From The Savage Sword of Conan #13. Story by Roy Thomas. Art by Gil Kane, Ralph Reese & Dan Adkins. (click pic for larger)
A classic? By Crom!
Friday, 25 April 2008
Friday Night Fights: Conan vs. Guys with Swords
From The Savage Sword of Conan #13. Story by Roy Thomas. Art by Gil Kane, Ralph Reese & Dan Adkins. (click pic for larger)
A classic? By Crom!
US Torture
Today's Bizarro made possible by Meaningless Bureaucracy Unlimited. "We control your life because we can!"
Everyone dreads a visit to the local DMV, but none more than those of us in New York City. Because this place is huge and untold dozens of people live here, all city services are as deep into the "Completely Sucks" range as one can get. It takes four days minimum to get a cable repair guy to show up at your place, for instance, so if your TV and internet are out, you're just living in colonial America for the better part of a week.
A visit to the DMV is a great way to get a feeling for what our ancestors felt as they waited on Ellis Island for in indeterminate time, in line after line, unsure of whether they would be allowed to pursue their dream, or be sent back home empty-handed and suicidal.
Because of the endless bureaucracy of getting a motorcycle license in NYC (you wait in line at the DMV to take a written test, which has little to do with actual driving rules or principles, then go online to schedule a driving test to be taken a month or more in the future – to which you must bring a licensed, registered, inspected car and a driver, licensed both for cars and motorcycles, to chauffeur the examiner as he follows you through the streets, honking in code to tell you what maneuver to execute – then back to the DMV within 90 days to trade the paper receipt the examiner gives you for another piece of paper, which you carry around until they send you the actual license 6 weeks later … I really wish I were kidding) I drove my old Vespa scooter, which I've had since 1981, unlicensed for four years. I finally got caught, and that's what forced me to submit myself to the local Gitmo to become legal.
Hence, this cartoon.
Upcoming Interview with Paul Hornschemeier
On Saturday, March 17, as part of the 2008 Ann Arbor Book Festival, I'll be conducting a live on-stage interview with cartoonist & graphic novelist Paul Hornschemeier, creator of such works as Mother, Come Home & The Three Paradoxes. I've read some of Hornschemeier's work and liked what I've read, so I'm looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks boning-up on the rest of his oeuvre in anticipation of what should be an interesting interview. The interview will be at 3:30pm in the Kalamazoo Room in the Michigan League (on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan).
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Mermaid Tears
Today's Bizarro is brought to you by the commercial fishing industry, which would TOTALLY kill mermaids in their drift nets if there was profit in it.
This is one of those cartoons that I hope you don't fully get until you look closely at the picture. I like to devise jokes that aren't completely evident until you look carefully. I enjoy being surprised this way by other people's cartoons, so I figure maybe my readers do, too.
Drawing Tools/Water and Meat
I've gotten a few inquiries about two of my previous posts, so I thought I'd answer them here.
Drawing Tools: I draw my cartoons the old-fashioned way, with brush and ink on bristol board, then scan them into a Mac to do all the repair work and coloring in Photoshop. I have a very cool state-of-the-art screen from Wacom called a Cintiq, on which you can draw with a stylus directly on the screen, which is pressure sensitive. So I can get a thicker line by pushing harder, thinner line by letting up pressure, etc., just like a paintbrush. I could (and have, on rare occasion) draw an entire cartoon on my computer, and no one would be able to tell the difference. This fancy-pants screen is tons o' good in my line of work.
Water and Meat: Many folks all over the place wonder about this "5,000 gallons to raise a pound of beef" (the subject of CHNW's demonstration in Times Square) and how much water it takes to raise plants for vegan/vegetarain diets. The way it works is that most of the crops we grow in this country are fed to animals, not people. So the water it takes to grow them is figured into the amount it takes to raise a pound of meat. Feeding plants directly to humans is 12-to-16 times more efficient than feeding them to animals (the number varies depending on the animal and the crop). In other words, it takes enough food and water to provide 16 meals for humans to create a single serving of meat. If the whole world turned vegetarian (yeah, like that would ever happen), we could feed 12-to-16 times more humans with the crops we currently grow. Simply put, it would solve world hunger.
The next question people ask is what you would do with all those farm animals in this vegetarian utopia. Simple: Stop breeding them. There are nearly a 100 billion "food" animals alive on the planet at any given time. Stop allowing them to breed, and they'd be gone in no time. As would the millions of tons of feces per second that they create, as well as the greenhouse gases they emit, and the pollution resulting from their poo. Contrary to popular belief, you can't use that much poo for fertilizer. Mostly, it just pollutes the air and ground water. We'd also see a HUGE reduction in medical costs, as most cancers, heart disease, diabetes, you name it, would disappear.
Like I say, vegetarianism will never happen worldwide without some kind of devestating plague that makes it too dangerous to eat animals, but all of these facts are part of why I don't subsidize the animal agriculture industry by buying or consuming animal products of any kind.
For more info on this kind of thing, visit Woodstocksanctuary.org. CHNW and I are founding board members and pour a lot of our time, work and money into this project.
Drawing Tools: I draw my cartoons the old-fashioned way, with brush and ink on bristol board, then scan them into a Mac to do all the repair work and coloring in Photoshop. I have a very cool state-of-the-art screen from Wacom called a Cintiq, on which you can draw with a stylus directly on the screen, which is pressure sensitive. So I can get a thicker line by pushing harder, thinner line by letting up pressure, etc., just like a paintbrush. I could (and have, on rare occasion) draw an entire cartoon on my computer, and no one would be able to tell the difference. This fancy-pants screen is tons o' good in my line of work.
Water and Meat: Many folks all over the place wonder about this "5,000 gallons to raise a pound of beef" (the subject of CHNW's demonstration in Times Square) and how much water it takes to raise plants for vegan/vegetarain diets. The way it works is that most of the crops we grow in this country are fed to animals, not people. So the water it takes to grow them is figured into the amount it takes to raise a pound of meat. Feeding plants directly to humans is 12-to-16 times more efficient than feeding them to animals (the number varies depending on the animal and the crop). In other words, it takes enough food and water to provide 16 meals for humans to create a single serving of meat. If the whole world turned vegetarian (yeah, like that would ever happen), we could feed 12-to-16 times more humans with the crops we currently grow. Simply put, it would solve world hunger.
The next question people ask is what you would do with all those farm animals in this vegetarian utopia. Simple: Stop breeding them. There are nearly a 100 billion "food" animals alive on the planet at any given time. Stop allowing them to breed, and they'd be gone in no time. As would the millions of tons of feces per second that they create, as well as the greenhouse gases they emit, and the pollution resulting from their poo. Contrary to popular belief, you can't use that much poo for fertilizer. Mostly, it just pollutes the air and ground water. We'd also see a HUGE reduction in medical costs, as most cancers, heart disease, diabetes, you name it, would disappear.
Like I say, vegetarianism will never happen worldwide without some kind of devestating plague that makes it too dangerous to eat animals, but all of these facts are part of why I don't subsidize the animal agriculture industry by buying or consuming animal products of any kind.
For more info on this kind of thing, visit Woodstocksanctuary.org. CHNW and I are founding board members and pour a lot of our time, work and money into this project.
Four to Read for Thursday, April 24
* Kerry Callen: The Truth about Superman (via JK Parkin)
* Blog@Newsarama: Another look at the manga-style Wolverine, X-Men
* Progressive Ruin presents...the End of Civilization.
* deviantART: Hank Ketcham's Fantastic Four by ~DocShaner (via Kevin Melrose)
* Blog@Newsarama: Another look at the manga-style Wolverine, X-Men
* Progressive Ruin presents...the End of Civilization.
* deviantART: Hank Ketcham's Fantastic Four by ~DocShaner (via Kevin Melrose)
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Free Association
This Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by a swarthy guy with poor hygiene and a penchant for argyle.Rorschach tests have been a favorite topic of cartoonists for a long time – few subjects are more fertile than the idea of "free association." Several months ago, I got to thinking about the concept of Rorschach's parents free-associating about him as an infant (decades before he invented his famous therapy technique, of course) but wasn't sure how to use it. This is one of those ideas that floated around my sketchbook for ages before I came upon a way to make it work.
Like any artist (except really poor ones), I don't love all my ideas. But this is one I'm really happy with. The strange comments in the caption balloons resulting from my own free-assocation about infants, make me giggle. If I can make myself smile, it's usually a good sign.
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