Friday Night Fights: Mr. Masago vs. the chefs of Shinto Pete's

From Johnny Hiro #2 (2007). Story and art by Fred Chao. (click pic for larger)

One panel? Lobster!

Amazon Top 50

Here are the Top 50 Graphic Novels on Amazon this afternoon. All the previous caveats apply.


1 (+1). Watchmen
2 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
3 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
4 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
5 (-). Watchmen (hardcover)
6 (-). Batman: R.I.P.
7 (+2). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
8 (-1). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
9 (-1). Batman: The Killing Joke
10 (+2). The Joker
11 (+6). All Star Superman, Vol. 2
12 (-1). V for Vendetta
13 (-3). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
14 (-1). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
15 (+3). Batman: Year One
16 (-2). Watchmen (Absolute Edition)
17 (+12). Secret Invasion
18 (+1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
19 (+7). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
20 (N). Naruto, Volume 38 *
21 (N). Naruto, Volume 39 *
22 (N). Naruto, Volume 40 *
23 (+2). Naruto, Volume 35
24 (N). Naruto, Volume 41 *
25 (-9). Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 3)
26 (+5). Naruto, Volume 36
27 (+9). The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle
28 (+16). Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel
29 (+1). Naruto, Volume 34
30 (-6). The Hidden Temple (Star Wars: Legacy, Vol. 5) *
31 (+15). Mercy Thompson Homecoming *
32 (-12). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
33 (N). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
34 (N). DMZ Vol. 6: Blood in the Game
35 (-20). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
36 (-8). Crown Of Horns (Bone)
37 (-15). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
38 (+10). The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 1)
39 (N). Wanted
40 (-7). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
41 (-6). Barack Obama Amazing Spider-Man #583 Flag Cover Variant Third Printing
42 (-19). Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind
43 (-11). The Complete Persepolis
44 (N). Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile
45 (N). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
46 (N). Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1)
47 (-4). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)
48 (N). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
49 (N). Bleach, Volume 26 *

Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.


Commentary:

* Watchmen finally breaks into the top spot. The hardcover remains at #5, and the absolute edition also maintains strong sales. Even the Dave Gibbons retrospective gets some pre-movie love, jumping up 16 places.

* Four new Naruto pre-orders land on the chart, bunched up in the early-twenties. The only non-Naruto manga to make the charts is a pre-order of Bleach, eking in at #50.

* A couple of Vertigo perennials resurface near the bottom of the chart--the first volumes of Y, the Last Man and Fables. (Y made an appearance on this week's episode of Lost, as Hurley was seen reading a Spanish-language edition.)

Three Amigos

Bizarro is brought to you today by Lethal Lingerie.

I'm not one to poke fun at people who are different, deformed, or disabled, but three-headed people always make me giggle.

I often wonder which position I would want if I was part of a tri-noggin organism. The outside positions would have slightly more privacy and better access to the nearest arm, but the middle position would feel a natural authority, balance and inclusion in any conversation.

In the negative category, the middle would have no privacy whatsoever and might be prone to feelings of claustrophobia, as well as being caught literally in the middle of any arguments between the outer two. The outer positions could feel excluded if the middle and opposing head spent too much time conversing, or should decide to keep secrets. An additional drawback of the middle head would be having to wait your turn for certain tasks like brushing your teeth or shaving, as the outer heads would presumably have the option to service themselves first.

But another positive for the center melon would be protection from objects approaching from the side, a definite advantage in a bar fight.

One also wonders who controls singular tasks like bending at the waist, sitting, breaking into a run, etc. If an outside head tries to sit without telling the other two, one imagines the body falls to that side as the leg bends. If he should decide to run without alerting the others, he might well run in a circle. But what if the middle head attempts to bend over quickly, as when dodging a flying shoe at a press conference, for instance, and the other two are unaware of the attempt? Does the middle head give itself whiplash?

So many questions, all answered in the upcoming autotriography. Pre-order yours now.

Me and Sheila

Bizarro is brought to you today by Aesthetic Assassinations.

Here's another one of those editing screw ups on my part. The cartoon shown here is as it was when I sent it in to King Features. Shortly thereafter, I received a call from my editor explaining that they'd had a lot of complaints about the word "freakin" in other comic strips lately and that it would be wise to change it. Apparently, there are numerous newspaper readers across the country who are offended by even a euphemism of a "bad" word and are willing to make their local editor's life miserable if they see one in their paper.

So the fine folks at King changed the word to "stupid" or something and I was to change it on the color version I sent in later. Both this editing discussion and the one I mentioned a couple of posts ago happened while I was out of town and by the time I got back to the Command Center at Bizarro Global Headquarters, I'd forgotten about them and didn't make the changes.

So x number of newspapers and web sites published the cartoon above one week ago yesterday, with it's magical, taboo, "evil" letter order in tact, but I've not heard of any complaints. Which is good.

On the subject of the GPS, I think this is the coolest invention since Scotch. But I can't say I'm fond of the voice that tells you what to do. I've gotten into shouting matches with that person before, whom I call "Sheila," and even though I always win, she remains smug and unflappable, which annoys me even more. Nowadays, I use the one on my iPhone, which is silent. I miss more turns, but at least Sheila isn't there to point it out.

Shameless Friend Promotion: Jim Ottaviani Interview on Newsarama

Pal Jim O is interviewed by Newsarama's Zack Smith about his upcoming comic T-Minus: "The Race to the Moon in Comic Form: Ottaviani on T-Minus"

Here in the Future

Today's Bizarro is sponsored by My New TV Series.

It is difficult for me to completely grasp, but Americans under 30-or-so cannot remember a time before computers were ubiquitous. I'm not all that old, as you can see from this dashing recent photo of me, but I never even saw a desktop computer in person until I was an adult and didn't learn to use one until I was in my thirties. Even hand-held calculators were rare and expensive when I was in high school. I learned to type on a typewriter like the one in this cartoon and the closest thing to spell-check that existed was my mom and a pocket dictionary.

I may sound like an old geezer but the speed at which technology has moved in the past 30 years makes a person's head spin. There is nothing to indicate that it will slow down in the near future, but at the current exponential rate that it is moving, sometime next month we'll have personal robots that respond to voice commands, be teleporting from coast to coast using only our thoughts, and the Internet will appear as a 3-D hologram hovering in front of us.

More to the point of this cartoon, computers actually did get too small to use. The most advanced cell phones of a only a couple years ago did everything the early desktop computers did but the keypads were so small and inefficient you might as well have been using Morse code and an abacus. Thank god for the ingenious new designs by Apple (again) and the new generation of phone screens and keyboards. How did we get by without them?

I know that when I describe the way my family and I lived when I was a kid, I sound like Abraham Lincoln reading by candlelight in a log cabin. But seriously, compared to now, we were practically barbarians squatting in tents in the wilderness. If you're currently a high school kid, chances are that by the time you're my age your description of today's Internet, email, texting, digital TV, etcetera, will seem like cavemen banging on logs with sticks. Get used to it.

That's if modern human civilization still exists by then, which is very unlikely, so never mind.

Sofa Self-Censure

Bizarro is brought to you today by Godzilla Goes Swimming.

Here we have a simple turn of a phrase, the sort I've always found fun. To me, any sofa long enough to accommodate me is a sofa bed. In fact, I'd much rather sleep on a sofa than a fold-out bed inside a sofa. The sofa cushion is invariably more comfortable than the thin mattress covering the wirey armature of the bed.

I know there are exceptions to this. Like futon sofa/beds, which are often more comfortable to sleep on as a futon opened up on the floor than they are as a thing to sit on, and modern sofas with platforms and big cushions or something. There are probably more wacky sofa bed inventions but I'm bored even thinking about it and I'm guessing you're nodding off reading about it, so let's move on to the next subject. It's just as boring, but at least it is a change of pace.

When I sent this cartoon in, it had a grievous typo. The woman was saying "Does is fold out?" Me editor caught it, corrected it on the black and white version, sent me an email reminding me to correct it on my version before I colored it, and sent it out to papers. That's our routine.

A handful of papers and all websites run Bizarro in color every day. The color files are sent electronically (as opposed to the b/w cartoons being mailed in hard copy, the old-fashioned way) so I have a little more time to finish them. I color the cartoons the week after they have been sent in and edited for b/w clients and that's when I usually correct mistakes or typos that my editor has found.

In this case, I was out of town when I got the email and forgot to refer to it when I got back and colored the cartoons. So the moronic version ran in papers and web sites all over America, making me look foolish. I hate it when that happens.

In a cartoon later that same week, a word was changed because of previous problems with it but again, I forgot to change it on the color version. That mistake could have gotten me into trouble with client editors all over North America. Everybody loves a cliffhanger so I'll post that cartoon later this week and 'splain.