Celebrating Celebs

Bizarro is brought to you today by Questionable Public Behavior.

I think celebrities often go off the deep end because they are used to being above the rules. I've experienced this on rare occasions when a group in a small town invites me to perform or something. For an hour or two, they treat me like Mick Jagger or Dane Cook. I don't wait in lines, I get special favors, everyone treats me like gold, nobody disagrees with me or questions any whim. I don't take unfair advantage of those situations because they are so rare and I don't feel entitled to it. In fact, it's fairly embarrassing.

But if you lived every day of your life like that for years, I think there is a great temptation to begin to believe you really are that special and develop a general attitude that you are immune to the rules that guide most people. I think this explains some of the celebrity drug addictions, weapons possessions, speeding tickets, shoplifting arrests, and the way Bono looks on the recent cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

I hope I never get to the place that there is no one in my life who will stop me from leaving the house like that.

(DISCLAIMER: There are other reasons celebrities get into trouble. Lots of people who get into trouble are not celebrities. Some people are more prone to feeling entitled than others, whether they are celebrities or not. I like Bono's music and his work for charity. I am not equating myself with "real" celebrities. I don't think Mick Jagger and Dane Cook are crazy, I just used their pictures to illustrate a point. I really do, however, think that eye makeup on Bono is grotesque.)

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Watchmen
2 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
3 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
4 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
5 (-). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
6 (-). Watchmen (Absolute Edition)
7 (+1). V for Vendetta
8 (-1). Watchmen (hardcover)
9 (-). Batman: The Killing Joke
10 (+1). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1
11 (+7). The Joker
12 (+17). Blueberry Girl
13 (+12). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
14 (-). From Hell
15 (-). Batman R.I.P.
16 (-3). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
17 (-7). Star Trek: Countdown TPB *
18 (+5). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
19 (-7). All Star Superman, Vol. 2
20 (N). Fruits Basket, Vol. 22 *
21 (+3). Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel
22 (-2). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2
23 (+9). Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 3)
24 (-3). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 *
25 (+8). Crown Of Horns (Bone)
26 (N). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
27 (+19). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4) *
28 (N). The Vast Spread of the Seas (The Twelve Kingdoms)
29 (-7). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
30 (N). Jack of Fables Vol. 5: Turning Pages
31 (-14). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
32 (+2). The Arrival
33 (N). Bone Volume 8: Treasure Hunters
34 (N). Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind
35 (N). Superman: Brainiac
36 (N). Batman: The Long Halloween
37 (N). Bone Volume 7: Ghost Circles
38 (N). Humbug (2 Volume Set) *
39 (-8). Vampire Knight, Vol. 6
40 (N). DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
41 (-15). Naruto, Volume 38
42 (N). The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded Edition
43 (-8). Naruto, Volume 41
44 (N). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
45 (-26). The Starman Omnibus, Vol. 2
46 (N). Eerie Archives Volume 1 *
47 (N). The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country
48 (-20). Naruto, Volume 39
49 (N). Bone Volume 6: Old Man's Cave
50 (-23). The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll's House

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


Commentary:

* Blah blah Watchmen blah blah. Watchmen actually sat at the top of the regular All Books charts for most of the week, but slipped back down to #2 this afternoon. It would appear that at least for now there's no major after-movie drop off for Watchmen.

* Not sure if DC's After Watchmen promotion will bear much fruit, but at least a handful of the titles they're promoting make debuts on the chart this week, including The Long Halloween and The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore. I'm surprised though that the new Swamp Thing hardcover doesn't chart.

* The top of the charts continue to be quite boring, with very little movement if any among the top ten titles. But there's plenty of volatility as you move down the charts.

* Naruto titles continue to fall down the charts, but I'm sure in a couple of weeks when the next batch are published they'll spike right back up again. In the meantime, the pre-order for volume 22 of Fruits Basket pops back up high on the list this week, after being missing entirely last week. And I'm surprised to see Fuyumi Ono's The Vast Spread of the Seas debuting so high, as this type of manga doesn't normally chart on bestseller lists.

* A lot of Bone action this week, with several older volumes popping up near the bottom of the chart.

Bird Envy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Extremely Young Morticians.

Here is another gag submitted by my strange friend, Derek. I changed it a tiny bit, not much, and I think it is his best yest. There have been many cartoon versions of the "Wrong brothers" before, but this one is fresh and simple, in my opinion. It makes me chuckle.

I admit that I didn't research Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For all I know there are no bluffs within twenty miles, it's as flat as a pancake and that's why the Wright brothers chose it. Nothing to run into.

If the Wright brothers could see what today's flight industry has become, they would be astounded by how badly I was treated by Delta two weeks ago when they stranded me for a day in Atlanta, then left my luggage outside in the rain overnight. This was NOT what Orville and Wilbur had in mind.

Thou Shalt Not Teal

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Ghostbusters.

This is a simple visual pun switch-a-roony gag that refers to the NFL team from Jacksonville. For the unsporty, they're called the Jacksonville Jaguars and their colors are teal and something.

This is one of the only times you'll see the color teal featured so prominently in Bizarro as it is one of my least favorite colors in the world. This is distinct from the color I call turquoise, which has more blue in it and is a terrific color. The color I hate is the one with more green, the one that appeared on tons of new cars back in the late 80s or 90s, and is still used for clothing and such. Blech.

The 1960s Jaguar XKE, however, are one of my favorite sports cars ever, not that I'm some kind of a sports car junky who drives around in a $100K car. I ride a 1980 Vespa scooter and don't own a car (nor can I afford a classic Jaguar) but I'm not unable to appreciate beautiful design.

I thought I might hear from some football fans when this was published, but instead I got a number of emails from Jaguar clubs who wanted to share this cartoon with their membership in newsletters and web sites and such.

What are your favorite sports cars and least favorite colors?

Pied Piper, Paid Paper

Bizarro is brought to you today by Bizarro Tributes From Around the World.

The cartoon at left is what I originally wrote and wish I had published. But when I sat down to ink the idea, I decided for some lame reason that it would be better to have both the therapist and the patient sobbing because we're all up this creek without a paddle together (Paddles stolen by W, boat built by Haliburton, leaking profusely), so I drew and published the version below.

As soon as I saw it in print, however, I wished I had gone with my original instinct, which is a quieter, drier joke. Bummer.

As for the idea itself, I am a great admirer of BaRockStar Obama and think he is exactly the right person at the right time. (Although 8 years ago would have been an even better time.) One of the things I admire most about him is his courage under fire. The guy stays cool against unimaginable odds, when everyone else around him is pointing fingers and screaming like children. No matter how much petty political nonsense his opponents throw at him, he takes the high road and sticks to the issues. In the long run, I hope that the juvenile culture of Washington politics will grow up a bit and take a couple of steps toward his end of the spectrum. I don't expect it, I just hope.

Meanwhile, I thought it might be funny to depict him breaking down and sobbing under a couch in the privacy of a therapy session. I know I would.

Bizarro Tribute

It's always nice when other cartoon strips pay tribute to Bizarro. Thanks to John for pointing this out.

Impaired Humor

(You can click the picture and it will become un-small.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Shark Week.

From where I sit inside my own head, there is almost no article of clothing more unappealing than the track suit. What is even stranger than the thought of someone thinking they looked good in this kind of color-coordinated baggywear, is the connection, or lack thereof, of the primary groups who wear them.

The fashion track suit is mostly the domain of three distinct groups: the tacky suburban house frau, goombas like "Paulie" from The Sopranos, and hip-hop-happy urban blacks. How did these three groups become members of the same fashion trend?

I don't know when urban blacks began wearing these eyesores en masse, but my guess is that some iconic fadster like Sean "P. Duddy" Combs (Piff Daddy? Pap Doodly? P. Poopy?) decided he could manufacture a lot of them very cheaply in Asia, slapped his name on it, then wore one in public. Once the hoards saw him in one, they had to have one, too. A simple sheep/shepherd equation. Pup Dabby gets rich(er); millions look like walking laundry bags.

The habit among suburban soccer moms grew from a more utilitarian seed, I suspect . They're chasing their crotch fruit around 24/7 and have given up caring about the way they look. Their bodies aren't what they once were and these baggy rainbow parachutes hide that (sort of.) They need something that won't wrinkle when they pass out on the couch from gin and pain pills at the end of the day. It also doesn't hurt that these velour body bags have a built-in contraceptive effect–their husband has to be in a very bad way before he'll come on to woman dressed like Puff Dippy.

Jersey gangster types are perhaps the most puzzling. These are middle-aged, white, often Italian men who are not slaves to hip hop fashion by any means, and not worried about contraception or the shape of their bodies. They are, however, overweight and lacking even a shred of aesthetic aptitude. Perhaps that is where the secret lies. A man in this position is looking for clothing that will both adjust to his constantly morphing waistline and give him plenty of freedom of movement in his daily activities: threatening, extorting, wacking, eating sausage.

Regardless of the reasons, it is odd that one could accurately structure a Jeopardy! question thusly:
"Soccer moms, gangstas, and hit men."
"What are three groups that dress alike?"

In other news, I made another mistake that I would like to share with you. In the title panel for this cartoon, I looked up the sign language alphabet to spell out "Bizarro." Evidently, I looked at the wrong sign for "R" and used the one for "S" instead, a mistake brought to my attention by several readers, so my original title panel spelled out "Bizasso". The original and the corrected version (for future use) are below.