Captain Canada

Today's Bizarro cartoon has been brought to you by Samurai Hitler.

To my surprise, this cartoon attracted some of the most vehement hate mail I've received in a long time. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but to me the joke is an innocuous take on the feeling so many Americans have had in the past eight years of being anywhere from embarrassed about our government, to afraid of retribution from others while traveling abroad. We progressives joked regularly about disguising our citizenship while out of the country and some actually did so with Canadian patches on their backpacks, etc.

To be brutally honest, I think that people who find this cartoon to be offensive have a very childish view of patriotism. I can't find the exact quote, but Al Franken said in one of his books that conservatives love their country the way a toddler loves his mother: she is always right, she can do no wrong, and god help anyone who speaks against her. A liberal loves his country the way adults love each other: you support them and want the best for them so you are not averse to offering constructive criticism, putting your foot down when they misbehave, and refusing to be abused by them. (Al said it much better but you get the idea.)

Some of my favorite quotes on the subject:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. – Edward R. Murrow

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. –George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. –George Jean Nathan

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. –James Baldwin

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. – Sinclair Lewis


As for me, when America is contributing to the welfare of its citizens and the world, and upholding the principles on which it was founded, I am patriotic. When it is invading sovereign nations on false premises, torturing its captives, and robbing its poor to feed the rich, I'm ashamed of it. Your results may vary.

I promise tomorrow's post will be funny instead of serious.

The Morning Puke

Bizarro has been brought to you today by Barbie's Bang Mobile.

I don't want to turn this blog into a never ending lecture about the limitless evils of the human species, so I'll just let this cartoon speak for itself.

On a more lighthearted note, my cat is throwing up as I type this. This is her morning puke, another one is scheduled for around 7pm. She eats a small amount of cat food twice a day (her choice, not mine) and moments later throws up everything she has eaten, often right back into the bowl from whence it came. She has been like this for years, yet continues to maintain an average weight.

Were a human to do this she would at first be termed bulimic, but after years of this behavior without losing a pound, would become a source of great medical curiosity.

My other cat, the first cat's daughter, never eats at all. Neither CHNW nor I have ever seen her put a morsel of food in her mouth. Like her mum, she neither loses nor gains weight. The strangest part of this mystery, however, is that the litter box fills up daily. I've lain awake nights trying to figure it out and have come up with the following theories:

1. The cats have found another food source of which my wife and I are not aware. Like a loose floorboard behind the sofa stuffed with tuna jerky.

2. The cats are letting their friends in at night to poop in our box, in an attempt to cover the fact that they are vampires.

3. The cats don't really exist, I am experiencing early-onset dementia.

If any of you have any more reasonable theories, please let me know. I could use the sleep.

May is Free Comic Book Month 5 at YACB!

May is rapidly approaching, so it's time for the Fifth Annual Free Comic Book Month!

May 2 is Free Comic Book Day, but here at YACB one day isn't good enough. For the fifth straight year, we'll be giving away free comics every day of May!

That's right, free comics! Each day of May I'll pick someone to receive a free comic, taken from my personal collection: duplicates, things I have in trades, and other stuff. My goal is to match up people with a comic that they haven't read but that they may like. My tastes are wide and varied, so chances are I have a comic for you.

And by free I mean free. Really. No cost, no shipping & handling, all free.

Here's what you need to do to enter:

By email (superman@umich.edu), send me the following:

* Your name
* Your postal address
* Titles of five comics that you like
* One other thing that you like (a book, a movie, an activity, etc.)
* Please include 'FCBM' in the subject line

That's it! For every day of May I'll choose at least one entry and try to match up that person with a comic, then I'll mail the comic to him or her. It's easy, and it's free!

(Note that this year I'm adding one more piece of entry data: something other than a comic that you like. I hope that this will make things a bit more interesting and help me better in fitting you with a comic.)

Last year I gave away 106 comics to 47 different people!

Of course, there are a few restrictions:

* You must be 18 or older
* You must live in the United States
* You may enter at any point during May, but only one entry per person.

And a little bit of fine print:

* Persons receiving comics are chosen by me, based on whether I feel I can provide a comic to you
* Even if you've entered in previous years, you're welcome to enter again
* I'll try my best, but there's no guarantee you'll actually like the comic I send
* All winners will be announced here on Yet Another Comics Blog (please let me know if you don't want your real name used)
* At least one winner will be selected each day, but it may take me a few days to get to the post office, so please be patient
* I will not use your address to spam you, nor sell or give your information to others

But wait, there's more!

Each person who has a free comic chosen for him/her will also receive a copy of the 2008 Halloween ashcan edition of either A Peanuts Halloween or Walt Disney's Donald Duck. (Let me know if you have a preference, though no guarantees; and if I go overboard again his year and run out I may substitute something else.)

That's right, two free comics! How could you ask for anything more?

So what are you waiting for? Send in your entry today!

More is Never Enough

Bizarro is brought to you today by Art Cruelty.

I think this cartoon is funny. I don't shop at places like Costco because I have no need for enormous quantities of products at low prices. If I were responsible for feeding a penitentiary full of inmates or a didn't know where babies came from and just kept reproducing, I suppose I would. I won't say I've never been to one of these monstrous markets, but I will say it wouldn't bother me if I never was again.

I'm uncomfortable with this kind of consumerism and what it is doing to our planet, but that's just me. As a reader of this blog told me recently, "you can always tell a liberal, but you can't tell him much." I could describe her the same way, of course, but whatever.

Even without the political sermon, I like this cartoon. Big chaw and a 4000-foot lariat make me smile.

Deer John

(Click image for a larger, clearer, more satisfying view.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cool Cops.

I used to go hunting with my dad when I was a kid and I admit that I really loved it. It wasn't the killing of animals that I enjoyed, it was the "man time" with my father that made it great. And, of course, the challenge of hitting a target appeals to a kid the same way a video game does.

As an adult, I have no tolerance for hunting for reasons other than immediate survival. Hunting in modern society is simply killing for fun. I can think of few things more reprehensible, with the possible exception of being a reality show producer.

From my current perspective, however, buying dead animals at the market is no better and arguably even worse. At least wild animals have a decent life before they get snuffed. The corpses in the deli case at the market were miserable from birth to slaughter. Since we don't need to eat flesh for health or survival, our only excuse is that it tastes good. It is difficult to argue that killing for flavor is any better than hunting for fun. We're just paying someone else to do the dirty work.

Sermons aside, I wrote this gag because I am a fan of cartoons that look like one thing but are revealed to be something different upon reading. I write those kinds of jokes every chance I get. The art on this one was fun to produce, too. Achieving the colors of twilight in the woods and the beam of the car's headlights was a kick. I like the way it looks on computer, but newspaper printing processes are not nearly as bright so this cartoon looked darker and murky in print. With something like this, it's impossible to get both to look good.

I hope you have enjoyed the few seconds you have spent reading my little blog. If you would like to read other entries, please do so now.

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

Casper frightens King Kong on the cover of The Friendly Ghost, Casper #218.

(Standard disclaimer about frightened giant gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)


Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Do These Shoes Make My Feet Look Big?

Bizarro is brought to you today by Unlikely Comedians.

At the risk of offending some of my readers, I will confess that I do not believe in "Bigfoot," "Sasquatch," "The Abominable Snowman," etc. There is simply not enough (or any) evidence beyond the personal accounts of woodsy folk tanked up on Bud.

I do not mean to say that I think it is alcohol that makes people see things in the woods, far from it. We all possess this very natural and useful tendency, no inebriation required. All mammals have evolved brains that see something where there is nothing, rather than nothing where there is something. It helps keep us alive. If you mistake a shadow for an intruder, no harm done, better safe than sorry. If you mistake an intruder for a shadow, you less likely to live long enough to reproduce this propensity for poor judgment.

So when we see something move in the wilderness, we have to make it into something. Our brain processes patterns and comes to conclusions, without our even trying. This alone explains the timeless, worldwide phenomenon of people seeing monsters in the woods, lakes, ocean, sky, snow. (It also explains our lust for conspiracy theories and our compulsion to invent gods. If we don't know the answer, we make one up to satisfy our minds. Without these answers, we go nuts. With an explanation, no matter how ridiculous, we are satisfied.)

If you're still not convinced there are no "Bigfoots" (Bigfeet?) ask yourself this: where are the bodies? How does this monkey-bear-human with size 29 shoes manage to hide not only itself and all of its kind from being adequately photographed, but its corpses, skeletons and fossils as well? We've found skeletons from mammoths and dinosaurs, for crying out loud, where are the giant skeleton feet of Bigfoot? And considering how many blood-thirsty apes of the human kind there are running around the wilderness wearing camo and waving guns, how is it none of these large, hirsuit, slow-moving targets have been shot? Hell, our species is infamous for shooting anything that moves and fairly regularly even shoots one another, which is why they wear those lovely orange vestments. So why are there no Bigheads proudly displayed on the walls of the dens of Alabama sportsmen?

Wait...now I'm beginning to see a pattern. Perhaps Bigfoots are smarter than we realize. Perhaps they dress in florescent orange camo, carry guns, drive off-road vehicles with gigantic tires and listen to Kenny Chesney. No wonder we've never photographed or captured one in the wild, they are living among us!