DISTRESSING NEWS

I just found out that the Kansas City Star is running a comics poll, asking readers which features they should get rid of. That's cool, people do that all the time and I usually fare well. But in this case, they start by saying, here is a list of ten comics we think suck, pick your five least favorite so we can know which ones to kill.

Ouch. How the hell did Bizarro get on a list with B.C., Beetle Bailey, For Better or for Worse, Cathy, Mark Trail, Marmaduke, Real Life Adventures, Shoe, Wizard of Id? I'm really offended by this. Most of these features aren't even written or drawn by the original creators anymore.

Anyway, if you want to put in your 2 cents, one way or the other, here is the link:
http://www.kansascity.com/851/story/1266665.html

I'll let you know how it turns out.

My Ass and Yours

Bizarro is brought to you today by Budget Colonoscopy.

Now that I'm 50, I'm supposed to periodically pay a stranger to probe my rectum with a garden hose. I'm referring to what the strangers in this business call a "colonoscopy," of course. Yes, it can save your life, but yes, it can also give you nightmares for years. Plus, it is expensive.

It would be hard enough to force myself to make this appointment and do all the revolting things necessary to achieve the "end" result, if it were free. (Like eating nothing the day before, drinking sludge to make you poop like a rabid camel for 24 hours, jet propulsion-strength farting and pooping after the garden hose is removed, etc.) But on top of the insult and injury involved, they also insist you pay them large quantities of money.

Since I'm self employed, I have no discount health insurance plan through work, so I'm forced to pay these things out of my own pocket at insurance-company prices, or pay the equivalent of a luxury car payment to an insurance company every month just in case I one day need it. It's legalized extortion.

I'm rooting for Obama's universal health care thingy, but I'm not holding my breath over it. That activity is reserved for hoping I don't have butt cancer. Lifelong vegans virtually never get colon cancer, but I've only been eating that way since 2002. Apparently all the carcasses I consumed for the previous 40+ years can have a residual effect and literally come back to bite me on the ass.

Since this was a fairly dark posting, here is a funny picture to pick you up.

Lip Brush With Fame

On occasion I get mistaken for Elvis Costello by people who don't really know what Elvis Costello looks like. They see glasses and a hat and figure I must be him. But now it will be an even more frequent nuisance, because Elvis is sporting a mustache. Damn that look-stealing limey. What next? A cigar?













He has even fashioned his hairline to look like mine, as evidenced in this photo of him doffing his hat at the end of Conan O'Brien's show last night.















For anyone interested in how to accurately tell the difference between myself and Costello in the wild, I offer this brief list of defining characteristics:

1. His hair is longer and wavy, mine is very short
2. The brims of his hats are larger than mine
3. His clothing is expensive, mine is mostly from resale shops and smells of cigars
4. He has Diana Krawl on his arm, I have CHNW (personally, I think I come out ahead on this one)
5. I am the one occasionally mistaken for Elvis Costello, he is the one never mistaken for me.

How Publishers Discourage You From Buying Single Issues of Their Comics

Exhibit #1: Boom! Studio's Irredeemable: Volume 1 collects issues #1-4 of the series.
* Cost to buy the individual issues (at $3.99 each): $15.96.
* Cost to buy the collection: $9.95
* Your penalty for buying the individual issues: $6.01

Exhibit #2: DC/Vertigo's Madame Xanadu Vol. 1: Disenchanted collects issues #1-10 of the series.
* Cost to buy the individual issues (at $2.99 each): $29.90
* Cost to buy the collection: $12.99
* Your penalty for buying the individual issues: $16.91
(plus there are no ads in the collection!)

When readers know there's going to be a cheaper collection soon after the issues in it are published, why should they shell out the $$$$ for the individual issues?

Father's Day

(How big can you make this cartoon? Click the Wolverine's beer label and find out!)

Bizarro on this day is brang to youse by Power Urination.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I posted this cartoon a few weeks ago beneath a link, but did not include the caption. (I'd link to that now, but I can't find it.) Anyway, I mentioned in that previous post that I thought it was regrettable that this cartoon would run on Father's Day, when it is about men who are estranged from their families. It was completely unintentional.

My Sunday cartoons are drawn about six weeks ahead, so sometime in mid-March I drew the cartoon, inked it, colored it, got it all ready to submit to King Features, then looked on my calendar to see what date was next. Turned out it was Father's Day but by that time it was too late to replace it with something less pointed.

So I'd like to apologize to any estranged fathers out there who found this cartoon to be painful. I got divorced in the mid-nineties when my daughters were 9 and 14, so I know it can be tough. On the bright side, it probably isn't a tough as being a huge, blue furry guy with a face like a baboon's ass. So count your blessings.

As for my own Father's Day, 2009 – My two daughters called and said, "HFD," I called my dad and said, "HFD," he said it back, then I went to work in my garden. For once, it only rained HALF the day, so it was a rousing success by recent standards and I enjoyed it thoroughly. No decorations, no gifts, no songs written for the occasion, no TV specials, no obligatory parties...my kind of holiday!

Monkey Covers

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

Monkey reaches the mountain peak way ahead of Bear on Howie Post's cover for The Monkey and the Bear #3 (1954).

(Standard disclaimer about how monkeys shouldn't smoke cigars applies.)


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

Pedestrians of Note

(For the making of a larger cartoon with the easier reading, click the third toe of the fourth foot from the left.)

Today's Bizarro cartoon is sponsored by Baby Man.

This cartoon was inspired by the ugly building that is going up across the street from Bizarro International Headquarters here in Brooklyn. There used to be a charming, old, three-story red brick warehouse from the late 19th century, but the owner tore it down and is erecting a hideous condo building. If the architecture were at least interesting or tasteful I would not mind so much, but the monstrosity he is erecting will be twice as tall as the old building and utterly odious. A couple of floors are finished, and now that I can see the "style" of the building, I pray for the 50-foot woman to stomp it into dust. Or Godzilla, though he does not have a skirt up which I could look from my vantage point across the street. (Of course, a 50-foot woman probably has an 8-foot "schnootzer," and that might be even more frightening than Godzilla.)

I know the man who owns the land and he is a nice enough guy. But he's one of these people who hasn't an ounce of interest in asthetics. To him, "a building's a building." When a person doesn't even recognize the difference between an ugly building and a beautiful one when it is pointed out and explained, as I once did for him, you don't have much of a chance.

Of course, at this very moment, he may be writing on his blog that he knows a guy who doesn't recognize a huge profit margin even when it is pointed out and explained, and that my investment portfolio is odious.

The obvious difference is that I am not erecting a six-story reminder of my lack of financial skills across the street from his home.