Contest Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept 9th, is another Bizarro Contest. This time, I'll be posting it at 6pm, Eastern Time (USA), and once again, the first person with the correct list of differences between the two cartoons will win something dandy. Probably some Bizarro Trading Cards, which you can buy for cheap here, if you don't win or don't want the pressure of competition.

Some things to watch out for that previous contestants have fallen prey to:

1. Note the number of differences you must find. It is not always 10.
2. The "official" differences will not be anything so subtle that you have to wonder if it is one of them. Like slightly lighter type on one cartoon than the other, a darker shadow or a slight highlight. It will be obvious things like an object missing or added.
3. Only persons posting their answers in the comments of the contest post will be eligible. Don't email the answers to me or write them in lipstick on a stripper and have them show up at my door.

Thanks for playing our little game. Good luck to each and every one of you.

Looky Here Now

Bizarro has been made possible today by a grant from the Institute for Spiritual Omen Authentication.

Perhaps my favorite kind of cartoon is one that looks like one thing but is revealed to be something else when you read the caption. I think this one achieves that kind of surprise, so I'm happy with it.

Below is one of my favorite attempts at that motiff. You have to look at the pic before reading it for it to work. Click to enlarge it for the full effect.










Tomorrow is another contest and I'm changing some of the parameters, so read the next post carefully if you want to compete.

Until next time... When opportunity knocks, look through the peephole first. It could be opportunity is being forced to knock by an armed kidnapper.

Spock Impressionist

(For making it bigger, you can click the image anywhere except on the green culottes.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Inappropriate Hair Gel.

People send me cartoon ideas all of the time and every now and then I'll use one. The most common thing for people to send me is a pun and although obvious puns make me groan as loudly as most, I like the strange ones. But even most of the strange ones are somehow not weighty enough to warrant a cartoon by themselves. So I've decided to start saving the ones I like, or that I can make into something I like, and use them on a semi-regular basis on Sundays under the heading "Sunday Punnies." This is the first one, the second one will appear in papers on October 18th of this year.

Some of the puns will be mine, some will be ones sent in some form by readers or friends. Either way, hope you likey real big.

Until tomorrow...stand tall and proud, unless there is a comfortable chair available.

Monkey Covers

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

It's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter vs. Marvel Apes on Ron Lim's monkey variant cover to Anita Blake: The Laughing Corpse - Book One #1 (2008).

(Standard disclaimer about super-hero apes from a parallel universe not really being monkeys applies.)


Image courtesy of the Comic Book DB. Click on the image for a larger version.

Bugged

Bizarro is brought to you today by Creepy Crawlies.

Before the entomology police get onto me, I suspect that preying mantises don't eat their young, only their mate. I don't really know, but then cartoons don't have to be all that accurate. I've always heard that black widow spiders devour their mates, hence the name, and I've heard that preying mantises do this, too. Whether it is true or not, I like the gag.

I'm sure any species that occasionally eats its own young has a good reason, my own father used to threaten it when we pushed him too far, but it does seem rather counterproductive to propagating the species. There was a religion in the United States at one time that forbade sex for any reason, even procreation. (Can't remember the name. Blueballers? Shrivellers?)Their numbers depended entirely on conversions, and it isn't easy to convert someone to a lifestyle that denies sex. The predictable result was that the sect died out completely. All with pained grimaces on their faces, no doubt.

So if there were a species that regularly ate its young, it, too, would have to rely solely on converts. Not a very good evolutionary design for any animal.

I'm off to Philly for my comedy thingy in a couple of hours and may not be able to post over the weekend, but I will be twaddling on Twitter, via cell phone.

Until next time... it is the table without legs that is sturdiest.

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days *
2 (-). Mercy Thompson Homecoming
3 (+1). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
4 (-1). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
5 (-). Watchmen
6 (+2). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
7 (R). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb *
8 (-2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
9 (-). The Complete Persepolis
10 (+2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid
11 (+3). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
12 (-2). Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages
13 (+3). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
14 (-7). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
15 (+7). Batman: The Killing Joke
16 (+10). Batman: Year One
17 (+2). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
18 (-7). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
19 (-1). Asterios Polyp
20 (R). Tumor Chapter 1 (Kindle)
21 (+3). American Born Chinese
22 (+8). Batman: The Long Halloween
23 (-3). V for Vendetta
24 (-7). Fun Home
25 (-4). A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
26 (-14). The Complete Peanuts 1971-1974 Box Set *
27 (-4). The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 *
28 (-). Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5) *
29 (-16). Parker: The Hunter
30 (N). Masterpiece Comics
31 (N). The Stonekeeper's Curse (Amulet, Book 2)
32 (-7). Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Deluxe Edition
33 (N). Batman: Dark Victory
34 (-1). Time of Your Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 4)
35 (+1). The Joker
36 (N). Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6 *
37 (-2). The Arrival
38 (N). Bleach, Vol. 28
39 (R). Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days
40 (-1). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
41 (+2). Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns
42 (-2). The Boys, Vol. 4
43 (-14). Final Crisis
44 (-7). Batman: Hush
45 (N). The Very Silly Mayor *
46 (R). Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Vol. 1
47 (R). The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1
48 (-21). The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
49 (R). No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 2)


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

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks


Commentary:

* Relatively calm at the top of the list, with the exception of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb returning unexpectedly high at #7.

* Why does Maus II drop while the rest of the University Effect comics remain stable in the top ten? And why is The Complete Maus so far down at #49? Are there that many professors assigning only Part I for their students to read?

* Highest debut belongs to R. Sikoryak's Masterpiece Comics, followed closely by the second Amulet volume by Kazu Kibuishi.

* There's a mini Batman resurgence this week. The Green Lantern bubble seems to have mostly burst though, at least for the time being.

* I'm so very pleased to see that the highest charting manga this week is the newest Yotsuba&! volume, due out in just a couple of weeks!

* The only other manga to chart is a volume of Bleach, and there's no Marvel to be seen at all.

Strange Things

I just received an email alerting me that an old animation project I created in 1989 is on YouTube. I'd forgotten all about it, but here it is in all its homemade glory as part of a popular indie TV show of the day in Canada. The show was out of Toronto, as I recall, and dealt with comics and graphic novels and sci-fi stuff. The first part of this segment is about The Watchmen and V for Vendetta, my segment starts at about 3:50 in. Please enjoy.



The first part of my segment, showing me as a 32-year-old pup, was taped on a home video recorder in the Dallas commercial art studio in which I worked at the time. The voices from off camera are my coworkers. The actual animation was all done with hand-made props and pictures in a local cable TV station with my friend, Steve Dirkx, who knew how to do that stuff. I tried to sell this thing but never got anywhere. It's fun to see it again.