MYTHFITS become reality

I want to apologize for not posting a new comic and poll this week. The weekend brought with it a nasty Summer flu. I was hacking up stuff that looked like Poo, except it was green (TMI?) and I even had a fever. I'm finally feeling 100% better and back to my usual, blogging self.

And boy, do I have a special surprise to show you! Tara Martin, of Loffie's Randoms, has created AMAZING three dimensional models of Unicorn & Robot from Mythfits! Check them out! I'm blown away by her talent and craftsmanship in sculpting these two guys. Check out all the angles of Robot here, all the angles of Unicorn here, and her process here.

I am honored by this, Tara, and I really hope we can get vinyl toys made from your designs. I'd love to see the Mythfits characters as a series of collectible figures!

I'd love to know what you think of these... [ ^_^ ]

Beauty Through Boredom

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dubious Travel.

Day two of my Journey into the Bizarro Archives.

The first cartoon shown here is from a few days ago and I like it. So did a woman who wrote to me to say her husband is very funny and she looks like hell as a result. Sorry to hear that and congratulations. I once read that most women rank humor and intelligence above looks and money when it comes to choosing a mate. This is the one and only reason I have been successful with attractive women, for I am no George Clooney in either looks or money.

The next cartoon is from the late 1900s. This was drawn at a time when I was on my "Mooch Book Tour," one that was funded entirely by my readers. I visited around 15 cities on donated plane tickets, stayed with Bizarro readers who had volunteered to drive me around, feed me and let me stay at their house. Some had nice guest rooms, others put me on the couch on in their child's room. (sans toddler) At one house, I slept in a pink bedroom with Little Mermaid sheets. I wrote a book about it, which is long out of print but I still have a box or two of them. If you want one, I'll sell them for $15 each, signed. Just a little way to clear my closet space and make some cigar money.

You may notice the hirsute man at the back of the line. That is a self-portrait from the period. To add to the impact, I've posted here a publicity photo from '95 as well. I painted the big pink sign and cut a hole in it for my head. I thought is was funny.

That concludes today's trip down memory lane. I hope nobody got car sick.

Click!

Bizarro is brought to you today by Camera Phone Self-Portraits

CHNW and I are big fans of the cell phone camera self-portrait. Well, it's CHNW mostly, she can't resist taking dozens of pics of us doing nothing. She does it everywhere: on the street, on the motorcycle, on vacation, sitting on the couch watching TV, hiding the bodies of our enemies in the backyard. I often remind her that one of these photos could come back to bite us in the ass one day, but she will not relent.

She takes photos of lots of others things, as well. She has I-don't-know-how-many cameras and uses them relentlessly. I must admit she's got a great eye, many of her photos are really beautiful.

On the other end of the spectrum, something that is the opposite of beautiful is any of my cartoons from my first couple of years of Bizarro. Posted here is one from my very first year, maybe even the first couple of months. The joke is "meh," the art is horrendous, the border is as thick and chunky as Tex-Mex salsa, the lettering is some nondescript psuedo-comic book-looking crap. And what was with that signature? Was I trying to replicate an auto parts logo?

Quite honestly, I didn't know what I was doing. It does, however, show my affinity for deadpan comments and hats, even then.

I decided recently to randomly pull things like this out of my archives to share with you on each blog post. Hope you enjoy it.


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24 Hour Comics Day

Our library, in association with the Eisner Spirit of Comics award-winning Vault of Midnight comic store, will be hosting a 24 Hour Comics day event from Noon on Saturday October 2 to Noon on Sunday October 3. More information at http://www.lib.umich.edu/24-hour-comics-day-duderstadt .

Details are still being ironed out, but we hope to have food & caffeine available in addition to a space for creating. We're also talking with our friends at MPublishing about putting together an anthology of 24-hour comics created at the event.

Monkey Covers

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

Don't you just hate it when you find a planet in your bathtub? Bo sure does on John Kovaleski's cover to Bo Nanas: Monkey Meets World (2005).



Click on the image for a larger version.

Food?

(click the lettuce to make the image bigger)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Suspicious "Food"

Today's offering, which ran in papers last Sunday, is a Jack and the Beanstalk spin off. Magic beans aren't always a good thing; who needs a four ton head of lettuce in their yard? Imagine the size of the bunnies it would attract.

Drawing the lettuce reminded me a lot of my days as a commercial illustrator. I worked for many years in a small commercial art studio in Dallas and we specialized in line drawings of products, mostly food. Some of our regular clients were Frito Lay, Armour Meats, Pepsi and American Airlines. AA had us draw planes, of course, not food. It was not glamorous work but it was good, consistent money in those days.

Most of what we did was photorealistic stipple drawings like the image I've posted here. This was not for a client but was a promotional image we did for the studio, which was called "Cat Pak." Get it? It's food in the shape of a cat. I wasn't vegan then, so drawing a dead fish as food did not conflict with my personal ethics. This is a bad copy of the original but was the best I could find today. The original was not so "gloppy" looking. Gloppy is an advertising term used to describe things that are, I don't know, gloppy-looking.

In the first ten years of Bizarro, from 1985 to 1995, the feature didn't make enough money to support my family so I worked full time as an illustrator and did all my cartooning at nights and on weekends. It was a grind.

Amazon Top 50

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


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly Truth *
2 (-). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
3 (-). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
4 (+1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
5 (-1). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
6 (+4). Walking Dead Volume 12
7 (+19). Kick-Ass
8 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
9 (-3). Blackest Night
10 (+1). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
11 (+3). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
12 (-5). Troublemaker Book 1: Alex Barnaby Series 3
13 (-4). Green Lantern: Blackest Night
14 (+20). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
15 (+2). The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future *
16 (+16). Siege
18 (-3). Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps
19 (-1). The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide Volume 40
20 (+11). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
21 (+6). Watchmen
22 (+3). Batman: Year One
23 (+12). American Born Chinese
24 (+5). Warriors: Ravenpaw's Path #3: The Heart of a Warrior
25 (-9). Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 1
26 (-6). Odd Is on Our Side *
27 (R). Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill *
28 (+21). Absolute Planetary Book Two
29 (-10). Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2
30 (-17). Blackest Night: Rise of the Black Lanterns
31 (R). Absolute Planetary Book One
32 (-9). The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
33 (-21). Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps
34 (N). Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows
35 (+9). The Walking Dead, Book 1
36 (R). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
37 (+6). The Walking Dead, Book 2
38 (N). Return to Labyrinth Volume 4
39 (-1). Batman: The Killing Joke
40 (R). Star Wars: Legacy Volume 9 - Monster
41 (+4). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
42 (R). Batman: Hush
43 (-6). Batwoman: Elegy
44 (-16). The Walking Dead Book 5
45 (R). The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
46 (-25). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
47 (R). Batman: The Long Halloween
48 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 3
49 (-9). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
50 (R). The Walking Dead, Book 4


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:

* The upcoming Diary of a Wimpy Kid volume maintains the #1 spot, and slips a bit to #19 on the overall bestseller chart. Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour stays at #2 and slips to #37 on the overall chart.

* The release of the Kick-Ass movie onto DVD & Blu-Ray prompts the graphic novel to hop back up into the top ten.

* The rise of books like Maus, Persepolis, Understanding Comics, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns serves as a signal that the start of the college fall semester is soon upon us. American Born Chinese hops up as well, which makes me wonder if it is starting to show up on syllabi?

* The Walking Dead and Blackest Night continue to be spread across the chart. Together they take up fourteen slots, or just over 25% of the chart.