Saturday, January 18, 2025

Variations on a Theme

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

A cartoonist is someone who draws the same thing day after day without repeating himself.
Charles M. Schulz

When creating this week's Bizarro cartoons, I lived what Schulz meant. I'd scribbled a punning caption in my sketchbook and started riffing on the idea, eventually coming up with sixteen candidates for gags featuring a famous cinematic vampire.

I thought it might be an interesting experiment to attempt an entire week of structurally similar gags without being repetitious. If every panel were simply a drawing illustrating the caption, it would have quickly become tiresome. After discussing the idea with Dan Piraro, we decided each installment would need an additional layer of humor. That caused me to look at the ideas differently and helped me eliminate some and choose those with the potential for something besides the captions.

I hadn't planned to do a "theme week," but once I began working on these, I couldn't think about anything else and decided to go for it. After getting the Nosferatu jokes out of my system, I could write unrelated gags in subsequent weeks.

Your thoughts on this weird detour are welcome.


My colleague Jonathan Lemon (a cartoonist and former UK pop star) sent me this absurdist drawing by Albert Hurter, a "sketch artist" who worked for Walt Disney Productions from 1931 until he died in 1942.




Hurter wasn't an animator but was hired to spend his days drawing whatever he felt like. His sketches served to inspire Disney animators. He also worked as a designer on many Disney films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Pinocchio.

Thanks to Jonathan for the pipe pic and the education. Although I wasn't familiar with Hurter's name or his work, I enjoyed learning about him.


If you can stand it, here are the Vampyre Week Bizarro panels.



I chose to run this one first because the caption sounds nearly identical to the name Nosferatu, and it sets the tone for the remaining gags.


This was the first one I wrote, triggering the avalanche of wordplay in my head.


I was hesitant to do "Nosferatoon." I cringe when I hear cartoons referred to as "toons," and I dislike the prefix or suffix "toon." It grates on me as trivializing and infantilizing the art form. However, I found it appropriate here, as the character is meant to be ridiculous. And he was fun to draw.



Clearly, this skull was simply an orthodontic oddity since vampires can't be photographed (unless X-rays are an exception). Also, when they're killed—excuse me, slain—I believe they either go up in smoke or crumble into dust.


In the past, my attempts at representing X-rays were unsatisfactory, but I'm happy with the latest one. The broken lines throughout the image would have been difficult to do with ink, requiring precise application of white-out. The effect was easier to achieve using digital drawing tools and switching between black and white "ink."

[Here endeth the nerd talk.]

See previous X-ray gags here, here, and here.


I must thank my ever-patient editor, JB, for advising me that we can indeed use "bleedin' prat" in a newspaper comic.

I didn't try to submit "wanker," but almost tried "tosser."


I held "Nosferatoque" for last because some readers (especially fellow Yanks) might not be familiar with the pronunciation of the word "toque," but after the previous five gags, they'd fall right into it.

That's nearly the end of my vampiric experiment. I have one more up my sleeve, but I postponed it until March.

This week's Substack newsletter includes the complete list of ideas I pulled from and a couple of rejected sketches. It's free to read or subscribe.
 

Bonus Track

Jesus Couldn't Drum: "Caught in a Dream"
Live in Florence, Italy, 1986


I'm reasonably sure that's Jonathan Lemon behind the keyboard.

A Bounty of Bizarro Booty

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free of charge, we encourage you to explore the following links.

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Saturday, January 11, 2025

Grim Repairer

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


The second week of 2025 brought snow and temperatures in the teens to Bizarro Studios North. The snowfall wasn't catastrophic; it was just enough of an inconvenience that we had to bundle up and get out with our shovels four or five times in the last several days. 

I felt sorry for myself until I heard about the terrible wildfires in California. I realize that my complaints are mere whining, and my thoughts are with everyone affected by the fires and smoke out west. The dark clouds gathering this year are not only metaphorical.

If we have additional snowfall, I'll just shut up and shovel.


This impressive mural comes to us courtesy of Bizarro reader Grieg T.


While driving around France, Grieg's friend Howard snapped photos of strange pipe-themed paintings on buildings. Unfortunately, we don't know the exact location or artist.


Despite the frigid temperatures, we produced our usual quota of cartoons, which we now present for your amusement.


Famously anonymous or anonymously famous?


You have to wonder if the brothers' coffee is laced with Benedictine.


A Sisyphean existence is bad enough without being mocked by a children's song.



Because I can't stop looking things up, I learned that a question mark can also be called an eroteme.


The outfit was a dead giveaway.


Gag cartoons often rely on the reader to create a visual in their mind's eye.

That's the latest from my Little Shop of Humor.

I experimented with next week's daily Bizarro comics (Monday through Saturday). All six are structurally similar and thematically related, and I'm curious to see how they resonate with our readership.
 

Bonus Track

Snakefinger: "The Model"
From Chewing Hides the Sound
Ralph Records, 1979



Monday's gag reminded me of Snakefinger's version of the Kraftwerk song "The Model." Born Philip Charles Lithman (1949-1987), Snakefinger collaborated frequently with the Residents. I saw him perform a handful of times with the Residents and his own band. 

I also had the chance to hang out with him during one of his visits to Pittsburgh and found him to be a soft-spoken and charming gent. 

More Bizarro Business

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free of charge, we encourage you to explore the following links.

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Saturday, January 04, 2025

Now We Are Seven

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


Well, my friends, we made it through another year of cartoons. In 2024, I released 314 Bizarro daily panels into the wild. That's a whole lot of clowns, cowpokes, cave folk, grim reapers, dogs, and cats. After seven years at the drawing board, I love it more than ever. My collaborative partnership with Dan Piraro is the best working relationship I've ever had.

Since January 1, 2018, I've spewed out 2,251 gags. Watch for a new photo of the pile of archival storage boxes soon.

As the Year of the Snake Oil Salesman advances, I hope our comical output will provide moments of relief from the chaos and madness that will surely come.


Faithful Bizarro buddy Petri V. of Waterloo, Ontario, spotted a pipe-smoking monkey in a Simpsons clip.



Petri writes:

I recently read an article linked to a short Simpsons clip on YouTube. The clip features a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, feverishly typing away (in shackles, no less!) in Mr. Burns’s mansion. I noticed that one of the monkeys was smoking a pipe, so I thought I might suggest it as a pipe pic candidate. I took the liberty of taking a screenshot.

Please note that sharing this video is not an endorsement of the forced labor of monkeys.

Thanks for the screen capture, Petri!



I referred to last week's pipe pic as an example of "Nephew Art" and explained it as well as I was able, but I couldn't recall who originated the term.


Fortunately, Dan Piraro commented:

For some reason, I think "nephew art" may have been the invention of one of our idols, B. Kliban. I'm not sure why I think that, and I may be totally wrong.

Thanks to Dan's powers of recollection, I located the source. Click on the image to see an enlarged version. (This applies to all photos in the blog).

Every year on National Cartoonists' Day (May 5), cartoonists share Kliban's famous "Out of the way, you swine!" panel.


January 1 would have been Kliban's 90th birthday. He died in 1990 at the too-young age of 55, but his brilliant work continues to endure and inspire.


We'd never have a club-wielding cop threaten anyone, so we'll just say, "Excuse us, but there's a new week of Bizarro cartoons coming through."


Who can resist the playful charms of Bettie Kilowatt?


This character is doing "Involuntarily Dry January."


New Year's Day marked the fourth birthday of the Pipe of Ambiguity Secret Symbol, which honors Bizarro's patron surrealist, René Magritte.


That reminds me: the official Pipe of Ambiguity T-shirt is one of the fun items in the Comics Kingdom Bizarro collection. 



The Ferryman of Hades doesn't get many repeat customers.


This still happens to cartoonists every day.


An alternate battle cry in the Marvel Universe is, "Avengers commiserate!"

That concludes the latest selection of rectangular humor from your (lone) ink monkey at Bizarro Studios North.

Bonus Track

Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve: "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
From The Young Ones
BBC2 TV, 1984



Online chatter about the current Bob Dylan biopic prompted me to share this fun cover version, performed by a fictional band featuring Stewart Copeland of the Police along with Jools Holland, Chris Difford, and other members of Squeeze.

Outposts of the Bizarro Empire

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free of charge, we encourage you to explore the following links.


  

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