Entomological Mortality & Simian Positivism

I'm pleased to post my two most recent collaborations with my good pal Dan Piraro.

Today's offering revisits a theme I explored in a Sunday page during my stint as guest cartoonist in May.

 

Before developing the Insect Heaven cartoon, I'd sketched an elderly fly being visited by a Grim Reaper who carried a flyswatter in place of the usual scythe. It was a funny image, but not yet fully satisfying as a gag. 

I then added the fly's fatalistic comment, and we both liked it enough to put it in the "keeper" file.

Riffing like old-school jazz musicians (at least in our own minds), we developed postmortem jokes for about a dozen other bugs, and used five of them for the Sunday spot, setting this one aside for future use as a standalone gag.

As I've mentioned before, some newspapers run Bizarro in a comic-strip sized space, which requires an additional composition every day. I was particularly happy with the way this one turned out when tweaked for the "landscape" format:

Dan's art took on a wonderfully somber and ominous tone in this configuration.

• • •

 Last Sunday's panel gives an upbeat twist to an iconic image.

In our version, the three monkeys focus on what they can do, rather than dwelling on the negative. Inspirational, isn't it?

Here's the sketch I submitted to Dan a few months back:

I came up with this spin after seeing an earlier strip that Dan had published in September. Here's his story about this circular brainstorming session.

As always, you can see our earlier joint efforts right here on the blog.

Please do stay tuned for more (occasionally gruesome) hilarity.