Drinking Dogs & Digital Dough

Welcome to the latest cartoon recap from Bizarro Studios North. As usual, we have a fresh batch of gags, puns, and social observation to review with you, but only after we share another found image celebrating the Pipe of Ambiguity, Bizarro's newest Secret Symbol.

This week's blurry pipe pic is a frame from a 1971 TV ad with animation designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson (1930-2019). Wilson was an early influence, and is one of my all-time favorite cartoonists. I own several well-worn books collecting his work, which I've had since my teens.

As a young nerd, I subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the first thing I did when it arrived was to find that issue's Gahan Wilson cartoon. 

Occasionally, he even provided a cover illustration. 

This is my favorite Gahan Wilson cartoon. The pulpy image was photographed from my copy of the 1975 Tempo Books paperback, The Weird World of Gahan Wilson.

It’s a perfect Wilson gag: elegant, simple, deadpan, weird, and hilarious.

Gahan Wilson's work is among many inspirations sloshing around in our skulls, and we're grateful for his consistently excellent output over the decades. 

Here are our latest stabs at prompting chuckles from readers.

This gag may have been born of nostalgia for dining at a restaurant, which we hope to experience again before the year is out. 

By the way, in the newspaper comic universe, the musical choice of angsty teens is naturally The Smythes.

In a move to serve the mythical aquatic creature demographic, Apple introduces their new SeaPhone.

Anyone who works behind a bar is automatically eligible for sainthood.

If my count is correct, this is the 25th clown gag to appear since I took over the Bizarro dailies in 2018, with four more in the queue as of this posting. I suppose the gag-writing section of my brain is a sort of clown car, with eternal room for just one more.

As usual, our favorite gag of the week appears on Friday. We love crytpocountry music, but we wish it consumed less energy.

In response to a few persnickety commenters, I'll mention that the vocal mic shown above is the latest Bluetooth version, so no cables are needed.

This monastic order recently accepted a new member, known as Brother Loophole.

As mentioned in some previous posts, we conceive and draw each panel in the vertical panel (portrait) layout, and then use that art to build the horizontal strip for papers that require that format. This usually requires that some elements are added or removed. Occasionally the process results in a superior version with a  different feel, as this one did.

The reader's eye roughly traces a "Z" on a vertical panel, similar to reading text on the page of a book, but follows an upper left to lower right diagonal path when reading a strip.

In our panel layout, the reader picks up the text message, followed by the smiling monk, finally landing on the bearded monk who's also reading the text we've already seen.

When reading the strip, the viewer again encounters the text message first, then sees the bearded monk's phone and his backward-glancing eyes, leading us to Brother Loophole. This sequence delays the payoff for an extra beat or two, which makes a slightly more effective composition.

Building the strips each week is always a bit of a puzzle. This part of the process is sometimes a frustrating exercise in problem-solving, but it  forces me to look at a gag's physical construction from more than one perspective.

That's the week in review, wrapping up with a dose of over-analysis. Thanks for coming back week after week. Don't forget to pop by Dan Piraro's blog to see what he has to say about this batch, and to read his latest magnificent Sunday Bizarro page.

See you next week, Jazz Pickles.

Bonus Track

The Monks: "Oh, How to Do Now"
from Beat Club (German TV, 1966)

Formed in 1964 by a group of American GIs stationed in Germany, the Monks were primitive, experimental forebears of punk and noise rock. They never took a vow of silence.

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