Ham & Existentialism

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

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Laughter is a reflex, but unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose; one might call it a luxury reflex. Its only utilitarian function, as far as one can see, is to provide temporary relief from utilitarian pressures. On the evolutionary level, when laughter arises, an element of frivolity seems to creep into a humorless universe governed by the laws of thermodynamics and the survival of the fittest.

Arthur Koestler

In his book The Act of Creation, Koestler uses dense academia-speak to say that humor has psychological benefits. It's a wordy but welcome reminder for those of us in the humor biz, who sometimes wonder why we're drawing silly pictures or telling funny stories when there's so much hate, corruption, and bigotry in the world. Maybe we are indeed helping in a small way. I hope so.

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Today’s pipe pic is from the CIA Museum. This pipe contained a subminiature radio receiver. The user would bite down on the stem and hear the sound via "bone conduction" from the jaw to the ear canal.

The photo was brought to my attention by my friend Black Mold, who has a wild weekly radio program on WWOZ in New Orleans. Check out recent episodes on 'OZ's two-week archive.

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You don't need special spy equipment to read our latest comics, just the web browser you're already using.

Cartoonist Bruce Carleton, whose art has knocked me out since I first encountered it in PUNK Magazine, posted the Comment of the Week regarding Monday's panel:

This is very funny if you don’t think too much about it, and very disturbing if you do, and then very funny again.

Readers in the hospitality business would attest that this wouldn't be their highest-maintenance customer on any giver day.

According to Bizarro reader Jeff J., this practice is properly called multilevel marinating.

The author's self-designated title is Chief Altruism Officer.

Any time I come up with a wordless gag, it's a safe bet that it'll run on a Friday. This peek at a stick figure drawing class is no exception. I liked the gag so much that I held back on the Secret Symbols.

The strip layout involved more shuffling and resizing than usual.

Saturday's panel featured nonstandard Secret Symbols, including a musical Inverted Bird, the Bunny of Exuberance in its guise as the logo for Bizarro's fictional heavy metal band, Iron Bunnies of Doom, and a K2 (with umlaut) modeled on the logo of the band Dokken, whose music I've never heard.

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Beer Here!

This label design for East End Brewing Company was a collaboration with EEBC's founder, Scott Smith.

Scott created a flow chart describing the process that led to the creation of Sketchy Beer. It began as a batch of Illustration Ale (which we'll discuss in a future post). I added some text and lettering I scanned from a letterpress print. The design work was a minimalist delivery system for Scott's charming diagram.

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Bonus Track

Danny Barker: "Ham and Eggs"
Orleans Records, 1988

Danny Barker (1909 – 1994) was a New Orleans musician, vocalist, songwriter, author, and historian. Among his compositions is "Save the Bones for Henry Jones," famously recorded by Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer in the late 1940s.

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Alternate Bizarro Locations

Dan Piraro's Bizarro Blog
Dan's Sunday page, cartoon commentary, and a discussion of the travails of modern travel

 Wayno's Bizarro Newsletter
An addendum to the blog, with a preview of a future gag and some ancient art from the files

Peyote Cowboy

Dan "Diego" Piraro's epic, award-winning surreal Western graphic novel

 

Thanks for checking out the blog. Drop by again next week, why don't you?
 

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