Piracy, Puppetry & Product Placement

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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I have a plan to consolidate my worries. I'm going to try to find a shrink who can talk all my worries from my head down to my arm, then to my hand, then finally down to one long fingernail. Then—wham!—all I have to do is clip the fingernail, and all my worries will be gone.

Virgil Partch (1916-1984)

Small wonder that the late Virgil Partch is one of my cartoon heroes. He was never shy about expressing his anxiety about working as a freelancer and facing deadlines. At the time of his death, he was two years ahead of deadline on his Big George comic strip. One could rightfully say that his art wasn't as great as it once was, but I can understand his motivation. 

If I could get four to six months ahead of deadline, I'd be a more relaxed dude. Well, maybe not, since the outside world gives us so much to be worried about. But my job as a cartoonist is to offer moments of relief from our everyday horrors, and I'll keep trying to provide that service.

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Today we have a fine art pipe pic.

N.C. Wyeth: Self-Portrait
Tempera on hardboard, 1940

I tip my summertime cocoanut straw porkpie to Bizarro reader Jeff M for suggesting this charming painting by one of America's best-known artists.

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As many of you know, in addition to the standard Bizarro panel, I also make an alternate version for newspapers that run it in a horizontal strip layout. 

This week, each gag required a different approach to fit the widescreen layout. In today's blog entry, every panel is followed by its strip for those who care to compare and to study some of my tricks for rearranging the art.

Monday's gag was the subject of some focused speculation on Arnold Zwicky's blog, which is mostly about language, but frequently discusses comics. Mr. Zwicky and one of his readers spent considerable time trying to determine whether the musicians in the panel were based on actual people.

I responded to Mr. Z and said that I like to do my homework when depicting real people, but these drawings are simply shorthand characters that are intended to read as hard rock or heavy metal musicians, of whom I have little knowledge. 

He sent me a very kind reply:

Ah, that was the other possibility -- that these images are coming from your subconscious, which is much richer than you credit. You have a truly gigantic bank of images, most of them partial and schematic, in your head -- it's one of your great powers as a professional artist --  and you mine them constantly in your work, rarely with any sense of where they come from. I assume that at some point you came across images of Kerry King as a thrash metal guitarist, and then bits of these images surfaced when you were trying to imagine a thrash metal guitarist. So you conjured up a nice-guy version of Kerry Fucking King (who is an amazing guitarist but otherwise a major asshole).

You'll see that I'm posting more on your cartooning style, in some detail. That's pretty much orthogonal to the question of where your ideas come come from, but also interesting to me. How the craftsman does their job.

I recommend reading his blog, and truly appreciate people who care enough about comics to do in-depth research when they have questions about a cartoon.

Thanks to Arnold Zwicky and David Preston for identifying someone who could almost be the guitarist known as Zinc.

Even if you make him walk the plank, he floats.

Speaking of language in comics, I agonized over this caption and changed it multiple times. I finally chose Discotheque Support over Disco Tech Support. I thought that the three-word caption spelled out the gag too explicitly.

It's been almost a month since our last clown gag, so here's a new one.

Note: I'm still working out some issues over a grotesque toy from my childhood.

The reply was, "He's extinct to me."

I need not remind you why the 2024 Bizarro calendar is titled Cowboys & Clowns. 

I'd definitely buy a jug of Saddle Bag Rye.

Thanks for viewing my digital brain dump. I welcome and appreciate your comments, questions, and pipe pics, even if I can't always reply. Rest assured that I read every one.

See you next week!

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Bonus Track

The Kirby Stone Four: "Clyde"

from the LP Rippin' N' Soarin'

Coronet Records, 1957-ish

A selection from one of the many oddball LPs I acquired in my years of shopping at Jerry's Records. The Kirby Stone Four were an unconventional vocal quartet who added a touch of jazz and a goofball sense of humor to many of their recordings. This LP is mostly okay, but "Clyde" is a standout.

The group fascinated me, and in the mid-1990s, I started putting together a proposal for a Best of the Kirby Stone Four compilation, which never came to be. I had a brief phone conversation with Eddie Hall, the "little guy" in the group. That's Eddie on the far right in the photo above. He was enthusiastic about the idea of a compilation, and during our call he told me about their appearance on The Judy Garland Show, which required multiple takes.

If you ever run across their Cadence LP Man, I Flipped When I Heard the Kirby Stone Four, grab it. You'll thank me.

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A Hunka Hunka Burnin' Bizarro

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