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 Saturday Bizarro recap is moving. As of next week (September 5), this post will become part of News from Wayno on Substack. If you're a regular visitor to this page, please head over to my 'Stack and subscribe (it's free!)
I'll probably post a link here next Saturday to catch anyone who might have missed the announcement.
I hope to streamline communications with readers by publishing the blog and the newsletter from one platform. We'll see how it works out.
Today's pipe pic has dual meanings for your cartoonist.
It's the cover of a 1977 LP by the Firesign Theatre, whose early comedy records greatly influenced my sense of humor, and the image parodies a 1955 oil painting by Bizarro's favorite surrealist, René Magritte.
Mysteries of the Horizon is one of Magritte's less familiar works. It features three men (or three views of one man) wearing bowler hats, a common motif in his paintings.
Just Folks... A Firesign Chat is less familiar to fans, and is not as well regarded as their earlier work. The group's ten-year contract with Columbia Records had been canceled, and they signed with Butterfly Records, primarily known as a disco label. They reworked bits from their 1970s radio program Let's Eat, but growing tensions within the quartet affected the performances, and the material was far from their best.
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| Groucho Marx and John Lennon both gave permission to appear on the cover. |
Their best work was very good indeed. Between 1969 and 1971, they released three classic albums: How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, and I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus.
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| Cover art by Robert Grossman |
Those three masterworks cement their place in history as comedy revolutionaries, and the Library of Congress added Dwarf to the National Recording Registry in 2005.
Pardon the nerdish digression. We'll return to normal business now.
Future comics scholars will have to decide how this batch of gags rates in the history of Bizarro.
Monday's panel imagines a failed restaurant promotion.
The officer may be highly decorated, but is he tastefully decorated?
I've done a handful of gags referencing karaoke, including three of these multi-panel "favorite numbers" comics. I may have exhausted this idea, but one never knows.
The time of year dictated that we run at least one back-to-school (or stool) gag.
M.C. Escher is another artist we admire. His work is more geometrical than surreal, but it's often just as fantastical.
Editing is perhaps the most important part of writing. Cartoonists will tweak dialogue or a caption to cut unnecessary words or even letters. I wondered how many drafts Poe messed with when composing "The Raven."
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Bonus Tracks
Farmer Jason: "Ode to a Toad"
rrom Rockin' in the Forest
Courageous Chickens CD, 2014
Farmer Jason is the children's music alter ego of Jason Ringenberg, who has fronted the rocked-up country band Jason & the Nashville Scorchers since 1981, who recorded a blistering version of a Bob Dylan song for their debut mini-album.
Jason & The Nashville Scorchers:
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
from Fervor
Praxis Records, 1984
"Sweet Marie" might serve as a palate cleanser after "Ode to a Toad..."
A Whole Lot of Bizarro Links
If you enjoy what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following destinations.
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