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
If we had not winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
~Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
As of this writing, with two-thirds of the country bracing for a severe winter storm, let's look forward to the arrival of spring with hope. Pittsburgh has been listed among a dozen cities that may be hit the hardest, so we're keeping our eyes on the sky.
Wherever you live, I hope you experience minimal impact and remain warm and secure from all threats to your safety, well-being, and happiness.
Today's slightly off-putting pipe pic is a folk art ventriloquist dummy.
I stumbled upon this bumpkin on an auction site last summer. We have a healthy backlog of pipe photos, but new submissions are always welcome.
Perhaps the latest Bizarro panels will offer a brief escape from concerns about snow and ice.
Monday's gruesome gag includes a nod to Pittsburgh's George A. Romero, often called the father of the modern zombie movie.
In the mid 1980s, we lived in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood as Romero's frequent makeup artist and stunt performer, Tom Savini. I'd often see him picking up supplies at the local hardware store or shopping at one of the Italian groceries in the area. He looked rather scary in person, but always offered a smile and a greeting.
Hey, it was worth a shot.
A couple of readers said this character reminded them of American Splendor comic writer Harvey Pekar. That wasn't my intention, and other than a hangdog expression, I don't see a resemblance, but since Pekar's comic persona was rendered by some of the best underground cartoonists, I'll take that as a compliment.
Among his other accomplishments, Pekar was a prolific music critic. He reviewed Charles Mingus's 1962 Oh Yeah album in Down Beat magazine, praising the musician's piano playing, but showing less enthusiasm for his singing.
Mingus took exception to this and shot off a letter of reply:
My efforts at blues singing were not meant to challenge such diverse masters as Joe Turner, Ray Charles or Big Bill Broonzy, and I don’t think their singing was meant as a challenge to each other or to me. No one could sing my blues but me (if you must call it singing), just as no one could holler for you if I decide to punch you in your mouth.
Mingus was uncompromising when it came to his music and was nicknamed "the Angry Man of Jazz." His written interaction with Pekar is an interesting intersection of the worlds of comix and jazz.
Wednesday's cartoon references another Pittsburgher: actor and comedian Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler in the 1966 Batman TV series and received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal.
Gorshin was unhappy with the character's form-fitting unitard costume, and he came up with the suit and derby hat festooned with question marks. This outfit then began appearing in the comic books.
Their motto is "Cranky and Proud of It."
Unlike Tuesday's drawing, this one is meant to resemble two actual people.
We wrapped up the week with a variation on a familiar gag cartoon trope. We searched to see if someone had already done this joke, but couldn't find one out there.
Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read these renderings and ramblings. Stay warm and cozy!
Bonus Track
John Boutté: "Louisiana 1927"
Directed by Mark Bergeron
Randy Newman's song from his 1974 album Good Old Boys became associated with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. John Boutté turns in a lovely performance here.
At the 2026 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, we heard a heartbreaking version of the song by singer/pianist Marcia Ball.
Friend and colleague Michael Tisserand lived in New Orleans for many years and currently resides in Minnesota. Michael published an opinion piece in the New Orleans Times-Picayune this week comparing the post-Katrina period to current events. I highly recommend his thoughtful column.
A Whole Lotta Bizarro Hooey
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's still free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
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
We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Vonnegut might have been both amused and horrified by a conference here in Pittsburgh this week. Its title, "The Pennsylvania Energy & Innovation Summit," is a prime example of 2025 Newspeak. The organizers' idea of "innovation" is the suppression of education and research, and the quashing of clean energy in favor of antiquated and environmentally harmful fuels that put more money into already over-stuffed pockets.
A (once) respected University hosted the event, whose guest speaker fell asleep after stunning attendees with a rambling fantasy about a relative having the Unabomber as a university student.
To quote Vonnegut again:
And so it goes.
My old friend Candi S sent me today's pipe pic.
Candi writes:
I was looking through an art book and spotted this today. The book is COUNTERFEIT: Ray Beldner, Money Work. He’s a guy who makes art that’s based on or covered with real and/or fake money images.
I did some homework to learn more. Here are the details on this piece:
Ray Beldner: This Is Definitely Not a Pipe. 2000.
After René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929).
Sewn US currency. 24" × 33"
A tip of the coconut straw summer porkpie to my pal Candi, who also sent one of my favorite pipe images a while back.
It's been about six months since Bizarro had a theme week. While working on new material back in April, I sketched out a musical gag based on AI's tendency to produce nonsensical results from harvested data.
I liked the format, and in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, wrote around twenty gags. I set some aside for the future, and selected twelve to run over two consecutive weeks.
I'm interested in seeing how readers will react, so please feel free to comment.
This one introduced the series because it's uncomplicated, and it sets up the concept for the rest of the week.
Tuesday's panel paid tribute to Ol' Dirty Bivalve.
The drawing worked best in a vertical strip layout.
Who can forget the classic "I Harpooned the Sheriff"?
Music nerd Easter egg: In 1966, Atlantic Records released the LP, Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul.
My drawing of the book was loosely based on the album cover image.
The working title of Bowie's 1973 album was Aladdin Neckwear. Just before the scheduled release, it was renamed, and new photos were shot. Friday's cartoon is based on a rare promotional copy of the album with its original title and cover image.
None of the above is true. I'm just messing with the data-scraping bots.
I know very little about the pop star parodied in Saturday's panel, which puts me on a level playing field with AI. My research taught me a couple of things: Bruno Mars is hugely popular and successful, and he is a ridiculously handsome human.
That's the hot six AI Radio hits for this week. Tune in on Monday for another round of recording artists topping the hallucinatory charts.
Bonus Track
Nick Lowe: "So It Goes"
Stiff Records 45, 1976
"So It Goes" was the first single on England's Stiff Records, later the home to Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Madness, The Damned, and many other performers who commanded a significant portion of my disposable income well into the 1980s.
In 1977, in response to David Bowie's album Low, Nick titled his new EP Bowi. The man's a genius.
More Bizarro Stuff
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
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
It's only lines on paper, folks!"
Robert Crumb
Greetings from Bizarro Studios North. I've lost a few days to personal obligations, and I need to redouble my cartooning efforts, so we'll dispense with a lengthy intro this week.
Today's pipe personality is French actor and filmmaker Jacques Tati.
Bizarro Field Correspondent Frank V. nominated Monsieur Tati, and I agree that he's a worthy subject.
Frank wrote:
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this pipe pix candidate long before this. Jacques Tati as Mr. Hulot is my absolute favorite comedy flick of all time.
Tati also knew how to use a pipe as a photographic accessory, and he was already on my radar. I searched my computer file folders and found another Tati image that I saved in 2021:
Big thanks to Frank for the suggestion and for reminding me that I had been meaning to feature Tati.
Without further ado, here are the latest of my published lines on paper.
What does it say about your cartoonist that I've imagined piggy banks as living beings in several cartoons over the years?
Another victim of departmental budget cuts.
"Frankie" is one of my favorite characters to draw, and he's appeared or been mentioned in over forty gags since I started here at Bizarro Studios.
I recently figured out that the word "nanobot" is actually an abbreviation for "nanobotany."
Friday's gag was by far my favorite of the week. As regular readers know, I like to use inanimate objects as characters in my work, and almost never add arms, legs, or faces, but using books as characters provided an opportunity to have it both ways.
The panel is sort of an homage to the 1946 Warner Brothers cartoon Book Revue, in which characters from book covers come to life and interact.
As a friend commented to me, "It's all comics."
I originally sketched this gag for myself and Dan, and we both assumed it was too risqué for a newspaper panel. Later, I shared it with one of our editors, just for a laugh. My email subject line was "Probably Too Naughty."
To my surprise, I was encouraged to run it and see what sort of reaction we get. Bizarro isn't a kids' comic, and newspaper strips and panels regularly use "hell" and "damn" and make occasional poop jokes, all of which were once verboten.
So, we're doing our part to see how far "the line" has moved. Zippy cartoonist Bill Griffith once told me that he thought newspaper comics ought to at least be as free as network television.
If we get any blowback, I'll report on it here.
Bonus Stack
Here's your hardworking ink monkey with my Bizarro output as of June 10, 2025. I keep all of my original comic art in archival storage boxes. Each box contains 150 drawings, all numbered and date-stamped. When I close the lid on another box, I stack them and take a photo. Although I share the pictures on social media, I mainly take them to remind myself that I’ve completed another 150 cartoons and that I'm building a body of work.
It's important and motivational to document one's work and to make note of milestones.
The latest box is number sixteen, and the pile is the original art for 2,400 panels. That sounds like a lot, but I know cartoonists who've been doing daily comics for a lot longer than I, whose output exceeds 10,000 gags.
I'd be afraid to stack my boxes that high.
Thanks for checking in on the blog. I hope you come back next week for more stuff. I have an unusual batch of gags coming up next week, and am eager to hear how they land with readers.
Bonus Track
Fingerprintz: "Beam Me Up, Scotty"
From the LP The Very Dab Virgin Records, 1979
Fingerprintz was a Scottish new wave (ish) band whose music was solid and catchy, but they're largely forgotten today.
In July 1979, I was aware of the band and had been buying their records when they played in Pittsburgh, though not as headliners. Fingerprintz had been hired as the backing band for the American singer Rachel Sweet, who was 16 or 17 years old at the time, and was on tour opening for the Cars.
After the show, we met the band (thanks to my friend Jim, whose record store was the place for all of your punk and new wave music at the time). We stopped by the store where they autographed records for us, and a group of us took them out for late-night pizza and many drinks.
I saw Fingerprintz again at Georgetown University in January 1980, playing their own music as the opener for XTC. They were a terrific live band and a perfect complement to XTC.
Cha Burnz (guitar) and Bogdan Wiczling, former members of Fingerprintz, performed in Pittsburgh in 1983 as part of Adam Ant's backing group. I barely recognized them in their Ant-gear and makeup.
Songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Jimme O'Neill and guitarist Cha Burns formed The Silencers in 1986, and they released ten albums between 1987 and 2006.
The three Fingerprintz albums (The Very Dab, Distinguishing Marks, and Beat Noir) are available on Spotify and Apple Music.
It seems that in place of a lengthy intro, I wrote a verbose closing section. Oh, well...
Spicy Bizarro Links
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
