Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Back to the Fryer

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 humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honestly as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in the afterlife. The Creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have some understanding, which is ‘Community.’

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

In olden times, the Book of Face had a "religious views" profile item. I entered "secular humorist" as a pun on secular humanism, which was a bit of a joke, but a joke based on truth.

I'm well into my rereading of Vonnegut's novels, and one volume also included a timeline of his life. He was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1992, and was invited to serve as Honorary President until his death. The quote came from his acceptance remarks.

Attempting to be decent, fair, and honest is how everyone ought to operate in the world, even though we all will fail in these areas during our lifetimes. Throughout human history, threats of punishment and promises of rewards in an afterlife have been an effective means of control, encouraging believers to look the other way when people (including themselves) are exploited, abused, or worse by those in power.

I'm taking a little detour from reading Vonnegut before diving back in, but I'm realizing that, while much of it was over my head in my younger years, it was possible to sense his wisdom, kindness, and basic humanity.

As with all great art, Vonnegut's work reveals more each time one encounters it, and I'm glad that it's still available to us.

I'm also grateful for our weird little cartoon community. Thanks for being part of it.

Today's tandem pipe pic comes to us courtesy of Thomas U, a Bizarro reader from Germany.


The puffing politicians are Herbert Wehner and Helmut Schmidt, in a shot taken sometime in the early 1970s.

Thomas wrote:
Herbert Wehner was caucus/faction leader of the Social Democrats in the German parliament Bundestag from 1969 to 1983, and was nicknamed "Uncle Herbert."

Helmut Schmidt, Social Democrat, was German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982.

Both smoked pipes and cigarettes during TV interviews and talk shows, so there are tons of pics of them with a pipe. Wehner owned more than 150 pipes.
I did a little searching and can confirm that there are indeed a great many photos of both Wehner and Schmidt smoking pipes.

Vielen Dank to Thomas for taking the time to send the photo and background info.

Recently, we featured a pipe image by cartoonist Roy Doty. Early this week, an LP cover by Doty popped up in one of my socials.
I don't recall seeing this record before, and I thought the cover was cool enough to share here, even without a pipe in sight.

The latest Bizarro cartoons may or may not reward repeated readings. I'll let you be the judge of that.

The herd might disagree.

Tuesday's panel shows a rare example of common ground.

What message would you deliver to yourself as a small fry?

Architectural incompatibility should be nipped in the bud.

The modern art character was loosely based on Figures au Bord de la Mer (Figures on a Beach), one of several surreal and erotic paintings Picasso made in 1931.

The gag exemplifies something Dan Piraro described in 2011 when talking about our collaboration.
Our sense of humor depends for the most part on a realistic scene with realistic people where something strange is happening to them.
Nailed it.

We wrapped up the week with one for the Hive Mind.

Thanks for checking in with us. For a deeper dive into the mind of your cartoonist, visit my free Substack newsletter.

Groovy Gear

Yes, we're still hyping the Comics Kingdom Summer Shop in the hopes that you'll consider grabbing some T-shirts or other swag that directly benefit your hardworking cartoonist pals.

Bonus Track

Dave Brubeck: "Jeepers Creepers"
from Jazz at the Blackhawk
Fantasy Records LP, 1956


This recording was included on the album with the Roy Doty cover, which was released in 1957 by Jazztone, a mail-order outfit that compiled and repackaged material from other labels in addition to issuing some of their own stuff.

They may have been a budget operation, but you gotta love that Doty album cover.


 

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Saturday, July 11, 2026

Gone With the Steam

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 

Greetings from the sunny climes of Hollywood Gardens, PA. 

Your cartoonist's schedule is heavily loaded this week and weekend, so we're going with a to-the-point blog entry today, starting with a vintage magazine ad as our pipe pic.
I stumbled upon this image while searching for something else on eBay. I discovered a seller who lists hundreds of tiny advertisements clipped from old magazines. One wonders if this person found an untapped market or just has a weird hobby.

Maybe one day, Bizarro cartoons snipped from newspapers will be offered for auction. Until then, you can read the latest batch in digital form.

The week kicked off with the latest in our floating sheet-ghost series. Although the art is sparse, every time I do one of these, I spend more time than I expected to on the drawing.

European starlings have lived in North America since the late 1800s, but this particular bird still embraces its roots.

Some sophisticated members of this species are less prone to laughing out loud compared to their unevolved cousins.

Focus groups thought the user instructions were "a little preachy."

Going down with the ship may have been a preferable option.

The cargo pockets come in handy at BYOB restaurants.

Thanks for stopping by. We do this thing every Saturday. If you'd like to be notified when there's a new post, you can subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, where you'll also see a teaser from an upcoming cartoon, samples of my pre-Bizarro art, and whatever else I can jam in there.

Fresh Fashions


The Comics Kingdom Summer Shop has been stocked with an assortment of Bizarro T-shirts, coffee mugs, water bottles, and insulated tumblers. Here's one of our understated Secret Symbol shirts for a sophisticated look.

Bonus Track

Golems of the Red Planet: "Hadrial"
from Masada Surf, 2026


Masada Surf has been in heavy rotation here at Bizarro Studios North. Here's all you need to know, from the band themselves:
GOLEMS OF THE RED PLANET is a 3rd wave surf exploration of John Zorn's MASADA songbooks. But let's back up... In l992-l993, composer John Zorn began composing a series of short melodies written in modes found in Ashkenazi Jewish music - a project he called MASADA. Now, over 25 years later, Zorn has composed 613 of these little ditties - the number of commandments found in the Torah. Each of these compositions is written on half a sheet of staff paper (no more than five staves) and written to be performed by any instrumentation. These pieces have been performed by genres as diverse as piano jazz, string quartet, hardcore, all female acapella, salsa, afrobeat, and many more .... but never SURF! And as many of us know, the best surf music uses middle-eastern scales. So we're exploring this vast songbook of new Jewish music and exploring it in a 3rd wave surf context - in the vein of bands like Man or Astro-Man? or Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Shalom, motherfuckers!

I'm thrilled to share their music with you and looking forward to seeing them live at the end of the month.



 

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Saturday, June 13, 2026

Lowe Frequencies

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 


Howdy, Bizarro Buckaroos. I'm back at Cartoon Corral after a week away from the drawing board and computer, so we're keeping things brief today. I'm fixin' to catch up on office biz and make more comics.

This week's pipe-smoking personality is the late King Hussein of Jordan, in a video screen grab from Albuquerque field correspondent Gerry J.

Gerry wrote: 
The King of Jordan was an avid ham radio operator like me. Unlike me, he was also an avid pipe smoker! Here is a screenshot from a documentary that shows him chatting on the radio with a ham in the UK.
Oddly, just before I received Gerry's email, we watched a documentary series called Wasp Woman: Murder of a B-Movie Queen, about actress Susan Cabot. It was fascinating and sad. Cabot had an ongoing romantic relationship with King Hussein (who had nothing to do with her death!).

Thanks to Gerry for the cool photo.

If you'd like to watch the short film about King Hussein the Ham, it's on YouTube (of course).

Here are the comics published while I was slacking off. The cartoon show must go on!

As my mind wandered a few months back, I speculated about what might happen if a mirror were placed face down on a scanner, and imagined this scenario. Hey, it might even prevent crashes.

I wish I had drawn the mime with a teardrop painted on his cheek.

It's "command-Z" if you're partaking of the Forbidden Operating System.

For this caption, I offer my sincere apologies.

Your cartoonist loves gags involving music and using inanimate objects as characters, so this one made me a happy ink monkey.

The food-gathering strategy of this species is the least efficient in the insect world.

Thanks for checking in. We'll have more of this stuff to share next Saturday.

If you crave more in-depth geekery and behind-the-scenes trivia, please consider subscribing to my free Substack newsletter.

Bonus Track

Nick Lowe: "Shake That Rat"
from Bowi
Stiff Records 7-inch EP (1977)


"Shake That Rat" is a surf-style instrumental with the bass guitar taking the lead. It was originally released on Bowi, Nick's smart-alec answer to David Bowie's Low album.

Nearly fifty years later, Lowe is still recording and performing, and his songwriting is better than ever. These days, he performs solo, or backed by Los Straitjackets, and he's worth seeing in any context.


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Saturday, June 06, 2026

Where To Begin?

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 creative process doesn't begin with humor.
It begins with subject matter.
Dave Coverly

Dave Coverly is the brilliant cartoonist behind Speed Bump, a single-panel daily comic he launched in 1994. He's also an admired colleague and friend.

I was delighted to find this quote in the excellent book Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner.

Dave describes a cartoonist's process more eloquently than I can, though I've tried. When I began seriously working on being a single-panel cartoonist, I was trying to write funny punchlines or captions, which worked all right for a while. One day, something switched in my brain, and I started thinking of topics I wanted to write about and working to find the humor in them.

Another important skill for a cartoonist is being economical with words. Briefer is usually better, as evidenced by Mr. Coverly's concise description.

Our pipe pic this time around is a meerschaum masterpiece carved by Sadik Yanik, a renowned Turkish pipe maker. 

The bowl end of the pipe is a Star Wars character named Maz Kanata, which, I admit, I had to look up.

Bizarro reader Stuart VR spotted the item in a Craigslist ad.

If you're interested, the same listing is now active on eBay, at the price of only $1,895.

A round of applause to Stuart for contributing to my overstuffed pipe pic folder.

Let's review this week's Bizarro panels for unnecessary verbiage.

Not only were the ribs bruised, but the artichoke hearts were broken.

My favorite detail is easy to miss. I was trying to do a comedic riff on the Morton Salt girl. After coming up with the name "Martian Salt," I drew an alien version of the famous logo, but it was much too small. I finally realized I could put the Flying Saucer secret symbol on the box.

Many Benedictine monks still produce beers, wines, and baked goods. I conceived the gag as a reference to the trade name Benedictine liqueur, which I recently learned was developed by a 19th-century wine merchant who made up a story that it was originally made by French monks. The story was a fabrication, but it made for great marketing.

There was, however, a real monk named Dom Pérignon who helped improve Champagne-making methods, and that historical fact may have made the Benedictine story easier to believe.

None of that background is necessary to get the joke, but I found it interesting.

The student hopes to eventually earn a black lumbar support belt.

Here's some etymological context, from Blatt Billiards of Wood-Ridge, New Jersey:
The term “foosball” comes from the German word “Fußball,” which translates to “football” (or “soccer” in American English). The game mimics soccer, with players controlling miniature figures on rods to kick a ball into the opponent's goal.

The phonetic pronunciation of "Fußball" evolved into "foosball," making it easier for English speakers to adopt. Over time, this unique name became synonymous with the tabletop game, distinguishing it from traditional soccer. German immigrants in the U.S. popularized the term, giving us the name “foosball” as we know it today.
As an old Monty Python fan, I laughed at this one, even if nobody else does.

I've done a couple like this before, but this is the first time I've done one in Bizarro. I haven't figured out what to call this type of gag. 

Suggestions are welcome.

In a weird cosmic coincidence, this one was published on Merle Haggard's 78th birthday. Compounding the oddity, he died exactly a year later, on his 79th birthday.

Howard Stern is still with us, dispelling any cartoon curse theories.

Fifteen years ago, I coined the term "streptonym" to describe this type of wordplay, and I'm still waiting for it to catch on.

Thanks for checking out the blog. I'll crack open another six-pack of chuckleboxes next week to examine what's inside (or behind) them. You're welcome to join in.

If you crave more in-depth geekery and behind-the-scenes trivia, please consider subscribing to my free Substack newsletter.

Bonus Track

Sonny Rollins with orchestra conducted by Oliver Nelson: 
"Alfie's Theme"
from Original Music From The Score "Alfie."
Impulse! Records (1996)


Jazz giant Sonny Rollins, "the Saxophone Colossus," died on May 25 at age 95. The music from "Alfie" isn't his most challenging material, but it's hard to discount its appeal. 


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