Young Man With a Corncob

This week, Santa made an early delivery to Hollywood Gardens, PA. On December first, I received an email from my brother containing this embarrassing but hilarious pipe pic of your cartoonist. It could easily be titled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Doofus.

Yes, that's me during my brief flirtation with pipe smoking, desperately trying to look cool and failing miserably. At the time, I was a terrible college student, with no interest in the engineering program where I was enrolled. Our urban campus, however, was ideally suited to the underachiever. The main floor of the student union was a huge lounge/cafeteria, with a lunch counter selling six-foot hoagies by the inch, and a couple dozen pinball machines. I spent far more time playing Spin Out than attending lectures.

It was the era before smoking restrictions, and people lit up just about everywhere. My fellow class-cutters and I rode public transportation to campus; our first stop each morning was a tobacco shop called The Briar Bowl, where we'd pool our funds for a pack of exotic imported smokes, and head to the student union for cigarettes, coffee, and multiple games of spades, before buckling down and hitting the pinball tables.

The area also had great little record shops (most of which sold underground comix), cheap restaurants and bars, and funky, overstuffed bookstores. My formal education never stood a chance.

Here's the uncropped print in all its adolescent glory.

Note that we extravagantly ordered the rounded corners. Unfortunately, our primitive camera couldn't capture fine details. I wish the image was clear enough to read those papers on the bulletin board. With the calendar alongside it, my teenage bedroom resembles a prison cell, which wouldn't be totally inappropriate. The following year, when our photographer began his college career, we commuted together by car, and soon learned the secret to maxing out parking meters by stuffing a penny and a pop tab into the coin slots.

I abandoned tobacco not long after this picture was taken, but I'm tickled that the photo has survived.

I like to think that my extracurricular studies prepared me for my eventual career in cartooning. Let's see how that worked out this week. 

Oh yes—I always forget to mention that clicking on any comic panel will link to a larger image.

The forecast for the next few days is occasional paisley with scattered gingham.

 

I pulled an Alfred Hitchcock move on Tuesday, and cast myself in the panel, along with my bandmates Dave and Tom. I took artistic license in portraying the upside down member of the group, who actually plays piano, not bass. I couldn't fit a piano into the panel, but to be fair, Tom provides the bass lines when we perform. In fact, we've given his left hand the nickname "Mo Bottom."

Speaking of a change in direction, I only had to make minor adjustments to the art to accommodate the strip layout. I think it works pretty well in both configurations.

Wednesday's panel is based on one of Aesop's more controversial fables, about an industrious ant turning away a hungry grasshopper in wintertime. Aesop cast the ant as a hero, but many interpret the grasshopper as a stand-in for artists and their contributions to society.

 

A friend of mine provided a succinct, perfect comment on this gag: "Everyone's a critic."

The AA battery pays tribute to Robert Crumb's Zap Comix, copying the title logo from Zap number 1. Now, that was an educational text.

I recently wrote several gags featuring "Subject P." Sometimes the writing process bestows extra gifts. We have three in the pipeline, scheduled over the next few months.

 

 

An enterprising businessperson finds alternate uses for tools of the trade.

 

My favorite element is this background figure. In yet another solipsistic indulgence, I drew a decade-old Bizarro comic on the front page, even though no one would know that unless I pointed it out. Oops.

That's the latest from Bizarro Studios North, and thankfully, we're nearing the close of this self-referential entry. Don't forget to visit Dan Piraro's blog, where you'll see a new Bizarro Sunday page, and find out what's occupying his active mind of late. 

I also recommend catching up on Dan's epic graphic novel in progress, Peyote Cowboy. It's a wild and surreal western, which will eventually be published as a physical book, but we can read along online, for free, as it develops.

Bonus Track

Cliff Edwards a/k/a Ukulele Ike
"I'm a Bad, Bad Man"
from Bandit Ranger (1942)

Cliff Edwards (1895-1971) was the voice actor for Pinocchio's insect messiah in the Disney film, and was a popular performer in his own right in the 1920s and 30s. I believe that's a tenor ukulele he's playing in this clip. He was a good musician, but an unconvincing cowboy outlaw.

We have one Ukulele Ike record in our archives. Its cover caricature is a mashup of Edwards himself and Jiminy Cricket.

Ukulele Ike Sings Again
Disneyland Records, 1956
Cover art by Francis Xavier Atencio 

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Worm Jerky

Brace yourselves, folks. We've entered another fraught holiday season, with the probability of a new pandemic surge as we deal with fatigue over reasonable and necessary precautions, and pigheaded resistance to a safe and effective preventative. Not to mention further normalization of violence, as long as it's perpetrated by a select class of weaponry fetishists.

Despite my tendency to voice a lack of faith in humanity (see above), I do realize that I have plenty to be grateful for, and I try to keep those people and things in mind. Among these gifts is the ability to connect with people like you, who read and enjoy Bizarro—and even those who don't always enjoy it.

America's Thanksgiving holiday was based on the whitewashed reframing of a particularly horrific chapter in the country's history, but taking time to express gratitude for people and things in one's life is never a bad idea, and it predates the colonization of North America by centuries.

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope yours was calm and uneventful, with no political arguments or food fights. I'm writing this post early in the week so I can take a few days off and return to my drawing board refreshed and energized.

As is our practice, we begin with a pipe pic. This one comes direct from my record shelves: Vivian Stanshall's 1978 LP, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.

Stanshall (1943-1995) was a founding member of the Bonzo Dog Band, who are much beloved here at the studio, and he had a fascinating and varied career after the Bonzos disbanded in 1970. Among his many projects, he was the master of ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells album, and he co-wrote songs with Steve Winwood into the 1980s. He was a longtime drinking buddy of Keith Moon, and the pair were responsible for legendary and outrageous pranks. Stanshall is often described as a classic English eccentric, but that seems inadequate for this singular character.

My most eccentric behavior is spending just about every day making comics and letting them out into the world. Let's review the latest batch to escape from my workshop.

Spyware was less discreet in its infancy, and body heat generated by nervous stoolies often melted the wax recordings.

Tuesday's comic can be read as a simple joke, or as an allegory.

 

The strip version illustrates the sidewalk's peril with a withered variant of Bizarro's flying saucer symbol.

 

Rodents are able to adapt and thrive in many environments. Firehouse mice are no exception.

 

Naturally, Bizarro offered a nontraditional Thanksgiving scene. I had fun drawing this one, especially the zom-bunny portrait in the hallway.

 

We all know how intelligent our pets are, yet we sound like imbeciles when we speak to them. If we weren't managing their food and hygiene, they probably wouldn't tolerate our babbling.

 

Over the years, I've based several gags on The Picture of Dorian Gray, but this one is my favorite because nothing in the text mentions Oscar Wilde or his novel. I give our readers credit for having a general cultural awareness enabling them to get this joke.

I searched for reference images in order to portray the Monopoly man (whose name is Uncle Pennybags) and Richie Rich (whose middle name is a dollar sign). Pennybags has a benign retro clip art vibe, but as I studied panels from Richie Rich comics, his appearance became increasingly disturbing. He's weirdly distorted, with a giant head and misaligned eyes. He has a diminutive torso perched atop outsize legs, and looks like a deep sea diver who surfaced too fast. Plus he always wears that humiliating outfit. He's nothing if not instantly recognizable.

That wraps it up for another week. Thank you for reading the comic and following these ramblings. Don't forget to visit Dan Piraro's blog for his latest Sunday page and to see what else he's been up to.

If you'd like to be notified when I update the blog, you're welcome to subscribe to my free newsletter. It lands in your inbox every week, and each edition includes an exclusive peek at a yet-to-be-published comic.

Bonus Track

Vivian Stanshall & bIG Grunt
"11 Mustachioed Daughters"
From BBC1's Marty Amok, broadcast in March, 1970

The hyperkinetic performer who solos on the custom built "theremin leg" is Bonzo Dog Band alumnus Roger Ruskin Spear. Spear frequently collaborated with Stanshall, and released some wonderful records under his own name.

Marty Amok was an Easter special starring comedian Marty Feldman, proving once again that British television was superior to anything we had in the states.

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Kaputnik, I Hardly Knew Ye

Greetings from Hollywood Gardens, PA, and welcome to the Bizarro Studios North blogging station, where we review (and occasionally over-analyze) our most recent cartoon output.

In last week's post, I mentioned that the vast majority of pipe pics I find on the web are of men in stiff, "serious author" poses. Here's the perfect example of this type of photo.

MAD cartoonist Dave Berg (1920-2002) had a pipe in his mouth in nearly every known photo and drawing of him, or of his comic alter ego, Roger Kaputnik. Berg's most famous creation was the feature "The Lighter Side Of..." Each installment included a series of strips on a particular topic, such as water, television, finances, relationships, etc. His drawings were quite well done, and often employed accomplished ink washes for a cartoony yet realistic look.

According to some of his MAD colleagues, he was also grandiose and self-important. Fellow contributor Al Jaffee described him as having a moralistic personality. Berg wrote a book called My Friend God, which gave the MAD bullpen plenty of material for razzing him.

Over the years, many readers found his comics had become repetitive, didactic, and stuffy. National Lampoon's 1971 MAD parody included a brutally funny skewering of Berg and his work.

Comic book and TV writer Mark Evanier's blog recounted a cringeworthy (and hilarious) encounter a friend of his initiated with Berg after the Lampoon piece was published.

He may have been a messianic fuddy-duddy, but there's no denying that Dave Berg was a masterful cartoonist, with a career of more than sixty years. I used to make fun of him when I was a smartypants teenager, but I learned from reading his work, too.

Let's see how well (or badly) I applied the lessons acquired spending countless hours reading MAD.

I kicked off the week with a silly gag, in the longstanding wiseacre tradition of making fun of something I don't quite understand.

The United Cartoon Workers of America requires its members to produce at least one desert island gag per year, so I'm just following the rules to remain in good standing with the union. My favorite incidental detail here was employing the Pipe of Ambiguity secret symbol as a periscope, although I'm sure Popeye did it long before Bizarro.

Wednesday's panel was a bit unusual in that the reader might miss part of the setup (the window sign) until after reading the punchline. We like to delay the payoff for a beat if possible, and I think this approach worked.

Redheaded Wayno & raven-haired J.R. Williams
Encinitas, CA, 1993 • Photo by Mary Fleener

The "Ken" cut wouldn't be my first choice. When it comes to plastic coiffures, I prefer the classic DEVO style.

Internet providers are the only utility that offers no proof that they've delivered the level of service you're paying for, and rates paid by different customers for the same "product" can vary wildly. Their plans all offer speeds "up to" a particular level, but no guarantee as to how often, if ever, they actually reach that particular speed. For the comic, I applied that standard to a tangible product.

When I look at the gag today, having written and drawn it months ago, it's my least favorite in this batch. It feels a little cranky, perhaps even, dare I say, Dave Bergian?

On the other hand, I'm still quite happy with Friday's panel, which combines two of my favorite subjects: cowboys and music. Three, if you count cowboy music. My mind's ear hears the cowpoke speaking in the languid voice of Sam Elliott as "The Stranger," in The Big Lebowski.

Saturday's panel provided an opportunity to create a new variant of the Flying Saucer of Possibility secret symbol. The version in this context is canonically possible, as both Cap'n Crunch and Quisp cereals are made by the Quaker Oats company.

That's the latest from Bizarro Studios North. As always, I thank you for reading Bizarro and visiting the blog. Speaking of blogs, Dan Piraro's weekly post is well worth reading, both for his commentary and for his glorious, widescreen Sunday page.

Bonus Track

Bing Crosby, with Victor Young and Orchestra
My Little Buckaroo
From Home on the Range
Decca LP DL8210, 1956
(Recorded in 1937)

.

A sentimental cowboy tune by singer, actor, and frequent pipe-smoker Bing Crosby, digitized by your cartoonist from a scratchy LP. All it needs is electric guitar and wah-wah.

 

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Museum Piece

We have a saying here at the studio: Another Saturday, another blog entry. As usual, we've come to share our latest comics, along with informative notes, a pipe-related image, and a musical selection (which may or may not relate to anything we discuss.)

As I type this post, I'm several days into a moderate case of insomnia, which I hadn't experienced in a while. It could simply be a delayed adjustment to the change to Standard Time last weekend. Of course, the world offers us all an abundance of reasons to lie awake at night, so I can at least assume I'm not alone in this.

Fortunately, connecting with Bizarro's readers through various comment forums, this blog, and my newsletter is always therapeutic, so I'm already starting to feel better. In fact, I'm rather excited to show you this week's opening photo.

Most of the pipe pics I see are men in stiff professorial poses, so when I came across this dynamic shot of Carla Bley, I knew I had to share it here.

Jazz musician Carla Bley in 1979  
© Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

My research has turned up quotes from several musicians mentioning that she is (or was) a pipe smoker. Bley is a prolific and wildly creative composer, organist, pianist, and bandleader. Her most recent album was released in 2020, at age 84. I've enjoyed much of her music over the years, and I think I'll start exploring some of the records I've missed.

It's not easy to follow a stunning picture like the one above, so we'll try to make it up in quantity, as we review six new Bizarro panels.

More than a few people told me that they'd welcome this variation on an old favorite. I hereby grant the Girl Scouts permission to run with the idea, as long as they send me a carton of the cookies.

 

If Sasquatch were being completely honest, he'd admit that he's an eight extra wide.

 

 

He cranky, but has something of a valid point. Few patients ask their therapist to make them a cocktail during a session.

 

I'd definitely be intimidated by a five-foot tall chicken. Or a robin, for that matter.

 

Friday's real estate panel was a direct riff on a comic I did a week earlier. It was also the most intimidating to draw. When I wrote this gag, I offered it Dan Piraro for a Sunday Bizarro page, figuring it would work well in the larger format. He must have sensed my lack of confidence in my ablility to draw it, and encouraged me to do it as a daily. I sweated over this one, and I hope it works, despite my loosey-goosey version of perspective. Thanks to Dan for the tough-love editing.

 

PS: Shaving is tricky when using a funhouse mirror. 

PPS: Not shown is the "Guess Your Weight" scale.

As I've mentioned in the past, we like to keep Halloween in our hearts throughout the year. I reasoned that the Great Pumpkin probably decomposes after the holiday, and one of its seeds becomes the GP for the subsequent year. It nicely mirrors other popular belief systems.

 

That's it for the week in Bizarro. Be sure to mosey over to Señor Piraro's blog to see what he's created for the Sunday funnies, and to read his comments on these comics and other matters of interest. 

 

See you next Saturday.

Spotted in the Wild

My friend Cathy B. shared this photo she took at The Kazoo Museum in Beaufort, SC.

Bizarro is now officially recognized as part of kazoo history. Look, Ma, I'm in a museum!

Thanks for the photo, Cathy.

Bonus Track

Zoot and the Roots: "I Ate the Little Red Rooster"
Red Rhino Records (UK) single, 1983

NOTE: Some YouTube videos are unavailable outside the US.
On some mobile devices, you must view the web version
of this blog to see the video link and preview image.

This selection is a callback to Thursday's "Bantam and Robin" gag. There are literally hundreds of chicken songs I could have chosen in its place. Back in the early 1990s, a cartoonist friend compiled at least four 90-minute cassette tapes of chicken songs, in a truly obsessive labor of love.

 

This one was scanned and digitized from my own collection. The 45 has a place of honor in my special carrying case of "bulletproof" records.

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I'm Not a Cat

Greetings, appreciators of amusing words and pictures. If you celebrate Halloween, I hope yours was enjoyable and safe. Although Day of the Dead (November 1) isn't part of my ancestral heritage, I like to observe it in my own way. Remembering family and friends who are gone, while celebrating and appreciating those who are still with us is the best reason for a holiday I can imagine.

Our pipe pic presented itself as I was selecting music for my workday earlier this week. After popping this Lalo Schifrin disc into the player, I noticed the cover photo, and wondered why I hadn't remembered that it was right here in my music collection, waiting to be shared on the blog.

This music was the perfect antidote to a cold, rainy autumn day. I'll mention more about Schifrin later in this post.

 

Before any additional musical discussion, though, it's time to review this week's Bizarro cartoons. 

 

Our offering for Day of the Dead was a twist on Take Your Child to Work Day. 

I always think a ghost gag will be something I can draw more quickly than usual, but I end up spending more time fussing over little details and coloring than any other comic of the week. I suppose that when the art is sparser, each line counts for more.

 

The scene pictured above is fairer and more consistent than the reality as practiced here in the good old USA, where clowns with deeper pockets can hire someone to swing a heavier mallet on their behalf.

 

The strip version called for a vertical layout, allowing me to extend the height of the "ring the bell" game, and make a lighter sentence even less likely. If you read a newspaper that runs Bizarro as a strip, you had to turn the paper by ninety degrees. Here on the blog, we rotate the image for you.

 

Although I'm not tattooed, I appreciate the art form when it's done well, and I once served as a judge at a "Meeting of the Marked" event in my hometown.

Intentional UV exposure is probably less safe than the ink and needle method.

 

The procedure in question would address this patient's browstache as well as his stachebrow. Medical science marches on.

 

By the way, this panel generated our Ridiculous Comment of the Week:

If you have to know math to get a joke, it isn’t funny. 

This reader must have focused on the word "reciprocal" in the mathematical sense, though it of course has other meanings. Maybe we should add a disclaimer stating that you have to know words to get some of the jokes.

 

At least he remembered to jiggle the handle.

Over the past twenty months, I've avoided referring to our altered existence due to the pandemic in my comics, although I've talked about it in the blog. I think it's safe to assume that after it's okay to get back to normal (or near-normal) activities, the way people work will be changed forever. Also, once I had the idea for this gag, I really wanted to draw a Zoom screen full of wildebeests, including one based on the "I'm not a cat" guy.

Thanks for reading the comics, following the blog, and subscribing to my newsletter. Don't forget to visit Dan Piraro's blog to check out his musings on art and life, as well as his latest gorgeous Bizarro Sunday page.

Peyote Cowboy, Dan's surreal graphic novel, is really getting wild with its latest episode. If you haven't read it yet, skedaddle over to the PeyCow site and catch up with this hallucinogenic western.

See you next week with more of this comical stuff.

Bonus Track

Louis Jordan: Bullitt
Pzazz Records 45 (1968)

Lalo Schifrin is best known for his film and TV scores, perhaps most famously for the Mission: Impossible theme. My favorite of his movie work is the Bullitt soundtrack.

This version of the Bullitt theme was recorded by Louis Jordan, of "Five Guys Named Moe" fame. It's quite different from Jordan's great Tympani Five recordings of earlier decades, but it certainly has its own appeal.

Some YouTube videos are unavailable outside the US.
On some mobile devices, you must view the web version of this
blog  to see the video link and preview image.

 

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The blog and newsletter are always free,
but gratuities are welcomed.