Saturday, August 08, 2026

Rounding the Cartoon Bases

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 

Summer's flying by, so today we'll jump into the deep end with a new pipe pic. It's a baseball-related photo of the late George Lee "Sparky" Anderson. 


Faithful Bizarro reader John C, of Nipomo, CA, sent it along with a brief note:
Forwarding the pipe pic below of Detroit Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson. I always remember seeing him trying to hide a cigarette he was smoking in the dugout. I think this gives him a more magisterial air.
A few years ago, John also contributed a splendid photo of soul singer Fontella Bass.

A respectful tip of the hat along with a dangerously-low bow of thanks to John C for his longtime readership and support of comics, his sharp eye for pipe pics, and his impressive vocabulary. Magesterial, indeed!

Here's what we found clogging the cartoon pool filter over the past week.

Readers of a certain age will recognize this sort of come-on as a regular part of their postal delivery.

Before anyone tells me that this isn't how snow peas work, I am aware. In the Land of Fairy Tales, where a single pea can be detected buried under twenty mattresses, a princess will literally feel cold when in contact with a snow pea. I know, it's a weird place.

This is the final cartoon from my recent cornucopia of crash test gags. There's also one more rejected sketch that will appear in my Substack newsletter.

The kid on the right recognizes the absurdity of the question, and just might grow up to be a Two-Dimensional Graphic Humor Technologist.

Our explorers should have stopped after a tiny sip, but engaging in risky behaviors is the strongest side effect of this beverage. A reminder to us all to drink responsibly.

You have to be a fast reader to get through an actual printed paper when underwater.

Bonus Track

Stuart McKay & His Woods: "Take Me Out to the Ball"
from Reap the Wild Winds
RCA Victor LP, 1955 


Nodding to the Sparky Anderson photo and Thursday's outfield cartoon, here's a quirky arrangement of an appropriate song.

Stuart McKay (born around 1915) was one of history's few jazz bassoonists, and Reap the Wild Winds was his sole album as a bandleader. He played on a small number of other recordings, including a dozen in a group led by a guitarist named Brick Fleagle (really!)

This version of "Take Me Out to the Ball" is off-kilter from beginning to end, with three instrumental runthroughs followed by an out-of-sync vocal chorus that starts a couple of notes too soon, resulting in an abrupt, unresolved finish.

The album includes three well-known compositions and nine originals composed by pianist John Saunders, with oddball titles such as "Those That Live by the Swordfish Die by the Swordfish," "You're Just a Cucumber," and "Newton the Fig."


A McKay composition, "Burping Bassoon," was recorded by Eddie Stone and his Orchestra in 1938.

Most of the above information came from Many Fantastic Colors, a scholarly music blog.


  

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Saturday, August 01, 2026

Don't Blink Or You'll Miss it

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 only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Alan Watts


Change affects us daily in one way or another. Over the past week, we learned that our favorite local music venue, owned by people who have become our friends, is closing its doors in a few weeks after fifteen years of hard work, excellent wines, and unwavering support of musicians. 

The co-owners issued a public statement, reading in part:
Although this is painful and heartbreaking for all of us, we remain eternally grateful for the love and support the community and the scene have bestowed upon us.

We stand in awe of the level of talent that has graced our stages over the years, and we implore everyone to continue to support them wherever they perform.

Please also let this serve as a call to action to do everything you can to support your local independent music venues, especially those that support and host local music. These rooms are the lifeblood of this art form, and they desperately need your patronage.

And though our stages may go dark, the memories will burn bright in our hearts forever.

I had the pleasure of performing there many times over the years, and enjoyed hearing countless wonderful musicians as a patron of the club. Even so, we now wish we had gone more often.

I believe that our friends who have run the business will come through this huge change all right, but we'll all feel the loss of a great place to gather for music and friendship for a long time.

Alan Watts makes sense when he suggests plunging into change to make sense of it.

It's also a good idea to remember that nothing we care about will last forever, and neither will we, so let's appreciate what we have while we have it (and while we're still around).

I found this meta image of a pipe smoking another pipe, but must also credit Bizarro reader Stuart VR for leading me to it.

Stuart sent me Craigslist ad for a pipe with a bowl modeled after a Star Wars character. It was crafted by a famous Turkish pipemaker, Sadik Yanik, and I posted that photo in June.

Naturally, I had to find Yanik's webpage, and spent a ridiculous amount of time browsing the selections, where I spotted the Popeye model.

So, we offer another tip of the Bizarro porkpie to Stuart for sending me down a Meerschaum rabbit hole a few months ago.

When I'm not wasting time scrolling through photos of cartoon character heads, I write and draw Bizarro. Here's the latest six-pack o' laffs.

The software may not be intelligent, but it certainly mimics human behavior.

July 20 through 25 was Crash Test Dummy week. It resulted from an intense writing session where the gags about dummies poured out of my head. I couldn't draw them fast enough, and my sketchbook pages are almost indecipherable. Rather than a normal gag-writing day, it felt more like a possession.

I ended up drafting a total of ten crash test gags. I used six last week, the above this week, and I have one more in the pipeline. The remaining two weren't strong enough to use, but I'll share them in my Substack newsletter.

It's a reserved preserve.

This panel includes a rare variant Secret Symbol: The Invoited Boid.

Thank you, Jerome "Curly" Howard.

My understanding is that Elsa Lanchester's real (red-auburn) hair was teased up and augmented for the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein film. I almost colored this panel in gray tones, but decided against it. The other character is my version of the wonderful Teri Garr as Ilsa in Mel Brooks's 1974 Young Frankenstein. Caricature isn't my strongest suit, but I was relatively happy with the likenesses of both actors.

These gents have seen too many Daffy Duck cartoons.

Shameless Commercialism
Just a reminder that the Comics Kingdom Summer Shop has a full selection of new and old Bizarro T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, and other items, which help keep your cartoonist in caffeine.

Bonus Track

Daevid Allen: "Stoned Innocent Frankenstein"
from Bananamoon
BYG Records LP, 1971 


I'm an unashamed fan of the goofy 1970s psychedelic-space-hippie recordings of Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and his band/family/collective, Gong. Friday's cartoon reminded me of this tune from early in his career. 

I'm also quite fond of this quote on mortality from Daevid Allen:
I can only hope that during this journey, I have somehow contributed to the happiness in the lives of a few other fellow humans.


 

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Saturday, July 25, 2026

Crash Course in Cartooning

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 

I think funny is just the foundation. I don't really think, to some extent, funny is the absolute most important thing. It should also communicate some idea through the medium of cartooning. Just to be funny is... You know what, the things that you laugh hardest at aren't cartoons.

Robert Mankoff


Cartoonist Robert Mankoff was the New Yorker's cartoon editor for around twenty years, and he's done a lot of thinking about cartooning specifically and humor in general.

I've found that the most satisfying gags usually begin with a topic or premise. The cartoonist's job is to come up with a funny way of commenting on the subject matter. Of course, creating a cartoon from scratch every day, year after year requires multiple approaches to humor—some simple and straightforward and others more nuanced or pointed.

However, many readers would disagree with Mankoff. Cartoonists routinely receive online comments complaining about a gag being "political," which usually means it expresses an idea the reader doesn't like. 

We routinely see comments telling us to "stick to puns." Apparently some readers only want to see a specific type of gag, and when we hear from them, it's a sign that we've gotten an idea across. We rarely, if ever, receive this kind of response to a blog post or newsletter, and I believe that's because the relationship between the artist and the audience is more personal, and readers are aware that an actual human makes this material. 

If a reader tells us that a gag has upset them in some way, we can reply and hear what they have to say. These conversations are almost always positive experiences.

On public sites, there's more distance and a greater level of anonymity, so people might feel emboldened to be aggressive and demanding.

We're fortunate to have forums like blogs to exchange ideas directly with readers, and we have an engaged and lively readership, for which we are grateful every day.

Bizarro field correspondent JP of San Jose provided today's subtitled pipe pic; a screen grab from his television.


JP wrote:
I was watching two different things recently and saw pipes in both so I took a quick photo of each for you to use if you like. 
The first was from the show Star Next: The Next Generation season 1 episode 6. "Lonely Among Us," where Data first shows interest in Sherlock Holmes and takes on some of his mannerisms, including holding a pipe while solving a mystery on the Enterprise. I have been doing a rewatch of this series and this was an episode that I had completely forgotten. There are many more episodes later with Data imitating Sherlock, even having his best friend Geordi as Watson. 
A tip of the Bizarro beanie to JP for taking the time to snap some pipe pics for our entertainment. His other contribution will pop up at some time in the future.
At times, cartoonists generate multiple ideas on a particular topic. That was the case a few months ago when I was working on this batch. All six of the week's cartoons feature crash test dummies.

Let's see if any substantive ideas are lurking beneath the surface of silliness.

Everyone has their own way of seeing progress, and crash dummies might use a phrase like this.

"Yes, but make sure the tires are melted."

Literalizing the metaphorical is a venerable cartoon tradition.

There's a controversy within the dummy community regarding talcum powder versus cornstarch.

Is this dummy a doomsayer or an optimist?

Come to think of it, someone has already invented self-crashing vehicles. Unfortunately, they don't limit the destruction to research labs.

Thanks for visiting the cartoon refreshment stand. 

That wraps up Crash Test Dummy Week. Actually, I wrote more than six gags about the dummies, so there are a couple more to come.

See you in seven days, good buddies.

Sartorial Essentials
It's still summer, and the Comics Kingdom Summer Shop is open for business to help with your seasonal accessorizing.

Bonus Track

Dave Edmunds: "Crawling From the Wreckage"
from Repeat When Necessary
Swan Song Records LP, 1979


Graham Parker wrote "Crawling From the Wreckage" for his 1979 album Squeezing Out Sparks, but wasn't happy with the way it sounded, and suggested to Edmunds that he might want to record it. It turned out rather well.

The Repeat When Necessary album features Edmunds backed by Nick Lowe (bass), Billy Bremner (guitar) and Terry Williams (drums). The same four musicians recorded Lowe's 1979 LP Labour of Lust. Seconds of Pleasure came in 1980, under their collective band name, Rockpile.

Also in the summer of 1979, Rockpile played here in Pittsburgh, as the opening act for Blondie. That was the only time I saw Dave Edmunds perform live, but in the years since, I've been lucky enough to see Nick Lowe many times.


 

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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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