Saturday, July 05, 2025

I Thee Web

 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 

Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret. If we loved each other, we'd solve many more problems. And then this world would be gasser. 
Louis Armstrong

Throughout his lifetime, Louis Armstrong gave his date of birth as July 4, 1900. The date has never been definitively established, and probably never will be. Conflicting documents exist, and it's probable that he was born in 1901. A baptism certificate lists Armstrong's birthday as August 4, 1901.

Ricky Riccardi addresses the controversy in the first four pages of his excellent book Stomp Off, Let's Go. Riccardi's perfectly reasonable conclusion is:
Louis Armstrong, born on the Fourth of July, 1901. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but that's the date this book will follow. In the end, it's all irrelevant; the bottom line is that Louis Armstrong was born, and that alone is something to celebrate.
I've cited Armstrong's quote in the past, and it's truer than ever. This weekend, I'm celebrating this truly great American.


Today's pipe pic is a beauty. It's a printed cardboard advertising sign that was probably displayed in a drugstore or tobacco shop in the early twentieth century.

I recently received it from Mike Michalik, a fellow Pennsylvanian and a collector of interesting ephemera. Mike hosted Auralcheology, one of my favorite podcasts, which sadly came to an end after 49 episodes. 

The podcast featured music from various eras and genres, with each episode highlighting a specific performer. Mike always provided fascinating biographical information and history along with the music.

Although no new episodes are being produced, you can still listen to the whole series on Spotify. Check it out.

Thanks to Mike for all of Auralcheology and for the excellent bit of advertising art.


I hope the current batch of Bizarro gags adds a few chuckles to your three-day weekend.


Melville's works are being updated for the twenty-first century, with varying degrees of success.

Often referred to as "Russian dolls," the character in Tuesday's panel wears the colors and sunflower symbol of Ukraine.

My fellow cartoonist and good pal Mark Parisi emailed me this week to say, "Nesting dolls. They are addictive, aren't they?" Indeed, they are.

Mr. Parisi is the creator of the long-running cartoon panel, Off the Mark, and is one of six deserving nominees for this year's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. 


Wednesday's gag presented the biggest challenge of the week, with two speech balloons, a caption, and a "split screen."

The strip layout was tricky, too, but I can't complain, since I have only myself to blame for the structure of the joke.

"The eights" is probably a high estimate, but at least he's wearing long pants.
Friday's gag celebrates my brief liberation from dialogue and captions. I'm always pleased when I'm able to get a joke across without words. If I can poke fun at a superhero at the same time, that's gravy.

The gag also works rather well as a vertical strip.

At least he chose an accurate name.


Thank you for taking the time to browse the blog. My words and pictures appreciate your eyeballs and brain.


Please come by again next Saturday.

Bonus Track

Louis Armstrong's Hot Five: "Who'sit"
Recorded in Chicago, June 16, 1926
Okeh Records 78rpm, 1926


This is a favorite around Bizarro Studios North. I'm particularly enamored of Armstrong's slide whistle solo.


More Bizarro Madness

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Saturday, June 28, 2025

Molto Boom Boom

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 

Hello from the Little Shop of Humor in Hollywood Gardens, PA. We're still sweltering here, and your cartoonist is currently juggling a few too many metaphorical balls, so I'll spare you a lengthy intro this time around.

Bizarro buddy Gerry J. from the City of Missed Left Turns (also known as Albuquerque, NM) had the presence of mind to grab today's pipe pic from his television screen back in February.


Thanks to Gerry for the fun image. Could you also send me some temperatures from February?


Let's see if the latest Bizarro gags can help moderate the heat dome...


The section on due process should probably use stick figures to help members of certain quarters grasp the concept.

I reversed the staging for the strip layout, which allowed me to place the word balloon and caption box on the same end of the composition. Otherwise, there would have been no room for the characters.

Microsoft's "Clippy" is afraid of showing his age.

Wednesday's gag is for my brother M., who retired from a long career in research and development, and recently assumed new responsibilities as president of his local bocce league. They play by more traditional rules. That includes a bottle of grappa at each game, doesn't it?

I also reversed this one for the strip layout, which gives it a slightly different feel and, I think, an extra measure of absurdity. Plus, I had room to show the pallino.

Sometimes, transcendence comes with a cup of coffee. I like to imagine that Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead occupies a nearby stool.

Greek mythology meets modern technology. Fortunately, Medusa only has a free Zoom account. Unfortunately, that still means she can fossilize up to 99 participants.

This is what happens when your psychologist has a minor in existentialist philosophy.


That's our blog for Week 26. We're halfway through the year!

I hope you'll return next week for a new batch of gags and commentary.


Bonus Track

The Beach Boys: "Pet Sounds"
From the Pet Sounds album
Capitol Records, 1966


Brian Wilson, the troubled genius behind the Beach Boys, died a couple of weeks ago, and I've had this composition of his in my head off and on since I first heard the news.
Wilson is the only member of the band who performs on the song, playing grand piano and accompanied by some of the ace musicians who came to be known as the Wrecking Crew. Wilson originally wrote it in the hope that it would be used as a theme for a James Bond movie.


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Saturday, June 21, 2025

The Terrible Fives

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 real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Igor Stravinsky


During a recent presentation I gave about the day-to-day work of producing six cartoons a week for the past seven-plus years, someone asked how long it takes to write and draw a gag. 

That's tricky. Drawing time can be estimated, as it's accomplished physically, but I can't quantify how long it takes to write a gag. I said something like, "In a way, the writing happens all the time." Not as elegantly as Stravinsky might have put it.

Each weekly batch begins with a "writing day," when I make rough sketches of at least six gags to draw as finished panels. In reality, I had been scribbling words, phrases, or doodles in my sketchbook for days or even weeks before tightening them up into usable material. Any number of things can be the seed of a cartoon: a bit of overheard conversation, a word that pops up in a puzzle, an unconscious scribble made during a phone call, even a typo in an email. 

Long before I begin the sketching phase, my brain tinkers with those kernels of ideas in the background. It's as if the conscious mind did some initial sorting and told the unconscious, "Here are a few that have possibilities. See what you can do with them."

No doubt this is more the result of skills gained through practice rather than anything mystical, but it's fascinating to step back and think about how humans create.

Igor could have been referring to any type of creative work. I'd love to know what seeds led to him composing The Rite of Spring, which reportedly set off a riot among the audience when it premiered in 1913.


Today's pipe pic is a jaunty nutcracker fisherman (or is it a fisherman nutcracker?) sent to us by Bizarro reader Larry B. of Beverly Farms, MA.


Larry wrote:

Just a little nutcracker from my ever-burgeoning collection. It’s displayed every Xmas in our home.

Thanks to Larry for sharing this charming photo.


To the best of my knowledge, none of the latest Bizarro panels sparked a riot.


My beloved Italian grandma had plastic slipcovers on the furniture in her living room, along with plastic floor runners so you didn't have to step on the carpeting. She also had a plastic-free "front room," where we played games, watched TV, and enjoyed the wonderful aromas of the food she prepared in the nearby kitchen. I'm sure many friends have similar fond memories of their immigrant elders.

It works every time. They just can't resist turning that crank.

Wednesday's panel was the rare gag that was fully formed when I first thought of it. Each successive "Z" should be read a little quieter than its predecessor.

The strip version presents the image to the reader first, followed by the nested balloons. Both layouts work, but in slightly different ways.

Wolfie was ready to retire before he turned six.

I often search for reference images when drawing specific items or people, and this one was no exception. Here are the pictures I studied when drawing the panel:

Oil painting (1767) of young Mozart by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni 

A 1775 portrait of Anna Maria Mozart by Rosa Hagenauer

Mozart's childhood home in Salzburg

An 18th-century child's wagon
I overdid the homework on this one, but it's my idea of fun.

Friday's panel is the latest example of a verbal construction I refer to as a streptonym. After fourteen years, I'm still waiting for the term to catch on.

This caption might have been inspired by a typo or an errant autocorrection.


That's our blog for Week 25 of 2025. Drop by next Saturday for another six-pack of cartoon fun.

Bonus Track

Jane Aire & the Belvederes: "Yankee Wheels"
Stiff Records 45 BUY26, 1978


"Yankee Wheels," which was recorded by Akron's Jane Aire and written by Akron's Liam Sternberg. It doesn't feel like summer until I spin this old favorite.


Alternate Bizarro Outposts

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Saturday, June 14, 2025

Automated Infringement

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 had my first serious encounter with AI thievery this week, in a smaller echo of the recent wholesale counterfeiting of multiple editorial cartoonists.

A sharp-eyed reader contacted Dan Piraro to alert us to an online ad for a plumbing company in Louisiana. The ad used one of my Bizarro gags, that had been fed into some AI platform and redrawn in a bland, soulless style, with no accreditation to the original source. The colors and staging were the same as my original panel, and the dialogue was identical. It was clearly a copy.

We brought the fakery to the attention of our editors at King Features and they forwarded it to the appropriate legal watchdogs. Apparently, they did their job, because the bogus Bizarro cartoon has disappeared, at least from the place where we saw it.

Coincidentally, the topic of using AI to "assist" artists came up recently on the local illustrators' group's online forum. A member had fed a photo of a painting in progress to an AI platform to see how it would describe the work.

I was among the respondents, and did my best to articulate my disdain for doing anything to further enable the harvesting of human creativity.

Colleagues, please think twice before inputting anything you created into an AI app. Everything you feed it is used for its "training."

I just learned about someone who prompted AI to "redraw" one of my cartoons and used it as an ad for their business. It's definitely copied from my work but dumbed down into a bland, generic "style." With no accreditation, of course. 

I'd share the two images for you to compare them side-by-side, but that would only spread more copies of the counterfeit. Feeding any AI platform work that you created, even once, just out of curiosity, is harmful to yourself and your peers.

Beyond its ability to facilitate theft from artists, AI is a serious environmental threat due to its insane energy requirements.

Sorry to get all lecture-y. I realize that a lot of AI is nearly unavoidable since it's embedded in almost everything we use. I don't mean to be a scold, but it's coming after all of us, and I hope we don't put out the welcome mat for it!

Here's a well-reasoned essay on the topic that does a much better job than I could. And it was written by a human.

Multiple members of the forum offered their opinions in a lively and respectful discussion on the topic. One participant seemed a little too defensive about resisting AI, which made me wonder how much they might be relying on it to assist or enhance their work. But I'm of a naturally suspicious nature, so who knows.

No doubt the debate will continue for a long time to come, assuming the world isn't burnt to a lump of smoldering coal in the near future.


Today's historical pipe pic comes to us from a Bizarro reader from Nipomo, CA (the same location as last week's contributor!)



I'll leave it to our correspondent to elaborate:
My grandfather, D. H. Wulzen Jr., was a pharmacist in San Francisco who became interested in photography beginning about 1897. He left over a thousand glass plate negatives when he passed, and my father (who became a commercial photographer) spent considerable time in his later years making prints and donating the best work to various collections. 

The original plate of this shot now resides in the San Francisco Historical Society collections at the SF Public Library. Like his acquaintance, Arnold Genthe, DHW spent time in SF's Chinatown and took many memorable photos of the people and built environment. 

The man pictured here is probably taking a break from his work in the basement restaurant that is behind him. The SF library mentions that this is an opium pipe, but [that is] not so, as opium pipes have different unique characteristics. This is just a guy on his smoke break. We don't have a specific date on this one, but all of the Chinatown photos were taken in 1900 and 1901, so [it was] well before the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Historian Doug Chan used the photo in this post:

https://medium.com/@dougchan/a-restaurants-cellar-door-to-a-way-of-life-ca9332201426
Thanks for the fascinating backstory to this museum-worthy photo.


I was recently approached by a company that sells CBD gummies named after a famous stoner comedy duo, and offered a "social media collaboration opportunity" to promote their product on my Insta in exchange for some chewable samples.


Unfortunately, my system can't handle CBD (and forget about THC), so I declined, and, as always, these gags were created by a human cartoonist, without the influence of artificial intelligence or drugs.


Best of all, the pharmacy the fills the prescription accepts Monopoly money.

A colleague who saw this cartoon asked me what cursive sounds like, and I can't stop wondering about it myself.

When the criminals were arrested, Variety's agricultural edition ran the headline, Fake Fungi Fools Farmstand Frequenters.

Thursday's panel was almost a Tarzan gag captioned Man of the Loincloth, but I came to my senses.

Bizarro celebrated Father's Day a bit early this year.

The week ended with that beloved Italian cartoon character, Prosciutto Porco.


Thanks for reading this far down into the post. You're almost done, and I appreciate your eyeballs. See you next week with more visual and verbal shenanigans.


Bonus Track

Groucho Marx: "Father's Day"
Decca Records, 1957


Happy Father's Day to all the dads reading the blog, whether your children are human, feline, canine, or otherwise.


A Bounty of Bizarro Bits & Bobs

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.


   

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