Blue Light Special

Hey, there, friend... You say you're not allowed to smoke in restaurants, the office, elevators, buses, taxis, the ballpark, or even your own home? Is that what's getting you down?

Well, chin up, cousin! Now, instead of simply satisfying your nicotine habit with gum, lozenges, or patches, you can feed that monkey while reinforcing your infantile oral fixation, all the while annoying everybody in the immediate vicinity with your incessant puffs of water vapor!¹

Please don't get me wrong, dear readers. I encourage everyone to stop smoking. But, with so many nicotine replacement therapy options available, this new item seems to be a cynical corporate maneuver designed to keep people hooked by having them mimic the physical actions of consuming burning tobacco products.

Not to mention the fact that no matter how hard one tries to appear cool sucking on a blue flashlight, it just looks silly.

Would-be tough guys blowing little poofs of steam bring to mind children play-acting with candy cigarettes. The "e-cig" is merely the latest in a long tradition of fauxbacco toys. I admit to once owning a ballpoint pen disguised as a cigar, but I gave it up when I started fourth grade.

Photo from Sam's Toybox

Now, in keeping with this blog's traditions, we present the submission sketch for today's cartoon.

All of my other collaborations with Bizarro's Dan Piraro can be viewed in the Bizarro Cartoon Storage Facility.

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Cultural Footnote
¹The opening paragraphs of this post were written as a tribute to the comedian Eddie Lawrence, who released several recordings as his character The Old Philosopher. The first Old Philosopher record appeared in 1956.

Eddie revisited this formula often, and even parlayed it into a sideline doing commercials.

At the time of this writing, the Old Philosopher is still with us, and will celebrate his 95th birthday on March 2 of this year.

Tragicomic in One Panel

Bizarro takes a literary turn this morning.

Here's the submission sketch that resulted in the above cartoon.

Dan Piraro reworked the idea a little for the finished panel. Although the driver in the sketch sports a day's worth of stubble, the poor schmo in the published version truly looks like he's been standing there forever. Dan's most astute artistic decision was not showing the guy looking at his watch, which was simply not necessary—just seeing the name Godot should be enough to suggest the word "waiting" to the reader. Besides, it's difficult to make a convincing drawing of a character looking at his watch, as clearly evidenced by that sketch.

This gag evolved quite a bit on its way to publication. I wanted to do something odd involving a person waiting for a passenger, while holding a sign with the arrival's name.

My first rough showed an inexperienced detective trying to apprehend a criminal. This felt less than fully-formed, and I rejected it.

After a while, it occurred to me to put the name "Godot" on the sign. Placing the driver at Beckett International Airport added a nice layer to the joke.

In this previously-unseen sketch, I tried working the Beckett name into the drawing, but quickly realized that the signage would overwhelm everything else.

The third stab, finally, had all of the elements in place. They just needed to be rescaled and rearranged, making the ultimate submission sketch fairly simple to execute.

Color Commentary
As the colorist for Bizarro, I have the pleasure of reading the comic about three weeks prior to publication. Each week, Dan emails me the black and white panels (which most newspapers run). I then color them in Photoshop, and return them to Dan for review and any tweaks he'd like to make before I color the strip versions.

This is the original monochrome panel for today's gag.

I colored the windows using a pale gradient, and turned the diagonal highlights white. Dan, however, was bothered by that empty space, and added silhouettes of other passengers behind the windows, as seen in this enlarged detail.

Nice work, eh?

Old Business
Please feel free to browse our many joint efforts in this blog's Bizarro Warehouse of Wonders, and check back for our next one, coming up on Monday.

Hell With the Lid Off 2014

My friends at Kelly's Bar & Lounge are holding their annual barleywine festival, Hell With the Lid Off, on Saturday, March 8. If you're in Pittsburgh that weekend, you ought to check out this beloved joint. Their mac & cheese is as famous as their impressivley-stocked jukebox.

In previous years, Kelly's called on me to design a poster and t-shirt for the event. This year is the tenth annual HWTLO, and they've decided to issue a limited edition silkscreen print, which will be sold at the festival.

The two-color 11" x 17" print is being produced at Commonwealth Press (who also work with my colleagues at Espresso A Mano and East End Brewing Company.) It's going to be a signed, numbered edition of just 40 prints. Twenty will be available for purchase at each of the two sessions. This digital mockup shows the art on a stark white background, but the actual poster will be screened onto French Paper Company's Madero Beach Speckletone stock, which is more muted, and has a nice organic look.

In addition to the special silkscreen, Commonwealth is also producing a black & white t-shirt for HWTLO.

And, finally, we adapted the design for a full color window poster, which should be popping up around town any day now.

 

I'm planning to be at Kelly's for a portion of both sessions, to answer any questions about the prints, sample a barleywine or two, and catch up with the friends I see there from year to year. Oh, and to snag some t-shirts.

Bottoms up!

Happy Horsey Days

Today's Bizarro is a public service comic, reminding readers that we're already a full week into the Lunar New Year.

For your further amusement, here's the sketch I submitted. In the published art, the composition is flipped horizontally, allowing for a view of the shop window.

Chinese New Year is one of my favorite holidays. It comes in the dead of winter, after the traditional western holiday season is over, and not much else is going on. It offers an excuse to get together with friends for great food, and, since my heritage is not Chinese, it carries absolutely no familial obligations. In short, a perfect holiday.

A few years ago, I did a set of twelve paintings based on the animals of the Chinese zodiac. The paintings all sold long ago, but the link to the exhibit is still hanging around the Internet.

I've been sending Lunar New Year cards since 2004 (Year of the Monkey), and will complete a full twelve year cycle in 2015. After that, I think I'll probably start over. Here's this year's offering.

Please check out my previous comical co-creations with Bizarro's Dan Piraro in this blog's Bizarro Warehouse.
 
ATTENTION MUSIC LOVERS!
Don't miss Dan's new EP of four original songs. That guy's got buckets of talent!