William Ask,...

Today's Bizarro comic features a legendary 15th century folk hero, transplanted to modern times.

The staging of Dan Piraro's finished art is very close to my submission sketch, with some improvement to the wardrobe. I wasn't sure what to do with Tell's right hand, but Dan solved that quite neatly.

I still think "Pippin" sounds funnier than "Red Delicious," but I wouldn't get into a duel over it.

Although I try never to listen to friends' suggestions for gags, and make it a practice to discourage anyone from offering them, I broke my own rule here. My friend Mike, an attorney with a weird sense of humor, emailed me with an idea involving an elderly William Tell reading an eye chart with apples in place of letters. The eye doctor would say something like "Sorry, but if you can't read at least the third line, I'll have to take your bow."

I really loved the idea of the apple eye chart, and decided to stew on it for a while, and finally came up with the familiar, stressful situation of passing a physical in order to get a job. Generally, we try to edit the wording for brevity, but the term "mandatory pre-employment physical" is such a ridiculous, clumsy piece of HR-speak, that we used it as our caption.

We've got more cartoon duets coming your way soon. Meanwhile, please browse through our previous collaborations in this blog's Bizarro Comics Corncrib.

Oh, and please don't send any ideas for gags. I'm trying to get better at writing my own! 

Thank you, dear readers.