The crew at Bizarro Studios North is gearing up for Halloween. We're sketching out our jack-o'-lantern designs, and warming up the Philco to watch a favorite movie while we hand out treats to the neighborhood ghouls, but we took a break today to review the week in cartoons.
Preceding your name with a self-aggrandizing adjective is a risky proposition, and few among us can pull it off.
This is the first time I've published a gag involving a fish sprouting legs, which is a popular cartoon setup. I like to think that this one actually works as a simplified explanation of the process of natural selection.
Thanks to the magic of smartphones, cartoonists can now create their own photo reference, as I did for this gag.
Many years ago, I was part of malcontent cartoonists' collective known as Sin Alley. One of the gang's ongoing projects involved savagely defacing the pages of innocent paperback cartoon books, which were then Xeroxed and sold under the table at a well-known comics convention. A particularly notorious Sin Alley "art sabotage" publication was based on a "Little Friar" book. I look back on that material as early training for today's cartoon, and, no, I can't show any of those images here without crashing the blog hosting site.
The English language is imbalanced when it comes to describing self-important, temperamental people. The most commonly-used words are feminine in form ("drama queen," "princess," etc.), so we're hoping to add to the general vocabulary. "Divo" might also apply, but it doesn't have the zing of "primo donno."
Some readers have pointed out that the actual masculine form would be "primo uomo." While technically correct, it has no humorous punch.
Although I live with two cats, a review of the Bizarro database shows that dogs appear more than three times as often as cats in my cartoons. I'm either more of a canine personality myself, or perhaps I'm afraid of offending the cats in our house, so I tend to do fewer feline gags.
Sometimes, those Type A personalities need extra time to bounce back from a week of relaxation.
Don't forget to check out Dan Piraro's weekly blog for even more insight into this week's gags, and to view his latest magnificent Sunday Bizarro panel.
In other news, Dan's first exhibition of non-cartoon art is happening tonight in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. Check out his stunning recent works at DiegoPiraro.com.
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