Yesterday's Technology Today

It's Saturday morning, kids, and that means it's time for old Uncle Wayno to share a bunch of cartoons while you enjoy a bowl of cereal.

 

I must admit, I relate to the kids in this comic. Some of my earliest memories involve a portable record player similar to the one in the drawing.

When I sketched out this idea, I also did an alternate version, shown above. Bizarro CEO Dan Piraro and I liked it with or without the caption. I ultimately decided to delete the caption, making the cartoon more universal, since it's about a particular behavior rather than a particular individual. This image is typical of my drafts. I've usually draw roughs using a Wacom tablet and stylus to speed up this more "disposable" part of the process. I still sometimes scan penciled thumbnails from a sketchbook, and I always draw the final comic art with ink on paper.

That's an actual record mentioned in today's cartoon. Young Master Jack would be jealous of the copy here in the Bizarro Studios Archive, which has the original picture sleeve.

Tuesday's comic is a simple inversion of a common phrase, and in no way is intended to question the therapeutic value of companion animals. People love all sorts of pets, even gargoyles.

Unlike Monday's gag, this one doesn't work without its caption. That would simply be a documentation of my life.

This fellow knows he's messy, so he always eats dessert while strapped to a high-velocity turntable.

Here we see a customer enjoying a day at the spa(r). Even a grizzled sea dog deserves to be pampered from time to time. In his Comic Strip of the Day column, Mike Peterson referred to this spa treatment as a "mahogany-pedi."

We saved the weirdest gag for last. When working on this batch of cartoons, I was thinking about the familiar Spider-Man origin story (since there's a new Spider-Man movie every few months), but I can't recall what inspired the leap to imagining a spider being bitten by a radioactive accountant. A cartoonist's brain often makes unexpected connections, and we're compelled to put them on paper.

Converting the art for the strip layout called for some tricky manipulation, but I think I pulled it off/

L-R: Panel and strip drawings

We're especially proud of our attention to detail in redrawing the brown spider's eyes.

That's it for this week. Thank you for following Bizarro, and for reading my Saturday ramblings.  When I took over the daily Bizarro cartoon duties, I promised to write a weekly blog post, following the tradition started by Dan Piraro, who still does his own highly entertaining commentary over at Bizarro.com. While you're there, don't miss his latest Sunday page.

Bonus Track
"The Horse in Striped Pajamas" by
Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum (Mr. Green Jeans) with the Jimmy Carroll Orchestra.


 
Most recordings of this song feature an adult identifying zoo animals for a curious child. Keeshan's version casts Mr. Green Jeans in the child's part. Although the vocal performance by these two grown men is more than a little creepy, the homemade video is rather charming. I love the fact that there's a nickel taped to the tonearm. And at first glance, I could have sworn that the plush toy at the top of the frame was an inverted bird of some kind, but on closer inspection it looks more like a moose.

Coincidentally, Captain Kangaroo received some unflattering internet action in recent weeks.


Title Search
The title for today's post, "Yesterday's Technology Today," is a tagline frequently used by my friend Ben Vaughn on his podcast, The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn. I've mentioned The Many Moods before, and recommend it to anyone who loves to be surprised. You never know what Ben will play on an episode, but it's always interesting and entertaining.