Nosepipe

Greetings from Bizarro Studios North, where we're trying to hold onto hope for sanity and humanity during a week of horrific world news, and the disappointing but unsurprising silence of spineless politicians still clinging to the malodorous shirttails of a disgraced former elected official.

We wish peace and safety for everyone around the world, and hope that our funny words and pictures provide occasional moments of relief.

To that end, we begin with this week's surreal pipe pic. It's a self-portrait by one of our favorite artists, René Magritte, titled La Lampe Pilosophique (The Philosopher's Lamp.)

Over the years, Magritte has been the subject of quite a few Bizarro comics, and his famous painting The Treachery of Images was the inspiration for our Secret Symbol, The Pipe of Ambiguity. 

We salute René Magritte, and his compatriots in the leftist, anti-war Surrealist art movement.

René made an appearance in Bizarro again this week, which you'll see as we review our latest comics.

Robin got off to an early start fighting crime on Monday.

 

Tuesday's comic was an unintentionally timely military gag.

 

After sketching the panel, I realized that I'd have to do some creative shuffling to get it to work in the horizontal strip layout, and I scribbled this rough guide for myself.

I ended up flipping the image to position the speech balloon and caption box on the same end of the panel.

Not to mention the calming scent of floor trout.  

 

Unlike Tuesday's ant comic, I was not planning for the strip when I drew this panel. In the strip layout, I usually position a word balloon beside the character who's speaking, since there's no headroom.

I redrew two of the pirates in an attempt to accommodate the balloon placement, but the scene didn't convey the feeling that they were whispering about their shipmate.

I went back to the original staging, and slipped the tail of the word balloon behind the leftmost character. I wasn't sure it would work, but I think it's clear. 

By the way, I'm sharing these mainly so I don't feel that my first attempt was a complete waste of time.

There's our old friend, Magritte, in a parody of his painting, The Son of Man. In the original, a man's face is hidden behind an apple, so the doctor's recommendation to get more fresh fruit makes sense.

This one went through a few iterations on its way to the funny pages.

My first completed drawing replaced the apple with a chocolate candy, which allowed me to use the funny-sounding word "bonbons." But, no matter how many times I revised it, the black & white drawing looked like a poop emoji (💩). Newspapers run comics so small, it would probably have looked more like actual poop. 

 

Next, I tried a peppermint swirl candy. That wasn't too bad, but I eventually realized that a green m&m was the answer. The shape and color echo the apple in the original painting, and the bold letter m could easily stand for Magritte.

While stewing over these revisions, I forgot to write the number of Secret Symbols next to the signature. For those who like to find thems, there are five in this one.

A bold choice of material.

That's the latest from our cartoon office. If you're in the mood for more commentary (on comics and other matters), pop on over to Dan Piraro's blog. You can also view his always-impressive Sunday Bizarro page. From there, you can bounce to his surreal serialized western epic, Peyote Cowboy.

See you next week, if maniacs don't blow up the world...

One More Pipe!

A few days ago, Facebook's "memories" feature reminded me about this comic from 2014, written by yours truly and drawn by Dan.

 

What is it with me and pipes? Perhaps I should schedule a session with the therapist from Wednesday's panel.

Bonus Track

Slim Gaillard: "Atomic Cocktail" (1945)

 

In the words of Charles Mingus, "Oh, lord, don't let them drop that atomic bomb on me." Or on anyone else, for that matter.

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