Pie in the Sky

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

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I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory.

Terry Gross

A recent comic sent me on a search for quotes about self-deception. I'd hoped to gain some psychological insight regarding people's uncanny ability (or determination) to ignore facts that contradict their chosen narrative.

Along the way, I encountered some wise words from Terry Gross, my NPR dream date. What she describes is probably true for all of us. 

However, there's definitely a segment of the populace who knows that what they claim to believe is objectively false, but will never admit it, because of their own past statements or public actions.

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It's objectively true that we love to include a pipe pic in our blog entries, and will continue to do so as long as quality images keep finding their way to us.

A longtime Bizarro reader and supporter snapped this one at Detroit Urban Artifacts, which looks like a spectacular antique store.

I've seen many photos of pipe-smoking dogs, but this is the first pink ceramic poodle.

Thanks to David D for spotting this pooch and sending us his shot.

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Now, let's peek at the latest Bizarro gags.

Monday's caption is what you might call a mental pun. It works when you look at the printed word, but I can't imagine an appropriate spoken pronunciation. It simply has to resonate in the mind's ear.

It was fun to draw once I decided where to place the mustache.

Would the knitted items in the drawing be considered hats, cozies, or something else altogether?

In recent months, I've done three comics involving piggy banks. (See Example A and Example B). Sometimes ideas come in multiples, and we're grateful when they do.

These three are the belated offspring of a gag I wrote for Bizarro long before becoming the daily cartoonist.

That first one is still my favorite.  

This is the panel that led to my musings about self-delusion. I wrote mongers on the character's sign because theorists lends too much legitimacy to the types of claims that inspired the gag. I propose that we replace the term conspiracy theorist with conspiracy fantasist.

The panel also drew comments from three camps:

• Readers who understood the joke
• People who identified with the character and took offense at the mention of facts
• Self-styled editors who presented corrections ("That should be a tin foil hat," "The word [x] should be [y]," "This would be funnier if...")

One wonders if commenters in that third category would tell a musician that they should've started a song with an E7 chord, or hand them rewritten lyrics.
 

Friday's panel brought your cartoonist great joy. I love wordless gags and especially wordless clown gags.

It warranted a vertical layout in the strip version.

Speaking of converting panels to strips, I'd assumed that Friday's reconfiguration would be a simple task, but proved myself wrong.

Fortunately, I worked it out and learned a little about doing my job as efficiently as I can. I'd initially attempted another vertical strip, but the tomb became too small to read. Returning to landscape orientation, I extended the background greenery and shortened the mic stand. The lines in the reduced art became much thinner, so I filled in the epitaph lettering and added heavier outlines around the monument.

Then I had to decide what to do with the caption. Whether it remained as a single line or split into two lines, the box interfered with the drawing. The tall, multiline caption box now seems an obvious solution, but because I'd been doing things more or less the same way for over five years, discovering it was a bit of a struggle.

Perhaps if I see this comic a few years from now, I'll have a comforting false memory of the strip layout coming together easily.

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Bizarro in the Wild

My dear pal and colleague Jim Horwitz was shopping with his kids at an art supply store in Minnesota and noticed a Bizarro comic displayed near the cash register. It had been carefully clipped from the newspaper, partially hand-colored, and mounted on a piece of mat board, all of which absolutely delights me.

"Jimmy Ho" has written many gags that Dan Piraro turned into Bizarro comics, and he's the creator of the online comic, Watson, which I highly recommend. Watson is funny, goofy, passionate, sincere, smart, sweet, and unique, much like Jimmy himself.

That wraps up another pile of laffs from the Little Shop of Humor in Bizarro Studios North.

Drop by again next Saturday, when I'll have a fresh batch of cartoons and commentary cooked up for you.

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Bonus Track

Pussy Cat: "Ce N'est Pas Une Vie"
RCA Victor (France) 45 rpm, 1966) 

Since we kicked off this batch with a faux-Gallic joke, I have an excuse to share a track by one of my favorite 1960s French yé-yé singers: Évelyne Courtois, who adopted the name Pussy Cat based on the Tom Jones hit, "What's New Pussycat?"

At age 17, Coutrois was the guitarist and songwriter for France's first all-female rock band, Les Petits Souris. She was inspired by the British mod scene, and in addition to original tunes, she covered songs by the Zombies, the Moody Blues, the Hollies, and the Small Faces. "Ce N'est Pas Une Vie" is her version of the Small Faces' "Sha-La-La-La-Lee."

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Additional Bizarro Goodness

 Wayno's Weekly Bizarro Newsletter

 Dan Piraro's Weekly Bizarro Blog

Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel

 

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