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
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby (1925)
I began to compose this post early in the week. I chose the Fitzgerald quote as a response to a certain autocrat's tone-deaf Gatsby-themed Halloween party, which celebrated greed and excess while withholding desperately needed food assistance from one in eight American citizens.
However, every time I started writing, I experienced symptoms of stress, which were quite uncomfortable and a little concerning, so I saved a draft of the post to revisit later and concentrated on my regular daily work.
Wednesday morning brought welcome news and reason for cautious optimism.
If I may quote from a recent Women's March newsletter:
Voters stood for bodily autonomy,
for freedom in our own lives, and for a democracy that listens to the
people. It was a hopeful day, a reminder that people still believe in a future grounded in fairness, freedom, and care for one another.
Fairness, freedom, and caring for one another... Imagine that!
Speaking of which, I hope you'll consider supporting your local food bank. Right now, it's more urgent than ever.
Faithful Bizarro reader Andréa D. sent this casually macho shot of cinematic tough guy Charles Bronson apparently lighting up between takes on a movie set.
The photo is all over the web, with conflicting dates attached. Various sources place it in 1960, 1969, or as late as 1976. Stills from the 1970 film Cold Sweat show Bronson at about this age and wearing very similar clothing. The particulars of the haircut, sideburns, and mustache also match well with this image.
The injury above his right eye makes me almost certain that it's from 1969 or 1970. The mark doesn't appear in every still from the movie, so I assume it was part of the plot.
Thanks to Andréa for the photo and for sending me down a filmic rabbit hole.
We hope that Bizarro provides moments of relief from current events or other stressors. The following are my latest offerings.
Roger that.
A tip of the Bizarro cold-weather fedora to Jazz Pickle Bill V., whose Facebook comment I appropriated for the title of today's blog. Our readers consistently impress me!
How would you describe the accuracy of your GPS?
"Put some insect protein on that first."
Thursday's panel plays with the visual language of comics.
I must admit, that's an odd T-shirt.
In no way am I complaining about my job, and certainly not about Bizarro's readers, but in the cartooning biz, we regularly encounter questions like these from "civilians." Most are well-meaning, but they are often amusing.
Note to colleagues: If you have a favorite Cartoonist FAQ, send it my way for a possible future installment.
If I were to ask forgiveness for this gag, I suppose I'd have to say, "It's been eight days since my last clown cartoon." However, I remain unrepentant.
Thank you for visiting the blog and checking out my comics and commentary. There'll be more of this stuff right here next Saturday.
By the way, my stress response early in the week gave me an idea for an upcoming gag, but I wouldn't want to make that a regular part of my writing process.
Bonus Track
Petra Haden: "I Can See For Miles"
From Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out
Bar/None Records, 2005
Petra Haden's 2005 album is an a capella cover of the Who's 1967 pop art/pop music masterpiece. She overdubbed many layers of her own voice to reproduce the vocals and music of the entire album.
Pete Townshend spoke highly of Haden's reinterpretation:
In a way it was like hearing it for the first time. What Petra does with her voice, which is not so easy to do, is challenge the entire rock framework ... When she does depart from the original music she does it purely to bring a little piece of herself -- and when she appears she is so very welcome. I felt like I'd received something better than a Grammy.
When I bought the CD in 2005, I expected it to be an amusing one-off, but I have listened to it regularly over the past twenty years.
Alternate Sources of Bizarro Content
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
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
Greetings from Bizarro Studios North in spooky Hollywood Gardens, Pennsylvania, and welcome to November.
If you have a post-Halloween sugar hangover, take comfort in the fact that Daylight Saving Time ends tonight, and you can sleep for an extra hour tomorrow morning.
Congratulations to all of us for surviving another month in this insane year.
Today's historic pipe pic comes to us courtesy of Bizarro field correspondent Dave F. of Austin, Texas.
Dave wrote:
We just visited Charleston SC which is home to The Citadel, a military academy with a long and interesting history. While touring their museum of student life over the centuries, the attached photo of an anonymous student in his barracks room circa 1900 caught my attention. Hope you like it!
It looks like our anonymous student had a small bottle of champagne on the shelf to his left.
A tip of the winter fedora to Dave F. for taking the time to snap a photo of the photo and send it to us for the blog.
If you ever spot a Bizarro comic in the wild, I'd be grateful for a photo of that, too.
We now present our cartoon output for Halloween week and hope your enjoyment is full-size, not "fun size."
Our guard should apply for a position at the Museum of Malapropisms to get out in front of the probable closure of institutions that dare to present natural history.
Face-painting falls somewhere in the middle.
Or at least it's supposed to be.
Following the commercial success and critical acclaim of Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, there were reportedly plans for a series of Shakespeare adaptations, starting with Andy Warhol's Macbeth. At least that's how I remember it.
Before this one, I don't believe I've done a gag with three characters speaking. I had to be creative with the word balloons for the strip layout.
The panel for Halloween Day combines two of my recurring themes: clowns, and ghosts wearing sheets.
One would assume that in this case, it simply means "a boatload."
Thanks for dropping by. I'll be here again next Saturday with another cartoon recap and whatever else is bouncing around my skull.
Where's Wayno?
I spent a couple of hours visiting a historic building back in September. Can you guess the location?
Read about it in my newsletter (which will be updated a few hours after this blog entry goes live).
Halloween Bonus Track
Louis Armstrong: "The Skeleton in the Closet"
from the film "Pennies from Heaven" (1936)
Here's a last gasp of Halloween from the great Louis Armstrong.
Much More Bizarro Madness
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
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
A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
In my household, we watch spooky movies throughout October. Some are works of art, and some are goofy romps. One film we revisit every year is 1983's Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on Ray Bradbury's 1962 horror/fantasy novel.
The text quoted above didn't make it into the movie, but it feels especially relevant. The lack of empathy and the level of cruelty on exhibit lately are directly related to what Bradbury called a refusal to know. The rampant "othering" of groups of our fellow humans makes too many feel they have permission to treat people as less than human. Being part of a community is wonderful, unless it devolves into tribalism.
Perhaps Halloween is popular for the same reason people celebrate Mardi Gras: Masks and costumes can obscure the arbitrary differences people with too much (or too little) power and wealth exploit to define groups of people as "them."
Today (Saturday), we'll be attending our town's annual Halloween parade, cheering the high school band in their themed costumes, and watching kids scramble for treats thrown their way.
I hope you all have an enjoyable Halloween, see a lot of fabulous costumes, and give and receive the best treats. Mask up, have fun, and meet and greet your neighbors.
Don't refuse to know.
Bizarro field correspondent Danielle A. spotted this vintage metal leaf tobacco box in a collectibles shop in her hometown.
The illustration on the box is charming and well-executed. The marine looks as if he's emerging from a porthole in its side.
Thanks to Danielle for taking the photo and sharing it with us. I love to see pipes found in the wild.
Oh, and if you ever see a Bizarro comic displayed somewhere out in the physical world, I'd be grateful for a photo of that, too.
Halloween creeps into Bizarro this week and next, although we keep the holiday in our dark hearts all through the year. Here's the latest sextet of cartoons.
Monday's gag was inspired by the Beatles knockoff records that proliferated in the 1960s. Designed to fool well-meaning grandmas, the phony groups had names like the Buggs, the Liverpools, or the Beat-A-Manias.
Metaphorical, if not inaccurate.
I offer my apologies to Charles Schulz.
"But I'm keeping the Dr. Brown's eyeball soda."
Their business card says "England's Newest Note Takers."
We wrap up with a reading from The Book of Rebellious Offspring 6:13-22.
Thanks for taking the time to read these boxes of badinage. Come back next week for more of this sort of nonsense.
Bizarro Bonus Track
The Kirby Stone Four: "You Came From Outer Space"
From Man I Flipped When I Heard the Kirby Stone Four Cadence Records LP, 1958
The Kirby Stone Four were one of many vocal quartets of the 1950s and early 1960s. They released several LPs on Columbia Records and other, smaller labels, but their debut on Cadence remains my favorite.
The group incorporated boisterous comedy, vocal impersonations, and a jazzy sensibility that set them apart from their contemporaries.
I chose "You Came From Outer Space" as today's bonus track because it's fitting for Halloween, and as a nod to Bizarro's Secret Symbol, the Flying Saucer of Possibility.
This song closes out the Rhino Records box set Brain in a Box: The Science Fiction Collection, a five-CD compilation released in 2000. Each disc is dedicated to a genre or style: Movie themes, TV themes, Pop, Lounge/Incidental, and Novelty. I served as an "A&R consultant" on the project, and the KS4 track was one of my suggestions that made the cut.
Rhino was known for extravagant packaging, and Brain was one of their most elaborate box sets.
It's designed to resemble a mad scientist's apparatus powered by a human brain, and it has lenticular images on three sides. It's a gem in my collection.
Need More Bizarro? We've Got You Covered.
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
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
I can't stop worrying. I invent worries. Even after thirty years of making a
living at this business, I feel my career is precarious. I can always
find dark clouds even though the sun is shining. But I have a plan to consolidate my worries. I'm going to try to find a shrink
who can talk all my worries from my head down to my arm, then to my
hand, then finally down to one long fingernail. Then—wham!—all I have
to do is clip the fingernail, and all my worries will be gone.
Virgil Franklin Partch II (1916-1984)
Friday, October 17th, was the 109th anniversary of the birth of cartoonist Virgil Partch, who often signed his work with the abbreviation "ViP." He's one of my all-time favorites, for his art, his humor, and his (fear-based) work ethic. Partch typically started drawing at 5:00 AM and finished up by noon, after which he'd hang out with drinking buddies at a boating club or bar. Apparently, he also had a strong play ethic.
Partch created two syndicated comics: a daily panel called Big George and a strip called Captain's Gig. However, his gag cartoons for magazines, which predated the newspaper comics, were his strongest work. The gags were wild and surreal, and were reprinted in many books.
Although the humor in his newspaper comics was more conventional than his magazine gags, much of the art in early Big George panels was fantastic. He had a confident, bold line, inked with a brush, and was quite effective and tasteful in his use of Zip-A-Tone shading film.
Mid-1960s "Big George" art by ViP
Happy birthday, Vip, from an earthbound fan.
Today's canine pipe pic comes from cartoon colleague Jonathan Lemon, creator of the comic strip Rabbits Against Magic.
Mr. Lemon sent this caption:
Mascot dog from World War One, complete with his own jacket and rank button, feldmutze with cockade and his very own Iron Cross Second Class
It's a shame that someone went to the trouble of dressing their dog in a tiny uniform and training it to hold a pipe almost a hundred years before Instagram.
Big thanks to Jonathan Lemon for forwarding the image to me.
I've been in the illustration and cartooning game for more than thirty years, and will soon be starting my ninth year as Bizarro's daily cartoonist. I may not worry as obsessively as Vip did, but his fears are undoubtedly at least part of what keeps me going.
We kicked off with a wordless gag that adds a culinary touch to the legend of Saint George and the dragon.
To quote underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, 'Twas ever thus.
He was hoping for the pizza delivery driver.
My favorite part of drawing this was the products on the shelves. Here's a closer look:
Now you know.
We started the week with a wordless gag, and ended with a word that isn't really a word. It's a gag that sprang from a typo.
Thanks for reading my ramblings and looking at my drawings. I'll be back next Saturday with more cartoons and commentary.
Bonus Track
Stan Freberg: "St. George and the Dragonet"
Capitol Records single, 1953
Stan Freberg, one of the great humorists of the last century, offers his take on the Saint George legend, mashed up with Dragnet.
Jack Webb's Dragnet, a massive hit on TV and radio, inspired many parodies, including this one from Jay Ward studios:
Can't Get Enough of That Bizarro Stuff?
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
