Now We Are Seven

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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Well, my friends, we made it through another year of cartoons. In 2024, I released 314 Bizarro daily panels into the wild. That's a whole lot of clowns, cowpokes, cave folk, grim reapers, dogs, and cats. After seven years at the drawing board, I love it more than ever. My collaborative partnership with Dan Piraro is the best working relationship I've ever had.

Since January 1, 2018, I've spewed out 2,251 gags. Watch for a new photo of the pile of archival storage boxes soon.

As the Year of the Snake Oil Salesman advances, I hope our comical output will provide moments of relief from the chaos and madness that will surely come.

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Faithful Bizarro buddy Petri V. of Waterloo, Ontario, spotted a pipe-smoking monkey in a Simpsons clip.

Petri writes:

I recently read an article linked to a short Simpsons clip on YouTube. The clip features a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, feverishly typing away (in shackles, no less!) in Mr. Burns’s mansion. I noticed that one of the monkeys was smoking a pipe, so I thought I might suggest it as a pipe pic candidate. I took the liberty of taking a screenshot.

Please note that sharing this video is not an endorsement of the forced labor of monkeys.

Thanks for the screen capture, Petri!

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I referred to last week's pipe pic as an example of "Nephew Art" and explained it as well as I was able, but I couldn't recall who originated the term.

Fortunately, Dan Piraro commented:

For some reason, I think "nephew art" may have been the invention of one of our idols, B. Kliban. I'm not sure why I think that, and I may be totally wrong.

Thanks to Dan's powers of recollection, I located the source. Click on the image to see an enlarged version. (This applies to all photos in the blog).

Every year on National Cartoonists' Day (May 5), cartoonists share Kliban's famous "Out of the way, you swine!" panel.

January 1 would have been Kliban's 90th birthday. He died in 1990 at the too-young age of 55, but his brilliant work continues to endure and inspire.

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We'd never have a club-wielding cop threaten anyone, so we'll just say, "Excuse us, but there's a new week of Bizarro cartoons coming through."

Who can resist the playful charms of Bettie Kilowatt?

This character is doing "Involuntarily Dry January."

New Year's Day marked the fourth birthday of the Pipe of Ambiguity Secret Symbol, which honors Bizarro's patron surrealist, René Magritte.

That reminds me: the official Pipe of Ambiguity T-shirt is one of the fun items in the Comics Kingdom Bizarro collection. 

The Ferryman of Hades doesn't get many repeat customers.

This still happens to cartoonists every day.

An alternate battle cry in the Marvel Universe is, "Avengers commiserate!"

That concludes the latest selection of rectangular humor from your (lone) ink monkey at Bizarro Studios North.

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Bonus Track

Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve: "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

From The Young Ones
BBC2 TV, 1984

Online chatter about the current Bob Dylan biopic prompted me to share this fun cover version, performed by a fictional band featuring Stewart Copeland of the Police along with Jools Holland, Chris Difford, and other members of Squeeze.

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