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
Twice five syllables,
Plus seven, can't say much—but...
That's haiku for you.
Douglas Hofstadter
This haiku about haiku comes from Hofstadter's 1985 book Metamagical Themas, which collects columns he wrote for Scientific American. I'm tackling it based on a blog comment from a few weeks ago.
I'm enjoying much of the book. The first section, which explores self-referential texts, got me thinking differently about a gag I was working on, and I'm pleased with the finished cartoon.
Some of the columns are far over my head, such as the detailed explanations (with diagrams!) of the construction of the Rubik's Cube and algorithms to apply when solving the puzzle. I admire Hofstadter's ability to quantify and explain such things, but I had to skip past those sections as they hurt my head.
I like a challenge, and this book is a big one. After this, I'll need some literary comfort food. Perhaps I'll pull this old favorite from the shelf:
John Peck, known professionally as The Mad Peck, died earlier this month at age 83. With Les Daniels, he coauthored COMIX, one of the first serious book-length histories of comics. I encountered it as a teenager and flipped my lid.
Peck's comics, particularly his mock advertisements, were influential on a certain young cartoonist-to-be, and I look forward to getting reacquainted with them. He was a pioneer of underground comix and created many classic rock music concert posters in the 1960s and 1970s.
I recommend Steven Heller's recent column on Peck in PRINT.
Today's pipe pic is a self-portrait by the American painter John Steuart Curry (1879-1946).
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Curry is considered one of the three most significant painters of American Regionalism, along with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. His most famous work, the mural Tragic Prelude, was the subject of great controversy when he painted it for the Kansas State Capitol building.
You may be familiar with Tragic Prelude, as a segment of it was used as the cover art for the band Kansas's 1974 self-titled album.
You may be familiar with Tragic Prelude, as a segment of it was used as the cover art for the band Kansas's 1974 self-titled album.
Curry's self-portrait was suggested to me by Bizarro reader John H, who said he was
sitting in a bar, middle of Missouri, arguing with my spouse about regionalist artists and came upon this. Barely made out the pipe.
Thanks to John H for the image and the backstory on spotting it. We have such a fascinating and well-informed community of readers. How many cartoonists get emails from someone who thought of their comic while discussing historic American regional artists?
Single-panel cartoons are like haiku in their simplicity and brevity. Others may say they're the punk rock 45s of the funny pages. Judge for yourself as we review this week's Bizarro gags.
Don't you love a restaurant with a strolling jack-in-the-boxer?
When I wrote and drew this one, I was playfully suggesting that finger painting is digital art since fingers are digits. Looking at it now, I find myself stuck in a logic loop. An Etch-a-Sketch drawing is mechanically assisted, so it's digital-adjacent, and smears of paint on paper are about as analog as it gets, yet the joke makes a certain kind of sense, too.
Perhaps it's best to move on.
This translates as, "I was expecting someone wackier."
Caricatures are tricky unless you're doing a caricature of a cartoon figure, as I did in this panel. (Is a caricature of a cartoon analogous to a haiku about haiku?)
An upcoming gag includes Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek. If Bizarro's art style were simpler, I might have drawn a generic person with Spock's distinctive haircut and pointed ears wearing the Star Trek uniform. Those visual clues would tell the reader who it was.
I wanted to get close to an actual likeness, so I did a rough pencil sketch, scanned it, then digitally moved and resized parts of the face and added black lines.
The second image was better, and I refined it further when drawing the final art for the gag.
It isn't great, but it's not embarrassing, either.
Last year, I wrote in my Substack newsletter about working as a magazine illustrator and regularly having to create caricatures of show business folks.
I tip my hat to colleagues who consistently do funny, recognizable caricatures. You know who you are!
If this were a piece of gallery art, I'd have trouble deciding between two titles:
Unintended Consequences
and
Some Procedures are Too Successful
and
Some Procedures are Too Successful
Congratulations to the unseen character in Friday's panel for ticking all the boxes.
This one could have run on Friday since it's Lent, or Fish Fry Season as secularists might prefer.
Thanks for checking out my ramblings. If you like the blog, come back next week for more of the same.
You might also enjoy my free weekly newsletter. It arrives in your inbox every Saturday with a link to the latest blog, a peek at an upcoming gag, pre-Bizarro art from my files, and other miscellany.
You might also enjoy my free weekly newsletter. It arrives in your inbox every Saturday with a link to the latest blog, a peek at an upcoming gag, pre-Bizarro art from my files, and other miscellany.
Bonus Track
Joe Jackson: "Fools in Love"
From Look Sharp!
A&M Records, 1979
A&M Records, 1979
This is not the song referred to in Monday's panel.
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