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
We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Vonnegut might have been both amused and horrified by a conference here in Pittsburgh this week. Its title, "The Pennsylvania Energy & Innovation Summit," is a prime example of 2025 Newspeak. The organizers' idea of "innovation" is the suppression of education and research, and the quashing of clean energy in favor of antiquated and environmentally harmful fuels that put more money into already over-stuffed pockets.
A (once) respected University hosted the event, whose guest speaker fell asleep after stunning attendees with a rambling fantasy about a relative having the Unabomber as a university student.
To quote Vonnegut again:
And so it goes.
My old friend Candi S sent me today's pipe pic.
Candi writes:
I was looking through an art book and spotted this today. The book is COUNTERFEIT: Ray Beldner, Money Work. He’s a guy who makes art that’s based on or covered with real and/or fake money images.
I did some homework to learn more. Here are the details on this piece:
Ray Beldner: This Is Definitely Not a Pipe. 2000.
After René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929).
Sewn US currency. 24" × 33"
A tip of the coconut straw summer porkpie to my pal Candi, who also sent one of my favorite pipe images a while back.
It's been about six months since Bizarro had a theme week. While working on new material back in April, I sketched out a musical gag based on AI's tendency to produce nonsensical results from harvested data.
I liked the format, and in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, wrote around twenty gags. I set some aside for the future, and selected twelve to run over two consecutive weeks.
I'm interested in seeing how readers will react, so please feel free to comment.
This one introduced the series because it's uncomplicated, and it sets up the concept for the rest of the week.
Tuesday's panel paid tribute to Ol' Dirty Bivalve.
The drawing worked best in a vertical strip layout.
Who can forget the classic "I Harpooned the Sheriff"?
Music nerd Easter egg: In 1966, Atlantic Records released the LP, Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul.
My drawing of the book was loosely based on the album cover image.
The working title of Bowie's 1973 album was Aladdin Neckwear. Just before the scheduled release, it was renamed, and new photos were shot. Friday's cartoon is based on a rare promotional copy of the album with its original title and cover image.
None of the above is true. I'm just messing with the data-scraping bots.
I know very little about the pop star parodied in Saturday's panel, which puts me on a level playing field with AI. My research taught me a couple of things: Bruno Mars is hugely popular and successful, and he is a ridiculously handsome human.
That's the hot six AI Radio hits for this week. Tune in on Monday for another round of recording artists topping the hallucinatory charts.
Bonus Track
Nick Lowe: "So It Goes"
Stiff Records 45, 1976
"So It Goes" was the first single on England's Stiff Records, later the home to Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Madness, The Damned, and many other performers who commanded a significant portion of my disposable income well into the 1980s.
In 1977, in response to David Bowie's album Low, Nick titled his new EP Bowi. The man's a genius.
More Bizarro Stuff
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
It's only lines on paper, folks!"
Robert Crumb
Greetings from Bizarro Studios North. I've lost a few days to personal obligations, and I need to redouble my cartooning efforts, so we'll dispense with a lengthy intro this week.
Today's pipe personality is French actor and filmmaker Jacques Tati.
Bizarro Field Correspondent Frank V. nominated Monsieur Tati, and I agree that he's a worthy subject.
Frank wrote:
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this pipe pix candidate long before this. Jacques Tati as Mr. Hulot is my absolute favorite comedy flick of all time.
Tati also knew how to use a pipe as a photographic accessory, and he was already on my radar. I searched my computer file folders and found another Tati image that I saved in 2021:
Big thanks to Frank for the suggestion and for reminding me that I had been meaning to feature Tati.
Without further ado, here are the latest of my published lines on paper.
What does it say about your cartoonist that I've imagined piggy banks as living beings in several cartoons over the years?
Another victim of departmental budget cuts.
"Frankie" is one of my favorite characters to draw, and he's appeared or been mentioned in over forty gags since I started here at Bizarro Studios.
I recently figured out that the word "nanobot" is actually an abbreviation for "nanobotany."
Friday's gag was by far my favorite of the week. As regular readers know, I like to use inanimate objects as characters in my work, and almost never add arms, legs, or faces, but using books as characters provided an opportunity to have it both ways.
The panel is sort of an homage to the 1946 Warner Brothers cartoon Book Revue, in which characters from book covers come to life and interact.
As a friend commented to me, "It's all comics."
I originally sketched this gag for myself and Dan, and we both assumed it was too risqué for a newspaper panel. Later, I shared it with one of our editors, just for a laugh. My email subject line was "Probably Too Naughty."
To my surprise, I was encouraged to run it and see what sort of reaction we get. Bizarro isn't a kids' comic, and newspaper strips and panels regularly use "hell" and "damn" and make occasional poop jokes, all of which were once verboten.
So, we're doing our part to see how far "the line" has moved. Zippy cartoonist Bill Griffith once told me that he thought newspaper comics ought to at least be as free as network television.
If we get any blowback, I'll report on it here.
Bonus Stack
Here's your hardworking ink monkey with my Bizarro output as of June 10, 2025. I keep all of my original comic art in archival storage boxes. Each box contains 150 drawings, all numbered and date-stamped. When I close the lid on another box, I stack them and take a photo. Although I share the pictures on social media, I mainly take them to remind myself that I’ve completed another 150 cartoons and that I'm building a body of work.
It's important and motivational to document one's work and to make note of milestones.
The latest box is number sixteen, and the pile is the original art for 2,400 panels. That sounds like a lot, but I know cartoonists who've been doing daily comics for a lot longer than I, whose output exceeds 10,000 gags.
I'd be afraid to stack my boxes that high.
Thanks for checking in on the blog. I hope you come back next week for more stuff. I have an unusual batch of gags coming up next week, and am eager to hear how they land with readers.
Bonus Track
Fingerprintz: "Beam Me Up, Scotty"
From the LP The Very Dab Virgin Records, 1979
Fingerprintz was a Scottish new wave (ish) band whose music was solid and catchy, but they're largely forgotten today.
In July 1979, I was aware of the band and had been buying their records when they played in Pittsburgh, though not as headliners. Fingerprintz had been hired as the backing band for the American singer Rachel Sweet, who was 16 or 17 years old at the time, and was on tour opening for the Cars.
After the show, we met the band (thanks to my friend Jim, whose record store was the place for all of your punk and new wave music at the time). We stopped by the store where they autographed records for us, and a group of us took them out for late-night pizza and many drinks.
I saw Fingerprintz again at Georgetown University in January 1980, playing their own music as the opener for XTC. They were a terrific live band and a perfect complement to XTC.
Cha Burnz (guitar) and Bogdan Wiczling, former members of Fingerprintz, performed in Pittsburgh in 1983 as part of Adam Ant's backing group. I barely recognized them in their Ant-gear and makeup.
Songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Jimme O'Neill and guitarist Cha Burns formed The Silencers in 1986, and they released ten albums between 1987 and 2006.
The three Fingerprintz albums (The Very Dab, Distinguishing Marks, and Beat Noir) are available on Spotify and Apple Music.
It seems that in place of a lengthy intro, I wrote a verbose closing section. Oh, well...
Spicy Bizarro Links
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
Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret. If we loved each other, we'd solve many more problems. And then this world would be gasser.
Louis Armstrong
Throughout his lifetime, Louis Armstrong gave his date of birth as July 4, 1900. The date has never been definitively established, and probably never will be. Conflicting documents exist, and it's probable that he was born in 1901. A baptism certificate lists Armstrong's birthday as August 4, 1901.
Ricky Riccardi addresses the controversy in the first four pages of his excellent book Stomp Off, Let's Go. Riccardi's perfectly reasonable conclusion is:
Louis Armstrong, born on the Fourth of July, 1901. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but that's the date this book will follow. In the end, it's all irrelevant; the bottom line is that Louis Armstrong was born, and that alone is something to celebrate.
I've cited Armstrong's quote in the past, and it's truer than ever. This weekend, I'm celebrating this truly great American.
Today's pipe pic is a beauty. It's a printed cardboard advertising sign that was probably displayed in a drugstore or tobacco shop in the early twentieth century.
I recently received it from Mike Michalik, a fellow Pennsylvanian and a collector of interesting ephemera. Mike hosted Auralcheology, one of my favorite podcasts, which sadly came to an end after 49 episodes.
The podcast featured music from various eras and genres, with each episode highlighting a specific performer. Mike always provided fascinating biographical information and history along with the music.
Although no new episodes are being produced, you can still listen to the whole series on Spotify. Check it out.
Thanks to Mike for all of Auralcheology and for the excellent bit of advertising art.
I hope the current batch of Bizarro gags adds a few chuckles to your three-day weekend.
Melville's works are being updated for the twenty-first century, with varying degrees of success.
Often referred to as "Russian dolls," the character in Tuesday's panel wears the colors and sunflower symbol of Ukraine.
My fellow cartoonist and good pal Mark Parisi emailed me this week to say, "Nesting dolls. They are addictive, aren't they?" Indeed, they are.
Wednesday's gag presented the biggest challenge of the week, with two speech balloons, a caption, and a "split screen."
The strip layout was tricky, too, but I can't complain, since I have only myself to blame for the structure of the joke.
"The eights" is probably a high estimate, but at least he's wearing long pants.
Friday's gag celebrates my brief liberation from dialogue and captions. I'm always pleased when I'm able to get a joke across without words. If I can poke fun at a superhero at the same time, that's gravy.
The gag also works rather well as a vertical strip.
At least he chose an accurate name.
Thank you for taking the time to browse the blog. My words and pictures appreciate your eyeballs and brain.
Please come by again next Saturday.
Bonus Track
Louis Armstrong's Hot Five: "Who'sit"
Recorded in Chicago, June 16, 1926 Okeh Records 78rpm, 1926
This is a favorite around Bizarro Studios North. I'm particularly enamored of Armstrong's slide whistle solo.
More Bizarro Madness
If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.
