WaynoBlog: Bang Zoom

Saturday, April 11, 2026

Bang Zoom

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

Happy Saturday, O cherished cartoon community.

I have no pithy intro or inspiring quote to offer today, so I'm skipping ahead to our pipe pic of the week. It's a screen grab from the "Save It For Later" music video by The [English] Beat.

Canadian Bizarro field correspondent Petri V sent the image and noted:

The song came up in the news recently, and I watched the video and found this image of a woman with a pipe looking at an album cover with a friend. From your blog posts, I know that you are more than just a little bit interested in music, so I thought I would share it with you.

The 1982 music video features the band performing at a tiny subterranean club for an audience of blasé hipsters, who are eventually won over by the catchy tune. I'm reasonably certain that the gentleman in the beret is not my partner in comics, Dan Piraro.

Naturally, I had to determine what that album was and found that it was a 1960 compilation of songs by French performer Juliette Gréco, released in the US and Canada.

A tip of the the cocoanut straw porkpie to Petri for the image and for reminding me how much I like that song.

If you're as overwhelmed by current events as your cartoonist, perhaps you'd like to visit this week's cartoons for a few moments of escape.

From the day I wrote this gag until I uploaded the file for publication, I ping-ponged between using "would" and "could" in the dialogue. The difference is subtle, and a case could be made for either word. If we didn't have deadlines, I'd most likely still be wavering.

One imagines that authors would be grateful if this sort of thing were limited to a couple of hours per day.

When sequencing a week of cartoons, I schedule my favorite for Friday, but I now think this gag was the strongest in the batch. I like the drawing, and the joke takes an extra beat or two to land. Also, the panel references a familiar character without showing him or even mentioning the name.

My newsletter for the week goes into detail about formatting the panel and strip versions of this gag, for those interested in the nuts and bolts. It will be published early this afternoon.

In its original 1950s incarnation, kids were expected to use actual potatoes to play with this toy, and the potato was literally just the head.

The plastic facial features and hats were backed with sharp spikes. Potato Head-related injuries must have been common in those days.

Friday's highbrow/lowbrow gag is notable for its reduplicative caption and is based on fuzzy memories of impressionists on variety shows. It seems that phrases such as "It goes something like this" were mandated by the FCC.