Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts

Saturday, September 06, 2025

Four Strings, No Waiting

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've got technological wonders around us, and we've used them to abrogate all responsibility for everything in our lives.
Harlan Ellison (1934-2018)

This timely observation comes from our pipe pic model of the week: Harlan Ellison, the prolific enfant terrible of science fiction (a term he hated).



It was recommended by field correspondent Glenn G., as well as Kent, a regular blog reader and commenter. 


Glenn also provided some background for those who aren't familiar with Ellison's work:
I thought I'd submit for your approval a pipe pic of my favorite author, Harlan Ellison. I don't know if you are familiar with his stories (mostly in sci-fi short stories) or his many columns of movie and/or television criticism. He wrote a number of memorable TV episodes for The Outer Limits, and one for Star Trek (which is considered by many to be the best ever of the original series), and other short story collections. 
I became enamored of the man and his writing in the '70s. A couple of his most often repeated quotes are: "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity," and my favorite, "You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."

You can see many of his short videos of commentary from the '80s on YouTube. Check out Harlan Ellison's Watching.

This is Ellison's second pipe pic to appear on the ol' blogeroo. A little over a year ago, we featured a shot of him writing while on exhibit in a bookshop window.

Big Bizarro thanks to Glenn and Kent for the suggestion, which reminds me, I still haven't read The Last Dangerous Visions, the third and final mammoth volume of the anthology series that Ellison launched in 1967. It's on the pile, and I hope to get to it soon.


I have only myself to blame for the latest batch of Bizarro gags, and am planning to keep it that way. No abrogation of responsibility for us!


Tropical shredding is the training program for aspiring air guitarists.
I decided on a vertical strip layout to showcase the full effect of this misunderstood musical art form.

If you'd like to see the reference photo I used to draw this one, check out my free Substack newsletter.

Who doesn't love tablesside sserivce?

I drew the cacti as accurately as I could, but their relative sizes are all over the place.

Over the years, what begins as a curricula transport system eventually becomes an adorable fashion accessory.

Thursday's panel imagines a theater where some patrons never have to miss a minute of the performance. Culture plus convenience!

We are all frogs in the skillet.

The book cover in the comic is an homage to Milton Glaser's 1961 cover for the Signet paperback edition. The first time I read 1984, it was this version, and Glaser's simple, effective design is burned into my mind's eye.

As more people return to the office, you can't be too careful.

Our Latest Bizarro Fashion Plate


Sheila H. of Tucson models one of the new "Eye Heart" T-shirts available in the Comics Kingdom Bizarro Shop. These comfy garments come in five different designs and an array of colors.

Our original Jazz Pickle, Pipe of Ambiguity, and Irön Bunnies öf Dööm shirts are also still available in the shop. All sales benefit your cartoonists. We'd love to share a photo of you in your BeeTees, too!

[End of commercial break.]

That's the latest nuttiness from my Little Shop of Humor. Stop by again next week if you'd like to see more of this stuff.

Bonus Video

Roy Smeck: "Tiger Rag"
Unknown film source, circa 1920s-1930s


Roy Smeck was a Vaudeville performer who became widely known when Warner Brothers featured him in their first "sync-sound" film in 1926. He made numerous other film appearances and had endorsement deals for guitars, as well as selling sheet music and music instruction books. 

Smeck played Hawaiian guitar, banjo, ukulele, and guitar, as evidenced by this Yazoo LP/CD cover:


Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb did the beautiful hand-lettered titles on the cover. The LP was released in 1976 and is highly recommended. It's even available on your favorite streaming services.



A Glut of Bizarro Giddiness

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.


    

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Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Accusez-Moi

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 

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Bob Dylan

Yes, I'm quoting the Bard of Hibbing again, with an excerpt from his 1964 composition, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."

These lyrics from a record released sixty years ago are still relevant, probably more than when they were originally committed to tape.

I can't add anything to such righteous poetry, so I'll close out this intro to the Labor Day weekend post to express 1) appreciation for all the workers who are the foundation of our economy, and 2) hope that it doesn't crash around us because of the actions of needy, greedy accumulators of obscene, unearned wealth who never engaged in honest work.


Bizarro reader Scot G. of Upland, CA, sent today's atmospheric pipe pic, which he shot earlier this year.



Scot's notes from the field:
I was in Miami Beach a week ago to see my favorite band, moe, play at the outdoor arena known as the Band Shell just off the beach. While watching the band perform, the percussionist, who is known for vaping during a concert, pulled out the famous Wayno symbol. Despite my attempts to take the perfect picture, the best I could do was a foggy image of percussionist Jim Loughlin. Even if you never use this picture, I thought you would enjoy the intersection. 

How could I not use this image, Scot? I love its unretouched rawness. It certainly has the feel of being at a live show. 


We'll never get rich making comics, but we're going to keep doing it as long as we're able, because the connection to our community of readers is a reward we treasure.


Drawing the antlers (mutantlers?) was an oddly relaxing experience. I first drew them using a wide highlighter to maintain a relatively consistent thickness, then inked around the guideline. 

Drawing anything by hand is a healthy activity for the brain. You should do it too, even if you never show your drawings to anyone.

I may have gone overboard with the art for the strip version, but I felt great when I finished it.

I couldn't resist the idea of doing a gag about a nineteenth-century French novelist as a child. Unsurprisingly, online comments were divided. Take these two, for example:

1) A modern internet joke without historical basis. Too erudite for me. 
2) I frequently learn new things when reading Bizarro!
As a cartoonist, I'm grateful for readers who pay attention and care enough to have opinions.

A wise pig can see parallels in the lives of others.

Your obsessive artist experienced much satisfaction drawing and coloring the damaged picture frame in the background of this panel.

I probably spent more time than necessary, but it was nearly as calming as the antler drawing.

Surely there must be one nearby.

Not an understatement.

The strip layout required significant shuffling, but we got there!

That's the latest from Bizarro Studios North. See you in September. 

Bonus Track

The Coasters: "I'm a Hog For You"
Atco Records 45, 1959


There was so much more to the Coasters than "Yakety Yak." This song was the B-side of their "Poison Ivy" single. Both sides were written by Lieber & Stoller, who found a perfect vehicle for their compositions in the Coasters.


Much More Bizarro Mayhem

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.


    

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Saturday, August 02, 2025

Thinking Outside the Bubble

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 have always found it interesting that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.
Tom Lehrer (1928-2025)

Tom Lehrer, the mathematics professor who wrote satirical and humorous songs like "The Vatican Rag," "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," and "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)," died on July 26 at the age of 97.

Lehrer's lyrics were sharp, witty, and dark, while the music was jaunty, upbeat, and catchy as hell. His total output consisted of 37 songs written over approximately 20 years, which may not be a large quantity, but the work was consistently excellent.

In 2022, undoubtedly aware that he wouldn't be around forever and having no family or heirs, Lehrer donated all of his music and lyrics to the Public Domain, meaning that anyone could use his material in any way they wished.

If the quote above is indeed something he said, he had little tolerance for plagiarists. Cartoonists are well aware of intellectual property theft and experience it every day. It's ridiculously simple to steal a cartoon image online and remove the artist's name. That's galling enough, but some miscreants also alter the text to fit their political loyalty or worldview.

Pointing out violations to people who (perhaps) innocently share bastardized cartoons sometimes results in them removing the offending image, but once something's out there and replicated thousands of times, it's impossible to catch them all. 

Often, when someone is notified that they're wrongly sharing a human being's art without proper attribution, they'll say something like, "Hey, you should be grateful for the exposure!"

It's 2025, and we've all been using the internet for around thirty years now. Everyone knows that it's wrong to steal, but what can you do about it? I don't have an answer, but every once in a while, I feel the need to howl into the windstorm, if only to get it out of my system.

Getting back to Tom Lehrer, I first heard one of his records while I was in high school, in a course called World Cultures. At the time, I didn't fully appreciate our teacher, who introduced us to the world beyond our rural Pennsylvania community. Some of our class projects involved preparing and sharing foods from different countries, and we covered a wide range of topics, including music.

I recall our teacher setting up one of those suitcase record players to play Tom Lehrer songs, and then explaining the meanings behind them. I wish I had been more open to learning opportunities, instead of sitting in the back of the room cracking wise. Despite myself, I memorized most of the words to "Lobachevsky," Lehrer's takedown of academic plagiarism, and I still love that tune.

I'm projecting a message into the universe for Mr. Ullman, my old World Cultures teacher: 
Thanks for broadening my horizons and putting up with my crap. You did a good job under often trying circumstances.
While I'm at it, I'll send ethereal thanks to Tom Lehrer for showing that it's possible to produce art while also working in an unrelated field. I've done it in the past, and it's not easy. I'm grateful to be working on a single career that I absolutely love.


I swiped today's pipe pic from artist Tom Neely's BlueSky account.



The panel came from an issue of Flippity & Flop, a DC Comics publication that ran from 1952 to 1960. The comic was based on a 1946-47 Columbia Pictures animated series, featuring a canary (Flippity, originally named Flippy), a cat (Flop), and a dog (Sam). 

Though similar, the series of four Flippy & Flop cartoons pre-dated Warner Bros.' Tweety & Sylvester cartoons.

Tom Neely's BlueSky account appears to have been abandoned, but he's active on Instagram as @iwilldestroytom.




After two weeks of musical gags ("Now Playing on AI Radio"), we're back to our usual assortment of random comical topics.


I'd like to thank a particular reader who contacted me to point out a punctuation error I made in a Bizarro gag a year ago. I got in touch with them and let them know that I corrected the panel in the archives. Since then, we've had occasional and quite cordial correspondence, some of which partly inspired this new panel.

At least the kid isn't being embarrassed in public.

There have been countless jokes about complicated coffee drink orders, but I couldn't find a prior occurrence of "dehyphenated" coffee. That's my style of drink: a well-made espresso in a ceramic demitasse.

Thursday's panel plays with the visual vocabulary of comics and is a hat-tip to the late Mort Walker. Walker created the Beetle Bailey comic, which will soon celebrate its 75th anniversary. He also wrote The Lexicon of Comicana, a book about the symbols and conventions of cartooning. A new edition of The Lexicon is being published in September, and it will include panels by both Dan Piraro and me as illustrative examples.

Update: A helpful blog reader recommends Bookshop.org as a source for those who aren't interested in further enriching a certain baldheaded greed monster.

We've all had this conversation, haven't we?

Desperation is the mother of folly.

That concludes this week of normal Bizarro comics, whatever "normal" is for us. Drop by again next Saturday to see what sort of shenanigans we put out there into the world.

New BizarroWear


The Comics Kingdom Shop has released a new line of Bizarro tees and baseball caps.

Due to popular demand, in addition to white, black, and gray t-shirts, we're offering several supersaturated colors. The ultra-bright colors are available in all sizes except XS, 4X, and 5X.


You can choose from five different "Eye Heart" designs showcasing your favorite Secret Symbol.

We're also working on adding V-neck tees to the shop.

As always, we’d love to see a photo of you modeling your BizarroWear to share with our readers!


Bonus Track

Tom Lehrer: "Lobachevsky"
from Songs by Tom Lehrer
Originally released on Songs By Tom Lehrer
Lehrer Records 10" LP, 1953


If you'd like to sing along, you can view the lyrics or download a PDF here.


A Plethora of Bizarro Productions

If you like what we do and appreciate that it's free, we encourage you to explore the following links.


   

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Saturday, July 12, 2025

A Quarter Turn'll Do Ya

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.


   

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