Spare Change?

The Internet has given us many gifts: the ability to make expensive impulse purchases at any hour of the day, the complete loss of personal privacy, and access to everyone's opinion on the latest meaningless controversy. In addition to those delights, we can also view videos of people asking for money to support their visionary projects, which is the subject of today's Bizarro comic.

Kickstarter is just one of dozens of crowdsourcing sites that liberate would-be geniuses from mooching off their parents (and apparently a lot of projects are initiated by the offspring of celebrities). Now, with a simple homemade video, they can ask friends, family, acquaintances, and zillions of strangers to pitch in!

If a funded project fails to materialize, there's little chance of the "investors" ever receiving a refund. In fairness, there are certainly many worthy projects, produced by people of honesty and integrity who deliver everything as promised. Perhaps some creators simply use up their energy on the pitch, and move on to their next idea.

There's no submission sketch for this cartoon, as we used a re-jiggered version of an old comic (which, coincidentally, was also one of my gags).

Although he could easily have recycled the entire image except for the computer screen, Bizarro CEO Dan Piraro made a few tweaks here and there, giving readers something a little different, and keeping his colorist employed. 

I don't recall ever seeing a previous cartoon reused without some alteration. That's just not the way things are done at Bizarro Global Enterprises.

All of our previous joint efforts can be viewed here.

Thanks for checking out today's comic. And, have I told you about my new project? All I need is to raise a couple million. If you pitch in, I'll send you a really cool trinket!

One Man's Dummy

Today's Bizarro comic imagines an embarrassing predicament particular to a certain segment of the entertainment industry.

Here's my submission sketch for comparison.

In the sketch, one puppet asks the setup question, while in Dan Piraro's finished panel, the conversation is between the ventriloquists. I'm only guessing, but I think Dan made that choice to keep the magical/absurd aspect focused on the sleeping dummy. This is a quiet little gag, so it probably doesn't need two dummies behaving like people. Either way works, but it is interesting to note the slightly different feel in each approach.

Dan likes to draw the dummy and ventriloquist in matching outfits, which is a nice, funny touch. And now I want a red tuxedo.

An earlier sketch, never submitted, shows just one ventriloquist on stage with a sleeping dummy. 

I'd intended to show him thinking something like What a time for my arm to fall asleep!, but felt the gag didn't have enough punch, and almost immediately scribbled this thumbnail in the margin of the same sketchbook page.

Intermezzo:

Dan's drawing of the matching outfits reminded me of these uncannily accurate dummies of the band NRBQ, which appeared on the cover of their 2004 album Dummy.

Clockwise from top left: Joey Spampinato, Tommy Ardolino, Johnny Spampinato, Terry Adams

NRBQ has been around in various incarnations since the late 1960s, and have created a large body of wonderful records and compositions. The current band includes one original member, Terry Adams. The NRBQ dummies were made by an artist named Heidi Kennedy.

Back on topic:

Ventriloquists and dummies are certainly staple characters in gag cartoons (not to mention bad horror movies). One wonders if there's been a cartoon with a ventriloquist and a dummy on a desert island, being visited by the Grim Reaper.

Here's a ventriloquist-themed illustration I did ten years ago. I believe it was done for the now-defunct New York Press, probably for the astrology column.

As always, you are invited to browse the many collaborations between Dan Piraro and me right here in this blog's Bizarro archive.

Another new bit will appear a week from today.

Red Snapper

Today's Bizarro comic features a popular candy treat.

The submission sketch is naturally a bit rough, but the layout is pretty much the same. The glaciers in the final art are more majestic.

One very nice touch Dan made is the way the angler is holding his catch so daintily. As the colorist, I was very happy with the way the glaciers and the ocean turned out, with the original black line art replaced with colored lines.

Swedish Fish candies have been around for over fifty years, and actually originated in Sweden. I recall them being larger (and sold individually rather than in a sealed bag) when I used to buy them at the little league concession stand, but the unidentifiable "red" flavor seems to have remained about the same.

Today is the first of three consecutive Thursdays this month for Piraro/Wayno collaborations to appear, so check your daily paper, or that "web" thing everyone's talking about. And please feel free to peruse the many previous gags I've worked on with Dan.

Reflect Yourself!

Today's Bizarro features a happy fellow who's just finished a painful but apparently satisfying task.

Dan significantly changed the composition compared to my straightforward sketch, and the many details he included add a lot of interest to the scene. 

The flash samples on the wall and the gentleman's tattoos also gave him an opportunity to include quite a few Bizarro secret symbols.

The masterstroke in the finished art is the window sign. Since it's painted to be viewed from outside the shop, it also appears correctly to the protagonist as he looks in the mirror.

Oddly enough, this guy's MOM selfie worked out just fine.

I'd been trying for some time to craft a tattoo-related gag parodying Norman Rockwell's famous painting, Triple Self-Portrait, but could never come up with anything that recalled the familiar image and produced a laugh.

Finally, I realized that, as shown in the painting, Rockwell's canvas depicts his mirror image. That was the hook I needed for the tattoo gag. It bears no resemblance to the Rockwell piece that inspired it, but a train of thought sometimes arrives at an unexpected station.

The NO REGRETS text provides an extra layer of commentary on permanent bodily decoration. I know I've had second thoughts about my own youthful choice of epidermal enhancement.

Please feel free to browse all of my prior collaborations with the great Dan Piraro, and watch for more in the weeks to come.

Garage Punk

The punchline in today's Bizarro is based on the old game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, which supposedly began in 15th-century China. Apparently flipping a coin to decide who bats first had not yet been invented.

The final art by Bizarro Grand Poo-bah Dan Piraro, follows my submission sketch pretty closely, with only a slight shuffling of elements.

The change I find most intriguing is the slight revision to the caption. We didn't discuss it, and in fact, I hadn't noticed it until I started writing this post. My thought was to try and make the payoff ("paper beats rock") the last thing the reader encounters. Dan's rewrite eliminates the comma, so perhaps he was shaving every possible text character.

In the ancient game, each hand gesture represents a physical object, although I can't accept simply being covered (paper's advantage over rock) as a defeat equal to being cut (scissors cut paper) or broken (rock breaks scissors). 

The gag is delivered when the reader's brain processes the idea of a physical object (the paper citation) defeating something nonmaterial (rock music). That process of finding meaning in what initially appears to be contradictory or nonsensical is the basis of many cartoon gags. Within the panel, there has to be some logic. The moment of surprise when you figure it out results (we hope) in a laugh.

Stay tuned for more funny business, and if you enjoyed this disturbance of the peace, please feel free to browse our prior infractions, in this blog's Bizarro Archive.

Highlights for Larvae

This Sunday's Bizarro depicts something we've all had to put up with: reading outdated magazines while enduring that boring wait for a medical appointment.

Dan's finished art expands on my submission sketch, and adds several fun bits of detail.

For readers who are too young, or culturally lacking, to catch the reference, the magazine title Them alludes to a 1954 movie of the same name, about giant man-eating atomic ants.

Although I drew the sketch, submitted it as my own, and pocketed the writer's fee, the gag originated in the fevered brain of my friend Jesse Schell. Jesse is a frighteningly talented guy who does too many things to list here. Go check out his website and be amazed.

Like most cartoonists, I hate when someone tells me they have a great idea for a cartoon, as it almost always turns out to be awful. I'm too conflict-averse to be honest about it, so I usually pretend to pass out, playing possum until they go away. Jesse, however, is very patient, and when my insistent bladder forced me to get up off the floor, he blurted out this gag idea (which I loved) as I ran to the men's room.

Almost exactly a year ago, another idea from Mr. Schell appeared in Bizarro. Jesse, I owe you a beer, buddy!
 And, speaking of the wonderful Mr. Piraro, he and I had a rare chance to hang out last month when he was here in Pittsburgh for the National Cartoonists Society's annual Reuben Awards Weekend. Here's a rare photo of several members of the Bizarro Collective from the formal shindig:

"Dangerous" Dan McConnell, Dan Piraro, Jim Horwitz (JimHo),  and Wayno
modeling a selection of official NCS neckwear.

As I have no doubt mentioned a few hundred times, my band, The Chalk Outlines, performed at the closing night of the NCS convention. Everyone agreed that we were loud. My good friend Jill volunteered to brave a room full of cartoonists in order to shoot some photos for us, and here's one of my favorites. It may be a little blurry, but that's how everybody remembers the weekend anyway, and this one makes me smile every time I see it.

That's Danny boy, cutting a rug with the lovely lady Klamelda, as the Chalk Outlines besmirch a stage that is rumored to have hosted the likes of Duke Ellington's band back in the Jazz Age.

As always, you are encouraged to peruse my earlier collaborations with Bizarro's creator Dan Piraro, in this blog's Bizarro Archive.

Tally Ho!

I don't know much about hunting, but I do know that there is a type of hunting dog called a pointer, which was enough to craft this gag:

Dan Piraro's finished art closely follows the staging in my sketch, which is always a nice bit of affirmation.

This is a gag that benefits from a realistic drawing of the animal character. A cartoonish dog using a laptop computer isn't very surprising, but a convincingly "real" dog in this absurd situation adds some logical contrast which gives the gag a little more punch.

Our many previous collaborations can all be viewed in this blog's Bizarro archive. Please drop by again for more of this kind of foolishness.

Start Me Up

Today's Bizarro is a gag that could almost be an actual occurrence for the caffeine-dependent among us (and I speak from experience).

Here's the sketch as submitted. In Dan's version, at least the fiend put a raincoat on over his pajamas, instead of showing up in a bathrobe.

Many of my cartoonist compatriots suffered from self-inflicted sleep deprivation over  Memorial Day weekend, when the National Cartoonists Society held its annual Reuben Awards here in my hometown. Pittsburghers Vince Dorse and John Manders received Divisional Awards for online comics (long form) and book illustration, respectively.

The event gave me a chance to catch up with many of my esteemed colleagues, including members of the Bizarro collective.

Clockwise from lower left: "Dangerous" Dan McConnell, Wayno, Jim Horwitz, Dan Piraro. Photo by Keith Robinson

At the Sunday night farewell party, attendees were entertained, or in some cases annoyed, by the musical stylings of the Chalk Outlines, my side project with fellow cartoonist (and powerhouse drummer) Dave Klug, and good friends Hank Lawhead, Jeff Stringer and B.G. Mozart. If there's one thing I've learned from this experience, it's that excellent musicians can carry a moderately-talented vocalist.

Ready to wash dishes after the gig: Hank Lawhead, Dave Klug, Wayno, Jeff Stringer, B.G. Mozart. Photo by Jill McGlothlin

Performing with these guys is a real privilege, and a lot of fun. We plan to keep it going on a casual basis for as long as we can convince someone to let us set up and bang away.

As always, you're invited to peruse the Bizarro archive to puzzle over our earlier collaborations. A new joint effort will appear on June 11.

An Endangered Species Walks Into a Bar...

Today's Bizarro cartoon tweaks a familiar cinematic trope, seen in countless westerns and film noirs.

When a director wants to tell the audience that a character is at the end of his rope, and is planning to get stinking drunk, the standard scenario is to show him ordering a whiskey, adding, "leave the bottle."

Here's the sketch I submitted to Dan Piraro for consideration.

This was one of those rare gags that hit me immediately, and I was pretty sure it would be a winner, so instead of doing a proper scan and cleaning up the image, I simply snapped a photo of the sketchbook page with my phone and sent it as-is, with visible pencil lines and poor lighting. Dan liked it as much as I did, but we thought the word "pot" could create some confusion. We didn't want readers on either side of that issue to think there was some secret message about marijuana in the cartoon. We have no agenda here other than producing a laugh. We agreed that the word "vase" didn't quite work, and finally settled on "planter," which maintains the syllabic rhythm of the word "bottle."

Dan added a nice little detail, showing the individual serving in a little terra cotta pot.

We do realize that bamboo isn't an intoxicant for pandas, so the transference doesn't hold one hundred percent. However, it is a fact that since bamboo has very few nutrients, pandas who live on it have to eat it in large quantities, so there is a scientific basis for the cartoon.

This gag marks a new milestone: it's the 125th collaboration between Dan and me to appear in Bizarro. You can see all of our previous joint efforts in this blog's archive.

They Might Be Gigantic

This Sunday's Bizarro is another fine example of Dan Piraro's wonderful comic art.

As I've noted before, Dan pulls out all the stops on his Sunday panels. Just check out this Dan McConnell Sunday gag.

My submission sketch was laid out for the "portrait" orientation of a daily panel.

In a ploy to make the gag more appealing to Dan, I intentionally drew the animals in a static, posed arrangement, rather than depicting them onstage. He's mentioned to me in the past (and I know from firsthand experience) what a pain it can be to draw cartoon musical instruments. especially guitars. I guess his enjoyment in drawing hippos, rhinos, elephants and whales won out, resulting in a spectacular cartoon image. You can almost hear the ultra-low frequency riffs coming from the steel-reinforced stage. 

As always, every one of our joint efforts is viewable in the Bizarro Archive. Have fun browsing, and don't bang your head. 

•••

Speaking of cartoons and music, exactly three weeks from today, my musical group, The Chalk Outlines, will perform at the closing party for the National Cartoonists Society's 67th annual Reuben Awards Weekend. 

Our drummer, cartoonist Dave Klug, describes the band as "alt R&B," which is as good a description as any. We'd originally planned this group as a one-off, just for the NCS party, but we're having so much fun, we're going to keep it going, and are planning additional local gigs over the coming months.

The NCS has never held their big blowout in Pittsburgh before, so the local cartoonists are all abuzz. Several Pittsburghers are nominated for Divisional Awards this year: Mark Brewer, George Schill, Michael McParlane, Vince Dorse, Pat Lewis and John Manders, along with yours truly. It's going to be worth the conference fee of admission to see this gang wearing tuxedos.

•••

The Chalk Outlines
B.G. Mozart, Wayno, Dave Klug, Hank Lawhead, Jeff Stringer
Photo © Jill McGlothlin, 2013