Smell You Later

Today's Bizarro comic features a police officer working with a nosewitness.

Dogs and cats are excellent subjects for comic gags. We all tend to anthropomorphize our furry companions, so it's not a great leap for a reader to see them in familiar human situations, while exhibiting their canine (or feline) nature.

Dan Piraro's published comic is quite different from my submission sketch. The composition is improved, and so is the text.

"Turn around and bend over" is much funnier than "face the other way!" Try working both phrases into your conversation today, and see if I'm right.

As many readers my know, every Bizarro comic is composed twice for publication. Most papers carry the standard panel version, but some publish it in strip format. This involves shuffling things around, and often, Dan draws additional elements to fill the space. This one works particularly well in the widescreen format.

You've got to love the look of defiance on that chihuahua.

This weekend will be bookended by collaborative Bizarro comics, with a new one popping up on Monday, inspired by a young friend who's inadvertently helped me in the past.

As always, you're welcome to trudge through our previous comical conspiracies. There are now well over a hundred.

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Dan Piraro blogs about Bizarro every day. His post on this comic is quite amusing and also includes an older canine cartoon from his archives.

Not Half Bad

Hot on the heels of last week's cartoon spoofing the story of Noah, today's Bizarro also has a scriptural twist. Taking us from Genesis to Revelation, we present this  discounted demon.

The final art by Bizarro's creator, Dan Piraro, fleshes out the rough sketch I submitted, and shows what's beyond the borders of my panel.

 

I'd been trying to come up with something using "333" as a reference to the traditional "666" number as the mark of the beast for some time. I'd drawn several sketches that didn't quite cut the mustard, and finally thought of the caption Markdown of the Beast, which is kind of nifty, if I do say so myself.

Old Scratch is one of those characters a cartoonist can return to and almost always find a new twist.

Bizarro-wise, October is a busy month here at Wayno World Headquarters. We've got three more funnies coming before the month ends, so be sure to check your paper daily. And, of course, all of our earlier comical collaborations can be viewed in this blog's Bizarro Storage Bin.

Devilish Digression

Speaking of the Prince of Darkness, here's an interpretation I did back in 1997. This was long before I met Mister Piraro, but I think it bears a passing resemblance to him.

This image was created without the use of Photoshop or any other image-manipulation software. In the late 20th century, many cartoonists and illustrators used a variation of the ancient animation cel technique to produce color art for publication. The black & white line art image was shot with a gigantic photostat camera and printed on a sheet of clear acetate. A special type of vinyl paint was then applied to the back side of the acetate to fill in areas of color. There was often a second layer used as a background. In this case, I used a combination of paint and a scrap of wallpaper from a discarded sample book.

I had this piece, titled "Suave Devil," printed up as a postcard, and I'm sure there's a boxful of them somewhere in the studio here. if people still sent physical mail, I'd offer them at a sale price.

Poop Deck

Today's Bizarro is not only a clown gag, but also completely wordless—a bit of a one-two punch!

It's rare for this writer to produce a purely visual gag, so when it happens, it's particularly satisfying. I've managed to pull it off twice before. 

It will be interesting to see what sort of reaction this one gets. To my mind it's a rather gentle gag playing on the idea of stuffing a large number of passengers into a vehicle that couldn't possibly contain them all. Our would-be sailor seems to have come to the conclusion that a waist high boat is no less likely to hold two of every species on earth than the largest vessel that could be built by a small family using hand tools, but there's always the possibility of righteous blowback. We'll see.

Dan's finished layout is very similar to my submission sketch, though he's added some amusing little extras. 

My favorite of his additions is the very funny depiction of our man's extra-large "shoes," which are actually a pair of giant sandaled feet. This one was submitted as a photo snapped right from the sketchbook. I was away from the studio, and didn't want to wait to get back to tune it up and lay it out in a portrait-oriented panel.

Mister Piraro and I have more collaborative funnies lined up in the coming weeks, including, coincidentally, another with scriptural inspiration. 

All of our earlier joint efforts are available for viewing in this blog's Bizarro Archive.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

They're Coming to Get You, Barbara!

I recently worked on a somewhat different project for my hometown publication, Pittsburgh Magazine. I'm a regular contributor, and do a monthly spot for the PittGirl's Last Laugh column.

This time around, I was also able to play with a two-page spread for a Halloween feature, The Ultimate Pittsburgh Zombie Hunt.

(click images for a larger view)

In order to accommodate the text and not have most of the illustrations squeezed into the lower half of the image, we decided to forgo geographical accuracy, and make it look more like a treasure map.

Sean Collier, the writer of the piece, included six must-visit locations for any connoisseur of the undead visiting the area.

 House of the Dead, a store catering to all of your zombie needs.

The Evans City Cemetery (shooting location for George Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead)

Monroeville Mall (shooting location for Romero's 1978 sequel, Dawn of the Dead)

Kennywood Park, home of many scary thrill rides

 Allegheny Cemetery, the final resting place of Stephen Foster

The Scarehouse, a Halloween attraction featuring a deranged bunny mascot

Any type of illustration involving a map has the potential to turn into a design nightmare, but putting this together turned out to be a lot of fun, thanks to the flexibility of the magazine's Art Director, Chuck Beard.

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.