I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday Bizarro comic above is mine, as are the comments below. The past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics that follow were written and drawn by my partner Wayno, whose weekly blog post I highly recommend.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
Hail, Jazz Pickles.
The cartoon above illustrates how certain tactics of a certain conman were intended to function like old-school Mafia strong-arm tactics. No matter how many ALL CAPS tweets declare that money is pouring in, it is not, and the tactic is backfiring, creating inflation, and sinking the economy, as most with an education beyond the seventh grade predicted it would. A certain conman and his cronies have become extremely wealthy in the last few months; the rest of us have not.
To distract from those debacles (and many others), the US is becoming a police state, as innocent, non-white folks—legal and otherwise—are being arrested and deported without trial. This is what Germany looked like in the early thirties. Exactly what it looked like.
“Those who do not learn from history…” (probably don’t know the end of that aphorism.)
In non-political news, I did a Bizarro/Garfield mashup a few weeks back and got this response from Jim Davis, sent via the National Cartoonists Society:
“You can imagine my surprise when I saw today's Bizarro! Would you mind thanking Dan for the nod and telling him that I'm going to have to counter with a GARFARRO strip now?”
I doubt that strip will materialize, but we’ll be interested to see it if it does. I don’t read Garfield, so if you happen to come across it, please holler at us: bizarropie@gmail.
A couple of quick TV recommendations:
There’s a one-man show kind of thing on AppleTV+ about Bono, front man for U2. The first few minutes were weird and we almost switched to something else, but then it began to hook us. By the end, we totally loved it. It’s unique and creative, and though I’ve long enjoyed the music of U2, Bono is a more interesting and talented guy than I gave him credit for.
I’m not a student of Shakespeare and have always found the antiquated language too much of an obstacle to enjoy the plays in their original form. But Olive Oyl and I spotted a movie on AppleTV+ called The Tragedy of Macbeth, and gave it a try. It’s brilliantly directed by Joel Coen, the sets and art direction are amazing, and the acting is impressive, even if you only barely have any idea what they’re talking about. It got some well-deserved Academy Award nominations, and I recommend it.
I also recommend Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week, which we’ll review now…
Kids these days have no respect for genies.
The rest of the month, he’s a personal injury lawyer.
He’s also an experienced slackerologist.
Taxes and accounting bore me, so I like to imagine the doorknob is a donut floating in front of his nose.
Soon, technology will provide floating holograms of what people are saying and thinking. Don’t be too sure I’m kidding.
I was once part of the same weeklong event as Leonard Nimoy, and ran into him numerous times. I was warned ahead of time that he hated talking about Star Trek. I can only imagine how tedious it had become for him. That’s the dark side of fame.
With that, we conclude this week’s bold incursions to where no cartoonists have gone before. If you appreciate that we offer our work here for free, please consider helping us to keep it this way via the links below. We’ll recommend you for a promotion should your boss ever call.
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English (US) · 