Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Test Your I.Q.'s Buoyancy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cat Porn.

This gag left a few readers wondering. It's a fairly odd idea and I'm not surprised it did not ring a bell with some folks.

It's a joke about stupid criminals. I saw a car with a canoe strapped to the roof one day and thought that if it was parked by a lake and some idiots decided to steal it but use the canoe to get away down the river instead of the car down the roads, they might flip it over and attempt to float it. Which would not work, of course. Then again, they'd never be able to flip the car over in the first place, so what we probably have here is just a stupid cartoon.

I've been doing cartoons 7 days a week for nearly 25 years and no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to create a refrigerator-worthy classic every day. In all modesty, I still think I've got a better batting average than most of the stuff in the paper, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself.

I you would like to know firsthand what it is like to be me, follow these three simple steps:

1. Come up with a reasonably original idea and scribble it down in cartoon form
2. Do that 9,125 days in a row
3. Write about it in a blog

Until tomorrow, my your world be full of unicorns and sexy foot massages...

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the most refrigerator worthy comics are about food. Maybe something about a type of food you actually have in your fridge. Jokes about applesauce are usually hilarious.

ManEatingBadger said...

I haven't even been alive for 9,125 days ^_^ and I'll pass on the sexy foot massages

great cartoons, great blog, keep 'em coming!

RSJ said...

I stand in awe of your ability to produce daily cartoon panels of such high quality while maintaining this blog and motorbiking hither and thither. It's an incredible achievement.

If I wore a hat, it would be off to you.

Keep up the good work because the work's good.

Mike said...

I didn't get it right away, but still I got it (though I'm drunk and it's past 2am where I live) so no you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Your cartoons are great.

Brent said...

I think you're letting us off too easy. For us to truly understand what it's like to be you, I propose the following rigorous test:

1) Do whatever it is we do every day.
2) Have the result of our daily labors summarized into a visual that takes 3 seconds for anyone to form an opinion on
3) Publish that summary to every human in the world
4) Receive anonymous feedback from any non-zero percent of those humans
5) Maintain civility, humility, and a sense of humor

I know I couldn't pass. Kudos to you.

Shoshanah Marohn said...

It was funny.

Kewl said...

I've thought about the fact that producing a comic daily, in a probabilistic way, is gonna produce eventually some under-par comics. Maybe it's not a solution for you (since your comics are for newspapers, you're not able to choose a pace all by yourself) but there are some webcomics I usually read which I think would benefit by extending the space between comics (*explosm cough cough*)

Ben said...

Are you calling out "Close to Home?"

doug nicodemus said...

it took me awhile, thank god you drew in the little tips of the tires.

Piraro said...

@FixedXorBroken...
Yes, I think it is among the worst comics in syndication. Nothing against the guy who draws it, he's a very nice fella.

RSJ said...

Hope you don't mind an 'inside baseball' question: How did Bizarro ever get syndicated? That's not meant as an insult: I was told by some friends who supposedly know such things that even after the success of Gary Larsen's "The Far Side" the syndicates went very conservative and were looking for 'safe' family strips that had 'broad appeal,' meaning they weren't funny nor experimental. Nothing against Lynn Johnston who does "For Better or Worse" but that was the sort of thing the major syndicates were looking for, or so I was told.

I have been reading Bizarro for many years in The Funny Times and now on this blog, but wasn't aware it was syndicated until recently. Good for you; most newspaper comics these days would insult the intelligence of the fish they wrap.

BTW, do you think Bill Watterson could get Calvin & Hobbes syndicated these days, had he not already been in syndication?

Heather C. said...

My all-time fave Bizarro was the one with the guy was throwing M&Ms instead of knives at a carnival and was asking a confused bystander if he'd ever had one hit his tooth. Love it!! It's old and yellow and yes, on our fridge.

Piraro said...

@RSJ...no offense taken. I got syndicated in 1985, five years after The Far Side was and just as it started taking off. When that happened, all of the syndicates wanted off-beat single-panel cartoons with a surreal sense of humor. Many were signed in between 85 and 90, but few survived. Newspaper editors continued to shy away from them for a while, but fell one by one over the years. There are plenty of them around now but most are not all that good. But that's true will all newspaper comics, not just the off-beat ones.

No way to tell about Calvin & Hobbes. From what I've heard from insiders, Waterson had difficulty getting it syndicated even back then. Most editors couldn't see the value of it.

RSJ said...

@ Piraro: In my experience, most editors see little value in much of anything except the publisher's opinion.

Thanks for your response -- I wasn't aware you'd been in syndication that long. Good on you for continung to turn out quality art and humor in an business that has a dearth of either these days.

P.L. Frederick said...

Me, I enjoy the subtlety of this cartoon: 4 upturned wheels. Also, how many other cartoonists would dare reference canoeing? Edgy.

P.L. Frederick (Small & Big)

Jodie said...

I guess I'm just weird but I loved your cartoons almost immediately upon seeing them in the Dallas Morning News. I didn't find the blog until last year though. I grew up reading The Far Side and loved it's off beat humor. I loved Calvin and Hobbes too. My husband gets the Sunday paper and gives me my comics. Most weeks it's the only physical part of a newspaper that I read. I read the DMN online, NYTimes and a few others. But I get my daily cartoon fix from your blog! THANKS for having such a twisted sense of humor. I really love most of them.

Heather C. said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Morgan Miller 3 said...

I'm the person who left the first comment, and I'm just a funny pages reader from San Diego. I'm a fan of your comic because it is part of my daily schedule when I check out the comics in the morning and it is well drawn, funny, and makes me think. The main reason I suggested a food joke in response to the refrigerator worthy part is because I have some California Raisons dancing on top of my fridge.

ojeano said...

Ah, see: I pictured the canoe right side UP on top of the vehicle and never thought otherwise. Though I didn't get this one (and tried in my mind for some days) the "half empty/half blurry" one far outweighs any hiccup in the sequence of my favorite cartoon, Bizarro. Jean