Saturday, July 24, 2010

3-fer Saturday

Bizarro is brought to you today by Religious Interpretation.

Today's extra special 3-fer is a jam packed full of various things that are sure to amuse somebody somewhere for some reason for at least a few seconds. I hope you're one of them.

The first comic includes a reference to Tarzan's Hollywood sidekick, a chimp named Cheeta. Cheeta's shirt is a satire of the popular middle-American saying, "WWJD?" which stands for "what would jesus do?" Popular with Christian teens, I suppose it was invented as a way to keep reminding teenagers that a vengeful god is watching them and they'd better not try to get away with anything. I didn't see this cartoon as a slap at religion but one reader did, telling me I owed him an apology and that my cartoon likely angered Jesus, which he insinuated was not a good thing and something I should be afraid of. I'm not inclined to believe that if some kind of god does exist, it would be so petty and insecure as to be insulted this easily.

Cartoon #2 is a simple illustration of a different meaning for the common claim that something or someone is huge in Japan. Nothing much to say here except that googling images of sumo wrestlers for reference reminded me of how utterly weird humans are.

Our final cartoon today is a Sunday panel and employs one of my favorite cartoon gimmicks – leading the reader to think one thing at first glance only to reveal after reading the caption that the picture is not what it seems. Here, most people's first assumption is that the horse is running when in fact, he is hovering in place. I particularly like the way the drawing came out on this one. The looks on both horses' faces adds to the joke and the cowboy on the hover-horse looks appropriately goofy. I also love doing this kind of desert background. Be sure to click on the image for a larger view.

Enjoy your weekend. That's an order.

9 comments:

dan said...

What do you make of the new Google Image search? As an illustrator myself, it's like the best filing cabinet ever and I'm glad Google caught up to the crusty old Bing image search. I don't have to feel guilty about using Bing any more!

DARG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
June said...

I particularly liked your desert scenery also. I'll bet you could do amazing landscapes rivalling any of the well-known desert painters.

Anonymous said...

Does it ever amaze you how many apparently humorless, easily-offended hair-trigger nutjobs actually read your blog and/or comic? Do you ever wonder WHY such a person would read it? I sure do. Maybe they find it the equivalent of wearing a hair shirt or flogging themselves with nettles.

Piraro said...

@daniel...I like the new Google image search. It works much better. I was actually online searching images the other day when it suddenly changed. It freaked me out. I thought I'd hit something by accident that sent me to some magical place I didn't know existed.
@June...thanks! I love the desert, always have.
@YetAnotherSteve...Exactly. Sometimes I remind people that they are not required to read my cartoons or blog. Some folks seem to forget.

said...

The link to 'religious interpretation' looks eerily like Michael Jackson. The death image has the right coloring and the angel image sort of shows him prior plastic surgery. Slightly creepy....

Andy Ihnatko said...

I loved the cowboy strip...but I thought it was a joke about the bizarre poses that merry-go-round horses are often carved in. The joke being that those wooden horses are carved from life and there really _are_ horses that just sort of float in that position.

Ray Avito said...

I love the look on the non-hovering horse's face. Cracks me up.

Aardwolf said...

hey man i love your stuff. im a cartoonist in south africa...there is no such thing as syndication here although i think my stuff is too off centre any way.. happychickensuicidecult.blogspot.com...