Electric Jesus

For a larger view, click the image.

I had a special request from a beloved reader for this cartoon, so here it is. It's never been published in the U.S. but appeared in some Scandinavian magazines with Bizarro a few years back. Some people find it crass, but it is merely an observation. If Jesus of Nazareth had died in an electric chair, millions of you readers would be wearing tiny gold chair earrings right now.

Hope you enjoy, another post and more cartoons to come later today.

.

Beauty Through Boredom

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dubious Travel.

Day two of my Journey into the Bizarro Archives.

The first cartoon shown here is from a few days ago and I like it. So did a woman who wrote to me to say her husband is very funny and she looks like hell as a result. Sorry to hear that and congratulations. I once read that most women rank humor and intelligence above looks and money when it comes to choosing a mate. This is the one and only reason I have been successful with attractive women, for I am no George Clooney in either looks or money.

The next cartoon is from the late 1900s. This was drawn at a time when I was on my "Mooch Book Tour," one that was funded entirely by my readers. I visited around 15 cities on donated plane tickets, stayed with Bizarro readers who had volunteered to drive me around, feed me and let me stay at their house. Some had nice guest rooms, others put me on the couch on in their child's room. (sans toddler) At one house, I slept in a pink bedroom with Little Mermaid sheets. I wrote a book about it, which is long out of print but I still have a box or two of them. If you want one, I'll sell them for $15 each, signed. Just a little way to clear my closet space and make some cigar money.

You may notice the hirsute man at the back of the line. That is a self-portrait from the period. To add to the impact, I've posted here a publicity photo from '95 as well. I painted the big pink sign and cut a hole in it for my head. I thought is was funny.

That concludes today's trip down memory lane. I hope nobody got car sick.

Food?

(click the lettuce to make the image bigger)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Suspicious "Food"

Today's offering, which ran in papers last Sunday, is a Jack and the Beanstalk spin off. Magic beans aren't always a good thing; who needs a four ton head of lettuce in their yard? Imagine the size of the bunnies it would attract.

Drawing the lettuce reminded me a lot of my days as a commercial illustrator. I worked for many years in a small commercial art studio in Dallas and we specialized in line drawings of products, mostly food. Some of our regular clients were Frito Lay, Armour Meats, Pepsi and American Airlines. AA had us draw planes, of course, not food. It was not glamorous work but it was good, consistent money in those days.

Most of what we did was photorealistic stipple drawings like the image I've posted here. This was not for a client but was a promotional image we did for the studio, which was called "Cat Pak." Get it? It's food in the shape of a cat. I wasn't vegan then, so drawing a dead fish as food did not conflict with my personal ethics. This is a bad copy of the original but was the best I could find today. The original was not so "gloppy" looking. Gloppy is an advertising term used to describe things that are, I don't know, gloppy-looking.

In the first ten years of Bizarro, from 1985 to 1995, the feature didn't make enough money to support my family so I worked full time as an illustrator and did all my cartooning at nights and on weekends. It was a grind.

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

So here it is President's Day and Valentine's Day back-to-back. Who can afford all of the presents for both such important holidays, especially in this sluggish economy?!

The solution is to get that special someone (and yourself) a Bizarro iPhone app! Boy, am I excited about it! I've been working for months with some very cool app designers here in NYC and we've come up with a new innovation in the comics-for-phones field!

Previously, with other comics apps, you could only buy a given number of cartoons and cram them into your phone and when you'd seen them all, that was that. Could take you ten minutes, could take you ten years.

With the Bizarro app, a NEW COMIC is added EVERY DAY! (The same comic that appears in newspapers.) PLUS, at any given time there is a YEAR'S ARCHIVE of comics that can be accessed super easy and fast from a handy-dandy calendar page. You can also click to access bio info about me (oh! so funny!), info about Bizarro (more humor!), and a help link if pushing buttons on a phone ends up being more than you can handle. Also, you can shoot an email to your other cool friends who might like this app, and you can leave comments. Last, but not least, you can
click to access this very ever-lovin' blog.

ALL FOR ONLY $1.99 PER YEAR! How can we give all of these laughs, drawings, insights, and life-changing experiences away for only $1.99 per year? I'm not sure, I'll have to ask them about raising the price to something more appropriate, like $10K per week. But for now, the price is DEAD CHEAP, so don't miss it!

As you can see from the graphic below, the home page is super long, so scroll down, amigos!

MAY I READ MORE ABOUT IT NOW?
YES! READ MORE ABOUT IT NOW!





Click it to big it...

Tears of a Clown Shoe

Bizarro is brought to you today by Footwear Violence.

Here's one of those stories you'll only hear if you read this blog. (And only "hear" if you read it aloud.)

I originally wrote this joke as the black and white version below shows. When I submitted it, I knew there might be some discussion over whether it was wise to submit it to my client papers and I was right. After a conversation with my editor and friend, whom we'll call "Choppy the Editor" for reasons of anonymity, it was decided that matters of erection might raise some eyebrows in many of my smaller-town markets.

You might say I should forge ahead and ignore the priggish ways of the powers that be, but in this economy, newspapers are looking for ways to save money and one of their routine practices is to cancel a comic. Giving them an excuse isn't wise, so I changed the gag.

I'm glad it happened this way, because the clown picture is much funnier anyway.

By the way, the Washington Post Express canceled Bizarro recently, a client that I really cherished. No idea why, probably just financial concerns. If this bothers you, please contact them (you can likely find an email address pretty easily) and tell them you have tears in your eyes and can barely get through the day. You'll be my new best friend.

Sketchbook-a-go-go

Bizarro is brought to you today by Irrefutable Evidence.

(To see more detail, click on each image to enlarge)

Instead of posting one of my published cartoons today, I thought it might be fun to post a few random pages of sketch book stuff. Perhaps I am wrong.

These images are drawn without any plan or goal, just taking a pen to paper and drawing whatever comes to mind. There is no pencil sketch first or reference to draw from, just whatever comes out of the end of the pen. These are all about 5"x7".

These are my favorite kinds of drawings to do, but unfortunately there's no money in it.

One might be inclined to say, "Dan, wouldn't it be cool to put all of these in a book?" to which I would say, "Yes, cool, but I'd be lucky to sell enough to fill the glove box of a Smart Car."




Wouldn't it be great if we could all make a living just doing whatever what we want? I vote for that option.















P.S. I should also mention that these drawings have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol. I can only do this sort of thing when straight and sober.

Strange Things

I just received an email alerting me that an old animation project I created in 1989 is on YouTube. I'd forgotten all about it, but here it is in all its homemade glory as part of a popular indie TV show of the day in Canada. The show was out of Toronto, as I recall, and dealt with comics and graphic novels and sci-fi stuff. The first part of this segment is about The Watchmen and V for Vendetta, my segment starts at about 3:50 in. Please enjoy.



The first part of my segment, showing me as a 32-year-old pup, was taped on a home video recorder in the Dallas commercial art studio in which I worked at the time. The voices from off camera are my coworkers. The actual animation was all done with hand-made props and pictures in a local cable TV station with my friend, Steve Dirkx, who knew how to do that stuff. I tried to sell this thing but never got anywhere. It's fun to see it again.

FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!!!!!

This is a cartoon that I submitted recently but which was rejected for content. The term "up yours" was considered a little too racy for most newspaper funny pages, so it didn't get published. It was actually written by J.C. Duffy, of The Fusco Brothers and The New Yorker. He didn't have a market for it, so he offered it to me.

I knew it was "iffy" when I drew it, but I hoped "up yours" was innocuous enough to get by. I guess I should have known better. Lord knows what kind of calamity and social decay would have been wrought upon western civilization if this kind of profanity were to be printed in a comic. The body shudders, the mind reels.

Profanity is profanity purely and only because we all agree that it is. If we stop forbidding certain words or phrases, they immediately lose their power. These kinds of words have the magical power to offend simple because we endow them with it. The myth of profanity exists purely because we believe in it, which, in my opinion, is archaic.

I've never studied the subject, but my brain tells me this likely started ages ago when people were more ridiculously superstitious (I say "more" because people are still superstitious, but we weed certain traditional taboos out over the centuries and tell ourselves we're not) and they feared that saying certain things about god would bring his wrath down upon us. (I know, some people still believe that.)

From there, I suspect we added certain sexually-loaded language to the list, fearing that if we spoke these kinds of words, orgies would break out and society would collapse. I know from personal experience that there are people living in the United States of America in the 21st century who actually fear that if their children hear (or read) about homosexuality, they will become homosexual. These are people with jobs and college educations and drivers licenses.

Personally, I think it is all a lot of hooey. When I was raising my daughters, they were not denied knowledge of profanity, but told that certain words and phrases were off limits only until they were old enough to understand the social implications and use them appropriately. I didn't want my six-year-old using language that other people would use to make inaccurate assumptions about their character.

Not surprisingly, this worked. They weren't forbidden from knowing or uttering these things, they were simply warned of other people's reactions to them if they did and asked to wait until they fully understood this concept before they talked that way. Both are now well-rounded, happy adults. Their brains didn't explode.

I also did this with all matters of sexuality, illegal drugs, manners of dress, etc. If you tell your kids the truth and give them good, factual information on which to make their decisions, they tend to make the right decisions. Imagine that.

I could go on and on about the myth of profanity, but it wouldn't make any difference, so f*ck it.

I hope you like this cartoon, as a person who hates doing laundry, I got a chuckle out of it.

Lion All The Time

Bizarro is brought to you by Animal Planet.

This simple but highly effective pun came from the nobby noggin of my good friend, Cliff, a former pediatrician who now teaches Stanford med students how to intimidate children into remaining still while a stranger jabs them with a long needle.

Cliff is a funny guy with an unusual ability with language. He and I have been collaborating on a sort of comic book written in puzzle form. Cliff writes the puzzles, I do the drawings. It's a metric buttload of work and unless it sells a frillion copies I'll never see much money from it. But such is a life in the arts.

Once published, I am hoping each of my three fans will buy a third of a frillion copies so Cliff and I can eventually be paid for our time. Thank you in advance for your help.

Here is a sneak peak at an illustration from the book, with the puzzle removed. We don't want anyone stealing our mojo. To enlarge it, click the thumb of the cowboy at left.

Standing Tall

Bizarro is brought to you today by Hurricane Damage.
As I've mentioned on this here ding dang blog thang before, I'm putting together a book of super hero cartoons. This is the latest addition to the project, hope you get a smile out of it.

I did another "standing erect" cartoon about cavemen some years ago that, although it is not obscene by any means, is too "adult" to run in the nation's funny papers. It's not a hysterical classic by any means, but I like it and offer it here for your discerning eyes.

Until tomorrow: Stand tall, friends.

Wayno World

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Family That Drinks Together...

Today's cartoon was written by a Pittsburgh colleague of mine who signs his cartoons "Wayno." He sent me a bunch of cartoons of his recently and I offered to showcase a few and give him some plugs. I like his work a lot and it's been fun collaborating with him. He asked me to direct you to this page to see more of his work. There are a few more of our collaborations coming up in the next few weeks.

Truth be told, I like his illustration style better than mine, but I'm more-or-less locked into this look for Bizarro and it has served me well, so there you go. I use other styles for other kinds of projects. Here is one I like a lot which appears as a full page in Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro.

Buy 100 copies today!

Tiny Ink Bubbles

Bizarro is brought to you today by contributions from people like this.

Some readers of this "blog," as I like to call it, have expressed an interest in seeing some of my unpublished work. So today I bring you two pages from a sketchbook from 1997. I'd lost this book for years and worried mightily about it, but just discovered it in my basement a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness.


Like most of my sketchbook drawings, these images were produced by starting out in the middle of the page somewhere, with no real idea in mind. I draw whatever comes to mind, then add to it until the page is filled. I guess you could call it stream of consciousness. They aren't meant to mean anything, of course, but these kinds of images are among my favorites that I've ever done. I still enjoy looking at them years later.

This particular sketchbook is very small, about 5"x7". To see the images full size, come to my house. Or just click on the images.

X-Ray Specks

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Perfect Holiday Gifts.

When I was a kid, it was a somewhat common element of suspense stories to have a guy handcuffed to an important briefcase. He was usually some hotshot spy or secret agent and there would invariably be a scene where he'd have to fight off villains while wearing the breifcase. When he was caught, of course, there was the tension of them threatening to chop his hand off to get the case, as if just cutting open the case were not an option.

While going through airport security last month, taking off my flipflops (because flipflop-shaped bombs and guns are so common), I thought of this image. I assumed the days of this kind of courier were over because of 9/11, but since this cartoon appeared in newspapers a week ago, I've heard from four different agencies/people that actually do this for a living and have this problem. They've described various strange solutions, one of them said that in a foreign country he was forced to check the case and ride the conveyor belt through the luggage tunnels to reach the plane.

As a bonus chuckle, here is a sketch for another cartoon I did a few years ago on this same theme, which is too adult for Bizarro, but not filthy enough for adult magazines. Thus, this meager blog is it's world premier.

(As always, click the cartoon to enlargerize.)

Bush Commemorative Stamp

Here's a sketch I did of a Bush commemorative postage stamp. The face isn't all that great, but it's a quick sketch proposed to a magazine. If they bought it (which they didn't), I'd have redrawn it. I know it looks more-or-less finished, but that's because I drew it on my computer, tracing over a photo of shrub and various images of old stamps.

There are commercials on TV now for an Obama commemorative plate and mug. It comes with a certificate of authenticity. They don't tell you what makes that plate and mug with a picture of Obama printed on it more "authentic" than some other plate and mug with a picture of Obama printed on it.

Cheeks

Today's Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by Taboos and Interdictions International.

Here is another cartoon that never appeared in Bizarro. As uppity as most of us Americans were about the offense that some Muslims took to the Danish cartoon featuring Mohammed, there are similar attitudes against cartoons about Jesus in this country.

Most comics editors will allow cartoons about god, angels, Satan, Buddha, Hindu gods, etc., but Jesus is off limits. This isn't a stated policy, they just know that large numbers of their readership will go ballistic and they'll lose time dealing with their protestations, so they decline the gag and ask for a replacement.

I'm not a fan of any religion because, to put it simply, I think they make people crazy. (Believing in invisible people with magic powers isn't what you could really call "not crazy.") Many of the wars fought throughout human history would not have occurred were it not for religion, most terrorist acts are committed in the name of religion, and without religion, you'd be hard-pressed to find a volunteer for a suicide mission.

There is no answer to this, of course. You can outlaw it, but it wouldn't change the human need to see patterns and ascribe meaning. There is a part of us that is crazy and will never be anything else.

Meanwhile, how funny would it be if a boxer believed in turning the other cheek? Hahahahaha!

Obsessive Humor

Bizarro is brought to you today by Censorship International. "Hey! You can't do that!"

As I mentioned yesterday, I accidentally left my current cartoons at home so I'm using stuff that is on my laptop, hence the date of this cartoon.

This is one that never ran in the papers because it was feared that people with OCD would rise up against newspaper editors all across the land and cause trouble for me. One might be tempted to say, "Don't give in, Dan. To hell with them if they can't take a joke." But editors don't like losing a day of work answering angry emails, letters and phone calls and may decide to replace Bizarro with a less controversial clone. That would be bad for me. So this isn't really censorship as much as it is my personal editor advising me against it and me agreeing.

I experienced a bit of this last week when I ran a cartoon about dyslexia. I didn't lose any papers over it (that I know of), but some folks complained. I have OCD and dyslexia in my family (and a touch of OCD myself) so I feel I have the right to poke a little fun at me and mine. Humor is an age-old human device for getting through tough times and situations, so I am not as sensitive about it as many people apparently are. God knows that vegans get regularly grilled in humor venues of all kinds, but I take it with grain of salt (or a salt lick) and laugh at myself and my kind. My folks taught me that. Laughing at ridicule and teasing takes the fun out of it for the other guy, and the sting out of it for you.

The blog is good for this kind of cartoon, which will likely never see wider publication. Glad I had this opportunity to share it with you, hope no one has taken time off from checking the door locks and stove handles to get offended.

See You At NY Comic Co

For those of you in the NYC area, I'll be signing, drawing, and selling junk at the Comic Con this weekend on Friday, April 18. At 2pm, I'll be at the Andrews McMeel Universal (AMU) booth signing posters of my new pirate cartoons book cover. The book won't be out until August, so these posters will be collector's items!

After that is over, about 3pm, I'll be hopping over to the IndieSpinnerRack booth and hanging out for a couple hours selling and signing my retrospective book (blue cover) from last year, drawing elaborate sketchcards (see examples below, front and back) for a nominal price, and selling my new line of trading cards, which are not even in stores yet! What?! Oh my god, ("oh my nobody" for atheist readers) the three or four Bizarro fans who show up for this event will go home with some rare booty, indeed!

Hope to see you there –and if you tell me you found out about it on my blog, I'll give you an extra special premium gift! Don't know what yet, but try not to act disappointed when you see it. www.nycomiccon.com