Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Injuns and Igloos












Bizarro is made possible by the Dick Cheney Institute for Early Childhood Development.

I am back at Bizarro International Headquarters again after a roaring weekend of insanity in Hollywood with my cartoonist colleagues. To those of you who expressed support and disappointment in my seventh consecutive loss of The Reuben Award, thanks a ton. Meanwhile, back in the real world, here are two cartoons since I'm a little behind on posting.

While writing cartoons one day it occurred to me that except for their size, pyramids and igloos look like they are two different models in the same line. Like the sample drawings you'd get in a container of Lincoln Logs. And voila, here's the cartoon. Now I need to do a companion piece about pyramids at the North Pole.

The Indian cartoon below is completely surreal, but I combined Godzilla and the Old West once before and liked the effect, so I tried it again. I confess I did not research the Indians, though, and it was pointed out that I got a few things wrong. The ground looks like the Southwest but Cherokees inhabited the middle-Southeast, and I'm told something about their costumes is wrong. I usually try to avoid mistakes like this but I was likely in a hurry when designing it and maybe even tripping on mushrooms. (CHNW and I are not very diligent housekeepers and have mushrooms and other things growing in our carpets. I sometimes trip over them, causing me to draw the wrong costume within a given context.)

But still, Godzilla and Indians! Hahahahahahahah!!!











(Click these cartoons to make them bigger and funnier)

7 comments:

isee3dtoo said...

I love the Godzilla Sunday comic.

This is one of the reason I read your strip, the perspective is like no other strip out there. Putting the reader on Godzilla shoulder was brilliant.

sheer.nothingness said...

I agree with Malo- Speedbumps is lousy. Looking over his work I feel like something should be funny, but never find anything he does that amusing. Plus, lame art.

Now, on the other hand, the shading on the Godzilla/'Indians' cartoon- awesome.

As per American Indians of the southwest (only the first link is wikipedia)- here is a Navajo man in ceremonial dress. I point him out because he's still recognizable to typical Americans as an "Indian", but he's also far more interesting to the eye.

Also consider the dress of the Hopi Kastina dolls which are nearly endless in variation. They generally represent deities, however, so I'm unsure how correct it is to dress people in them- I'm unsure how many of those have ever been translated into masks and costumes, but I know some (such as Masau'u) have.

Another local tribe are the Zuni, southwestern potters extraordinaire.

David said...

Good point about the pyramids and igloos. I never really thought about it before. Very clever.

Jeremy said...

Would have been better if you said Mushrooms is that name of one of your cats. Mushrooms are usually pretty soft so feet would smash right through them.

Anyway, sorry about losing the Reuben. Maybe less guest writers would help your chances next year? Its almost starting to feel like Pluggers.

Anonymous said...

I love the igloo cartoon and I showed it today to the people attending the International PhD School for the Studies of Arctic Social Sciences which I'm part of (http://webarkiv.hum.ku.dk/ipssas/ )

They all laughed.

The irony however is that the theme of todays's presentation was "Food security in the Arctic". I'm not going to get into to many details here, but let's just says that securing food in the Arctic is somewhat difficult, especially store bought food (veggies and fruits, for example) which costs 8 to 10 times what it does in the south and which is never fresh by any means.

For this reason, and also because they have been doing so for a long time, Inuit with whom I work and who live in these communities relly heavily on what they call country food (basically caribou, seal and whale meat).

I was somewhat shocked today by the reaction of PETA to our Governor General's eating raw meat with Inuit (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/05/26/jean-seal.html), especially when he said : "It sounds like she's trying to give Canadians an even more Neanderthal image around the world than they already have."

Qualifying them and all other Canadians of Neanderthal, was that really useful?

We may be for or against the commercial hunt of seals, I find it really strange to be against one's culture. In my world, this is called xenophobia and that can easily lead to racism.

I also find it slightly strange that it is morally accepted to deny people their basic rights. Everyone should be entitled to have access to nutrious foods. And seal and other fresh meats are nutritious. More than anything else the Inuit and other Northern residents have access to.

One last comment, in case you think this was done only to piss off Europeans and other animal protection organizations:
It is part of the Inuit way of life to share their meat and there is nothing more disturbing to them than someone who refuses what they offer. It is in fact a serious offence. Politics or not, she just could not refuse.

Still love your cartoons even though we'll propably never agree on this whole animal issue.

F. Lévesque, anthropologist.

nycowboy said...

Sent this around to a number of architects and titled the subject "Typical Clients"
Some things never change hey?

Waldo said...

Tripping on mushrooms... very good! I will steal that from you the next time I am loopy on cough and cold medicine.

Jeremy: Here are some photos of mushrooms that you could break a leg on....

http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/life-lessons-mushroom