Holiday Contest Hiatus

My usual Thursday Contest Game Puzzle Thing has been postponed for the holidays. I'll kick it off again next Thursday, Jan 7, 2010, so look for it then!

In the meantime, I will be posting hilarious cartoons and commentary on an almost daily basis, so check back each day for the horseplay and monkeyshines.

Gargrantuan Glutes

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fashion Concerns.

I have to admit that this is one of my favorite cartoons in a while. The sheer ridiculousness of it still tickles me after all these weeks. (I write/draw cartoons about 6 weeks before they are published.)

Women have long been worried about the size of their butts and since that is where many women gain the most weight, it makes sense. When I was a teen and young adult (sounds like a church pamphlet) women regularly worried about their butts being too big. But around the turn of the century, along comes this fashion craze for big butts, with the likes of Kim Kardashian and J-Lo, and all of a sudden an ample amount of junk in the trunk is desirable.

Everyone has their own wiring and mine does not happen to include a circuit for attraction to ample booties, but I can't help but wonder if this latest rambunctious rump craze is truly new or if lots of men have always been attracted to large buttocks but have stayed in the closet about it. (Black guys have always been open about it, but the stereotype was that white men preferred smaller cabooses.) Clearly, I just don't have enough honest discussions with my guy friends about what turns them on.

Just as in yesterday's blog, again I say, "Hmmm".

Countdown to Catastrophe

Bizarro is brought to you today by The End Of The World.

A lot of people wrote to "high five" me about this cartoon. It seems there is no shortage of folks annoyed by the gullibility of their family and friends regarding this latest threat to our survival. We humans are always looking for secret clues to the ultimate catastrophic ending, as though the universe were controlled by Dan Brown.

But it is an irresistible part of our nature as apes with huge, mutant brains: we take our natural instincts to spot patterns and guard against injury, and extend them to ludicrous degrees. My apologies to those readers who don't like hearing this, but in my opinion it is the very reason humans have always invented gods to explain the things we don't understand or can't comprehend. We live in a world with natural rules and order and when the facts of our existence fall outside of our understanding, a make-believe answer is more comforting than no answer at all. Most of us need to know that there is a Purpose to our existence and a destination beyond death.

So get ready for 2012, only two years to go unless The Rapture happens first. I can guarantee that 2012 will be every bit as catastrophic as the years 2000 & 1000, both of which caused widespread panic (among cultures who happened to use that arbitrary calendar.)

Of course, it would be especially cool if the catastrophe started at the stroke of midnight on 12/31/11, but in which of the planet's 24 time zones would that occur? Maybe the Mayan's time zone! But even they spanned two or three. Hmmm.

NOTE: This cartoon is based on a fairly obvious idea and I have no doubt it has been done before and will be done again. This is a prime example of one of those ideas that lots of cartoonists will arrive at individually.

Golden Girl Gaiety

Bizarro is brought to you today by Good Advice.

Here it is a few days after Xmas and I'm back at Bizarro International Headquarters overseeing production meetings, taking conference calls from Asia and beyond, scheduling power lunches with bigshots, and refusing to take Larry King's calls. It's great to be home.

Seasons Serpents

One of my cherished readers sent this holiday card of her border collie and Burmese python in Santa garb. It didn't seem right not to share it with my e-pals. Here's the original page.

See you next week, have a good one.

Cracker Leverage

Bizarro is brought to you today by Scary Parrots.


I likely won't be posting much over the next few days during the holidays, so I'm leaving you with what I think is a good one. I confess that this idea came to me while looking at a cartoon in New Yorker by the legendary and brilliant Sam Gross. It isn't a case of plagiarizing since I completely changed the gist of the gag, but it is a direct inspiration.

Even though I don't like or celebrate Xmas, the wife and I spend a few days with friends in the country. It's way fun and nobody plays Bing Crosby's Xmas album.

Hope all of you have a nice holiday, whatever that means to you. I'll post again next week.

Fire in the Hole

Bizarro is brought to you today by Heartburn.

Here's a cartoon that's kind of lame, really. I guess I thought the drawing was fun because the idea is a little trite. It happens. One of my regular readers emailed me and said he particularly loved this one, though, so I'm guessing it appealed to others, too.

Our Internet is still out so we're looking forward to tomorrow and the rare honor of hosting a Time Warner Cable repair technician in our home. He or she is due between 10am and 2pm, so we're cleaning all day today (and probably tonight) and the caterer is scheduled to show up at 9 in the morning to get things set up. We're so excited!

Baby Head Syndrome

Bizarro is brought to you today by Big Babies.

I like putting baby heads on adults. I did it in a cartoon a few years ago (which if I had any kind of modern filing system I'd be able to find and link to now) about a woman who had asked her plastic surgeon to make her look as young as possible. I like both of those cartoons.

But as funny as I think it is in cartoon form, what if that were an actual syndrome that people could have? Their bodies would grow normally but their heads would remain like an infant's. No matter how cute that baby head was, it would not be funny. Just creepy.

Or maybe our instinctive attraction to babies would pull us toward them and the large body attached would simultaneously push us away. Freaky.

If this syndrome does exist and I'm not aware of it, my apologies to anyone reading this who may have or know someone who has a baby head.

Blue Santa

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Magic of Christmas.

Bummer of all bummers, my Internet is out again. It's a constant problem in our building and Time Warner won't be out to fix it until next Wednesday. Uggh. I'm posting this from my laptop and a weak, stolen signal from a neighbor. It makes it slower and more difficult, so there may not be as many posts in the coming days. And please, don't even think about emailing me.

Here is a little Xmas cartoon for the season. Being a department store Santa has got to be tough. I don't think I'd be very good at it and I know I wouldn't like it. I'm not the sort of person who is good with the public in this kind of situation. I've never worked retail, but I'm guessing I'd last a couple of hours at the most before punching someone and getting fired. Good thing I can draw funny.

Twofer Friday!

Bizarro is brought to you today by Twofers and Grelcoes.

Since my Internet was mysteriously missing yesterday and I could not post the weekly Thursday contest thing, I am offering you TWO cartoons today. That's just how I roll.

The first is about an actual clinically tested therapeutic technique called "make believe." It has been proven that many people with low self esteem can experience relief just by pretending to be somebody or something that they consider desirable. Some experts say this is why renaissance faires exist.




The next cartoon is about the wonders of Botox. Nicole Kidman has had wads of it shot into her forehead and now most of her face doesn't move when she smiles. It's creepy as hell, but in a youthful, attractive way.

That's all for today Bizarro Rangers. Enjoy this Friday and that weekend.

Out of Bidness

Sorry, boys and girls, but there will be no contest or posting of any kind today (other than this one) because my Internet is out. This is the best I can do from my phone. They're supposed to come tomorrow morning to fix it, hope to be back to normal then. Thanks for checking in on me (sniff) it's so lonely and and cold here in internet limbo. (cough, cough)

Sporky the Pig

Bizarro is brought to you today by Holiday Crafts.

This is a cute gag with a fun picture that I'm sure some of my readers enjoyed. Pretty much anything featuring a "spork" is humorous on some level: Mr. Spork of the Starship Enterprise, born with a silver spork in your mouth, etc. But it wasn't until the day after the cartoon ran in papers and a reader emailed me that I realized my grievous error.

When I wrote this cartoon I confused the term "spoonbill," which normally refers to certain birds, with "duck-billed," which refers to platypuses. I knew the difference but because my brain is overworked and underpaid, I made a mental error in the beginning of the joke writing process and never gave it a second thought.

The next day another reader wrote to correct me, as well. I thanked both of these kind folks, both of whom were gentle, polite and informative, and told them that the kind of lunks that typically read Bizarro wouldn't know the difference anyway.

Readers of this blog are excepted, of course. I'm sure all of you caught my error and am quite certain that none of you are lunks.

Doldrums

Bizarro is brought to you today by Everyday Super Heroes.

I don't have much to say about this cartoon, so let's talk about winter. It depresses me. Unless I'm going skiing or snowboarding, which I've not done in years. Got to move south. Why can't New York City be in Southern California?

Soon there should be a Bizarro iPhone app. I hope you like it.

Igloo Skyscrapers

Bizarro is brought to you today by Frosty's Santa Killing Spree.

I drew this cartoon because I liked the visual. As well as I can remember, I've never seen a congested, high-rise igloo city before and i was intrigued with the idea of creating one.

Some jokes lie entirely within the caption and so the drawing doesn't really matter. In fact, most cartoons these days are like that, which is why cartoonists with extremely limited drawing skills can still be successful. Since I can draw, however, my mind naturally thinks in visual terms and I often come up with jokes wherein the drawing is essential. Though I find ego to be unattractive, I have to admit that I get a secret glee from creating a cartoon that lesser-skilled draftsmen would not be able to tackle. Don't tell anyone.

Civil War

(To make it a bigger picture, click the right femur of the character in the red shirt.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Smatmobile.

I loved the Smart car the very first time I saw one in Europe in the late 90s. I tend to like small, unusual vehicles of any kind , so it's pretty much made for people like me. I haven't owned a car since I moved to NYC, but if I did, this would be one I would consider. Although I should say I know nothing about the quality of the car, I just like the size and look of it. It may be crap, for all I know. (And in any case, I prefer motorcycles and scooters over cars.)

I think one of the most interesting things about the Smart car is, however, that it evokes anger in certain people. I have personally heard several say they would like to crush them or flip them over. I have felt similar hatred for SUVs, but it is because they are a kind of blight on the earth. They use more gas than necessary and so help to keep us dependent on Middle East oil, they tear the roads up faster because of their weight, they are a traffic hazard because you can't see around them, they contribute to traffic congestion because they take up so much more space, same with parking. Hating Smart cars, on the other hand, seems to be simply a symptom of the growing culture war in the U.S.

I think about this culture war all the time and can think of no reasonable end to it. Could be we are headed for another civil war. Progressives wouldn't have a chance in such a war, we don't already have stockpiles of weapons and we are less brutal by nature. If it comes to that, I guess we'll all move to a more civilized place and leave the country to the Glenn Becks. Perish the thought.

The God Box

Bizarro is brought to you today by Circular Thinking.

I recently saw Julia Sweeney's ("Pat" on SNL years ago) one-woman show "Letting Go of God," and was very impressed. Like me, she was raised Catholic in a pretty seriously Catholic family. Being indoctrinated from infancy into any religion is a powerful thing and can affect the rest of your life. Julia's show is about how seriously she takes matters of spirituality and her journey to discover the meaning of it all. I recommend it if the subject interests you. It got rave reviews, which are well deserved.

I met Julia once in the greenroom of a small theater in NYC in which we were both performing in the same variety/comedy show. I think we are about the same age and I now know that our spiritual journeys have been remarkably similar. We both were raised to take religion seriously, which we did, then spent years of our adulthood educating ourselves in an attempt to make sense of it all.

This cartoon has nothing to do with her show or that journey, I just wanted to mention it. This cartoon is simply a humorous take on confessional booths, which, for those unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Catholicism, are small wooden booths in which you speak to a priest through a tiny window. The idea is that you tell him your sins and he gets god to forgive you.

My first trip to one of these booths was in the first grade. We were taught what to say and do and led into the booth to kneel before a screened window and tell a stranger (the priest on the other side of the wall) our "sins." Most six-year-olds have very few sins, of course, so the exercise is primarily meant to teach you submission and instill in you a deep-seated sense of guilt and self loathing. This sort of ritualistic Big Brother mentality can screw up a person for life. And it does, as I can attest and Julia explains so articulately in her show.

The good news is that you can find release from these ghosts if you work at it. Eventually, you can get out of the box.

WINNER of the BLENDER and MORE!

Thanks to everyone for playing this week. Our grand prize winner of the Bizarro Blender (formerly known as Cuisinart) is Andrew D.

Second place is Megan, who will soon be the proud owner of a couple of packs of Bizarro Trading Cards. (settle down, Megan, catch your breath)
Third place this week is a dude named Rex, who did not give me his email address. If you know who you are, leave it in the comments section and mention your last name so I'll know you're not a FRAUD just trying to snag some free trading cards!

I'll be emailing each winner soon to get your mailing addresses for your treasure delivery.

Please come back tomorrow for more fun, cartoons, shenanigans, monkey shines, and folderol. (The spell check on Blogger does not recognize "folderol." Curious.)

Here's the winning list:

contest #14

This week is a little harder, I think, because I flipped one of the images. But, THE REVERSAL OF THE ENTIRE IMAGE IS NOT ONE OF THE DIFFERENCES! (UNLESS one individual thing is NOT reversed as it should be. hint hint)

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in subtle ways. Your mission, if you have the right stuff, find them first and post the list in the comments.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image OR THE REVERSAL OF IT.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the contest post wins this fabulous Cuisinart blender! of , mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.
6. If you live outside the U.S./Canada, I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Antarctica, probably not.

Click on the image below to ENLARGE and PLAY!

Seeing Things

Bizarro is brought to you today by Hallucinating 101.

Hallucinating can be fun as long as it isn't dangerous. There are many recreational drugs that will cause hallucinations, some are safer than others, of course. As a matter of legality, I'm not recommending any of them. Hallucinating during a fever is no fun, mostly because a fever that high is quite painful and can kill you. Sleep deprivation can also cause you to see things, as any parent of a newborn will tell you.

Turns out it's fairly easy to cause a person to hallucinate. I'm not going to get all grammatically literal about it, but some optical illusions can reach the level of a sort of hallucination. If you've ever been in those fun house places that are built with everything all catawampus, and balls appear to roll uphill and water pours sideways, that's pretty close for my money.

Our brains are actually geared toward this sort of thing. We (and most other creatures) have evolved to spot patterns and make some version of sense of them, which helps us survive. For instance, it is much safer to see a shadow and think it is an intruder than to see an intruder and assume it is a only a shadow. This is one reason people so regularly see faces in random shapes, like the image of the Virgin Mary in your toast or the bark of a tree. One of my favorite examples of this is this image of Jesus in a dog's behind. Wow.

Here's a good one that has nothing to do with religion.

Contest #14

This week is a little harder, I think, because I flipped one of the images. But, THE REVERSAL OF THE ENTIRE IMAGE IS NOT ONE OF THE DIFFERENCES! (UNLESS one individual thing is NOT reversed as it should be. hint hint)

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in subtle ways. Your mission, if you have the right stuff, find them first and post the list in the comments.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image OR THE REVERSAL OF IT.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the contest post wins this fabulous Cuisinart blender! of , mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.
6. If you live outside the U.S./Canada, I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Antarctica, probably not.

Click on the image below to ENLARGE and PLAY!

Contest TODAY!!!

As promised, the winner of today's Bizarro Giveaway Puzzle Contest Scramble Competition Game will get a brand new Cuisinart blender, from this site, shown here.

At 8pm NYC time tonight, December 10, 2009, I'll post the two pieces of art with which to compete. Hope to see you then! If you've never played this game before, check out last week's contest.

P.S. I haven't checked with the company donating the prize, but there is some possibility you can't win if you're outside of North America. Sorry, Finland.

HUGE Contest News!

Tomorrow is my usual Thursday Bizarro Puzzle Game Contest Seek-n-Find Competition Thing but this week something will be different!

Assuming some of you are tired of competing for Bizarro Trading Cards (perish the thought!) I figured it might be fun to give away a REAL prize worth ACTUAL money. Accordingly, a company has agreed to award this Cuisinart machine object to the winner of tomorrow's contest!

Check out the price, dudes and dudettes! It's worth over a hundred bucks! That's class!

They sell tons of stuff online, like this thing, counter stools, and some of my favorite modern furniture. Check them out and get all purchasy. By the way, if you want to give something nice to your favorite cartoonist, this would be an excellent choice. (Note the free shipping!)

Meanwhile, spread the word that tomorrow's contest is for REAL! I'm so excited, I'm going to drink the pink stuff in this blender I'm giving away.

BY THE WAY, THIS IS NOT A JOKE, I REALLY AM GIVING AWAY THIS BLENDER.

Playing With Your Food

Bizarro is brought to you today by Bill Maher.

As a lot of you know, like my friend Bill Maher, I'm an ethical vegan. (As opposed to someone who is vegan purely for his own health.) I occasionally think of cartoons that have to do with this topic and its related issues – nutrition, cruelty, health, the environment – and I toss them into the mix. I have been guilty of being pretty preachy about it in the past, it is difficult not to be when you are fighting against the suffering of those unable to speak for themselves, but I try very hard not to be and I hope I'm getting better.

I think this is a fairly successful cartoon in that regard. It evokes the subject of food choices without being overt. To me, there is something inherently funny about a little girl expected to slaughter a live chicken at her school lunch table.

Lots of people are concerned about environmental issues these days, so they choose local foods to save the pollution caused by shipping foods across country. If you're doing this but still buying meat, you're undoing your efforts many times over. Animal agriculture is responsible for far more greenhouse gases than all transportation combined.

Many people insist on organic meats to protect their family from harmful chemicals. Animal protein, in and of itself, feeds cancer and heart disease as fast as the hormones and chemicals you fear. Organic meat is a bit like organic bullets. It misses the larger point.

Many people become angry and defensive when they hear these things and I understand that. Attacking a person's diet is like attacking their religion, ethnicity, traditions, and family. Sorry about that. I'm the sort of person who is more than willing to toss a tradition overboard if it serves no purpose, harms me, or depends on the victimization of someone else. Like cheap sneakers made by orphans, I can do without them. It's just how I roll, homey.

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.

Obsessive Compulsive Cartooning (OCC)

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Magically Aging Man.

Whenever I do cartoons about disabilities or diseases, I get complaints from people who think it is insensitive to make fun of people with problems. I did a cartoon a few years ago about a band called the "A.D.D.s" in which all of the teenage musicians were scattered about the stage, busy doing something other than playing music. I got a ton of mail from angry parents of kids with A.D.D. Same thing happens if I do one on dyslexia or amputees.

In this case, I figured it was safe to make fun of this topic because I have a touch of OCD myself. Just as predicted, I got a ton of mail complaining about this cartoon. Although, perhaps not surprisingly, it was all from the same person.

NOTE: I think it bears mentioning that in each of these types of circumstances (and last week during the "Death With Dignity" controversy) I also get mail from people within these movements or suffering from these afflictions who really enjoy the humorous take on the subject at hand. Many people understand the healing properties of laughing at one's own hardships.

Pay or Play

(click the image to make it largerer so you can see it betterer.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Make Music Not War.

Here is another odd topic, one which just crawled out of my head and onto my drawing board and refused to leave so I shipped it off for publication. Sometimes that's the only way to rid myself of these things.

A man is held up on the street, but has no money. The mugger then marches him into a music shop, steals a violin, marches him home, watches over him as he learns to play, then years later makes him perform on the street until someone tosses some money at him and – voila – the mugger gets what he wants.

Good old American ingenuity.

I'm off to D.C. this weekend to perform some comedy at a couple of charity holiday parties. I hope it is fun and not tragic and hideous, forever etching itself in my mind as that weekend I should have stayed home.

I hope, too, that you enjoy your weekend, whatever you have planned.

Contest #13 SOLUTION

Sorry, I forgot to post the winning answers for this contest. Here they be, maties...

Invisible Poop

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by A Better Magician Cartoon.

This cartoon raised some eyebrows and caused a few readers to tap on their keyboards and ask me what it meant. The deal is that the guy forgot to do the rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick, so the rabbit is still there and bunny droppings are falling out, leaving a trail behind.

This is one of those gags that seemed a lot funnier in my head than it did when I tried to draw it. The problem is that the magician has to be in the background to show the trail, which makes the droppings tiny dots. The ones falling past his cape are more-or-less unnoticeable as a result, especially in the newspapers that print my cartoon about the size of a business card. I thought I did a decent job illustrating it, given the limitations, but the questions from readers tell me otherwise.

You can't win them all, tomorrow is another day.

Contest #13 WINNERS!

This week's top three winners came in at 9 minutes and 12 minutes after the cartoon was posted. You guys are fast.

Grand Prize: Marcello
2nd Prize: Spyra
3rd Prize: Philip Crow

Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone for playing, hope you had a good time even if you didn't win. Next week's contest prize will be completely different and REAL! Yes! An online shopping company is donating an actual prize worth real money. I'll tell you more about it next week, as the Thursday contest approaches.

BIZARRO SCRAMBLE PUZZLE GAME CONTEST #13

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in subtle ways. Your mission, if you are a righteous hero of historic proportion is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the contest post wins 5 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.
6. If you live outside the U.S., I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Saudia Arabia, probably not.

Click on the image below to ENLARGE and PLAY!

Contest Today!!

Today, at 6pm, NYC time, another of the now infamous Bizarro Cartoon Scramble Puzzle Game Contests will be posted. To get a jump on the competition, read the rules below and get your brain hats out of storage ahead of time.

FIRST PERSON TO SOLVE THE SCRAMBLE PUZZLE GAME CONTEST WINS FIVE PACKS OF BIZARRO TRADING CARDS. DANG!!! Second and third persons to solve it get TWO PACKS EACH!! Dang!

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in subtle ways. Your mission, if you are a groovy dude, chick, both, or undecided is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the contest post wins 5 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.

Enjoy, good luck, and may dog bless!

Death Controversy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ways To Get Arrested in the Park.

When this cartoon published a week ago, I got a flood of emails from angry readers. What I thought was an innocent albeit surreal take on an old expression – death with dignity – was seen by many to be a jab at the political movement to secure a person's right to physician-assisted suicide. Unbeknownst to me, (because I don't pay much attention to life outside of my own tiny world, I suppose) there is a law in Oregon about this called the Death with Dignity Act.

This topic doesn't get much press here in NYC, at least not that I've noticed, so I didn't actually think about this when doing this cartoon. I don't mind offending people with whom I disagree if I feel strongly enough about a topic, but I hate offending people by accident, especially when I agree with them in the first place.

I've long supported any person's right to end their life when they wish to, especially in situations of chronic pain and illness. I think that denying this fundamental right of self determination is superstitious, archaic, and cruel. The sad truth is that even if a person is in excruciating pain, has no chance of survival and decides completely of their own sound mind that they want to end their life, anyone who aids them in any way can go to jail. As I understand it (and correct me if I'm wrong) in most states even if a person attains the means to do this on their own, anyone present while they do it can go to jail. So a person who somehow gets hold of enough pills to kill themself wants to go peacefully, surrounded by family and loved ones, they can't unless everyone in the room is willing to head to the slammer. Instead, their only option is to die alone, climb out of a window, hang themselves, blow their brains out, whatever they can manage in their condition. Of course, most people just choose to waste away slowly in agony because it is their only legal option. This is the law's idea of "respect" for human life.

So I spent a couple of days writing apologies to various readers and making statements to various groups and I think I've straightened it all out. I certainly hope that if the time comes that I want to check out of this life with some dignity, the law allows me the freedom to do so.

Glory To The Internets

A reader pointed me to this extraordinary page. I pass it along to you without comment, for now.

Placing the cursor over a person will provide a description of that character on the right. Be sure not to miss the group of people in the lower right corner.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Enjoy... http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=353