Impossible World

Bizarro is brought to you today by Eat My Friends!

Here's a simple visual gag that has no deeper meaning and nothing to do with anything. Sometimes a bit of simple surrealism is good for you. It's not brilliant, but it's a smile.

What's fun about cartoons like this is that as often as not, someone will write to me in all seriousness and say something like, "I love Bizarro but I don't get today's cartoon. Is there something I'm missing? How could the prisoners dig their way to another planet?"

I never mind people asking for clarification on a cartoon and their confusion is often warranted because my cartoon was nebulous. So I'm nice to anyone who writes (unless they are being an a**hole). When someone asks a question like my hypothetical one above, I still respond politely but I admit that I laugh before I type.
And sometimes I call CHNW in from the other room to laugh with me.
And sometimes a few friends from the neighborhood.
Only on rare occasions have I posted the letter on YouTube in a video in which I appear with phony buck teeth and a fright wig, pretending to be the person who wrote the letter.

Usually I just politely explain that it's supposed to be impossible, and therein lies the humor. Or what I mistook for humor when I wrote it.

Other sorts of letters I sometimes get will be from somebody like a meteorologist who feels it his duty to point out that the earth I have drawn in the background has no clouds on the entire hemisphere shown, which is statistically impossible. For readers like this, I send my special Bizarro Anthrax Gift Basket.

Greek Freaks

(Jonesin' for a bigger picture? Click it like a red-headed stepchild.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Zeus, King of the Gods.

What man wouldn't want to be a centaur? You'd have all of the benefits of a human upper body – dexterity, human intelligence, a good place to hang a nice shirt – plus all the benefits of a horse's entire body: speed, strength, majesty, great kicking, hung like a...

You'd have an advantage in almost any sport (exceptions: skiing, snowboarding, cycling, auto racing [not really a 'sport', per se, in my opinion] skydiving [not a 'sport' either], hockey, soccer, pole vault, diving, swimming, bowling [not a sport], tennis, racquetball.) Okay, you'd have an advantage in a few sports like football, basketball, kickboxing, baseball [maybe], and all running events. But even without sports, it would still be so cool to be able to gallop like a horse, tower above crowds, and kick the crap out of anyone who made "horse's ass comments."

Being a satyr would not be as much fun, maybe no fun at all. I can't think of many advantages of being part goat. I like goats, I just don't want to be one. Yes, satyrs have a tremendous sexual appetite and sex is often considered fun, but how many women are willing to throw down with a goat?

And pretty much nobody would want to be the third brother. No advantages there whatsoever, unless you're just really into pecking. I think that guy would need a centaur brother just to keep him from getting the stuffings beaten out of him.

Last Words

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Two Too Hairy.

I've seen a lot of self-referential cartoons over the years with various gimmicks that use cartoon balloons as props within the scene or characters that make reference to the borders, etc., and I've done a handful myself. In general, cartoons like that can be too "easy," so I only do them when I think I have a concept that is interesting enough to make it worthwhile. I think this one passes that test; some will disagree with me, of course. (See comments section under "Anonymous.")

I like the fact that this has multiple layers: the victim's last words, the caption balloon stabbed into his back, the reference to the 911 call which would have been the same as the victim's last words. For super-genius readers, like those who frequent this blog, the whole thing falls into place instantly, you smile and snort, count the secret symbols and move on to "Cathy." But for some readers, this cartoon was confusing enough to write to me and ask what it meant. Here is an excerpt from one such email:

"Huh?"

So here is the full explanation of this cartoon:
A guy in a cartoon calls 911 and says, "Help! Someone is using my own words against me!" Because he is in a cartoon, his words appear in a balloon above him with a pointer that designates the speaker of the words contained within. Apparently, as guy #1 utters these words, guy #2 (not pictured) is, in fact, grabbing that same caption balloon and stabbing the caller with the point of it, thus using his own words against him. All of this happens before the scene pictured. As we join the unfortunate cartoon character, now presumably dead, the police cartoon characters have already arrived, one of whom exclaims with his own cartoon balloon that he now understands the peculiar 911 call, "Help! Someone is using my own words against me!"*

Simple.

*This cartoon is fictional and is not meant to represent any actual events or persons. No actual characters were harmed in the making of this cartoon. All characters, both explicit and insinuated, are entirely constructed of lines and color and do not exist in biological form. Your computer screen is an electronic device for personal use and is not a window into another world or alternate reality.

Three Amigos

Bizarro is brought to you today by Lethal Lingerie.

I'm not one to poke fun at people who are different, deformed, or disabled, but three-headed people always make me giggle.

I often wonder which position I would want if I was part of a tri-noggin organism. The outside positions would have slightly more privacy and better access to the nearest arm, but the middle position would feel a natural authority, balance and inclusion in any conversation.

In the negative category, the middle would have no privacy whatsoever and might be prone to feelings of claustrophobia, as well as being caught literally in the middle of any arguments between the outer two. The outer positions could feel excluded if the middle and opposing head spent too much time conversing, or should decide to keep secrets. An additional drawback of the middle head would be having to wait your turn for certain tasks like brushing your teeth or shaving, as the outer heads would presumably have the option to service themselves first.

But another positive for the center melon would be protection from objects approaching from the side, a definite advantage in a bar fight.

One also wonders who controls singular tasks like bending at the waist, sitting, breaking into a run, etc. If an outside head tries to sit without telling the other two, one imagines the body falls to that side as the leg bends. If he should decide to run without alerting the others, he might well run in a circle. But what if the middle head attempts to bend over quickly, as when dodging a flying shoe at a press conference, for instance, and the other two are unaware of the attempt? Does the middle head give itself whiplash?

So many questions, all answered in the upcoming autotriography. Pre-order yours now.

Me and Sheila

Bizarro is brought to you today by Aesthetic Assassinations.

Here's another one of those editing screw ups on my part. The cartoon shown here is as it was when I sent it in to King Features. Shortly thereafter, I received a call from my editor explaining that they'd had a lot of complaints about the word "freakin" in other comic strips lately and that it would be wise to change it. Apparently, there are numerous newspaper readers across the country who are offended by even a euphemism of a "bad" word and are willing to make their local editor's life miserable if they see one in their paper.

So the fine folks at King changed the word to "stupid" or something and I was to change it on the color version I sent in later. Both this editing discussion and the one I mentioned a couple of posts ago happened while I was out of town and by the time I got back to the Command Center at Bizarro Global Headquarters, I'd forgotten about them and didn't make the changes.

So x number of newspapers and web sites published the cartoon above one week ago yesterday, with it's magical, taboo, "evil" letter order in tact, but I've not heard of any complaints. Which is good.

On the subject of the GPS, I think this is the coolest invention since Scotch. But I can't say I'm fond of the voice that tells you what to do. I've gotten into shouting matches with that person before, whom I call "Sheila," and even though I always win, she remains smug and unflappable, which annoys me even more. Nowadays, I use the one on my iPhone, which is silent. I miss more turns, but at least Sheila isn't there to point it out.

Here in the Future

Today's Bizarro is sponsored by My New TV Series.

It is difficult for me to completely grasp, but Americans under 30-or-so cannot remember a time before computers were ubiquitous. I'm not all that old, as you can see from this dashing recent photo of me, but I never even saw a desktop computer in person until I was an adult and didn't learn to use one until I was in my thirties. Even hand-held calculators were rare and expensive when I was in high school. I learned to type on a typewriter like the one in this cartoon and the closest thing to spell-check that existed was my mom and a pocket dictionary.

I may sound like an old geezer but the speed at which technology has moved in the past 30 years makes a person's head spin. There is nothing to indicate that it will slow down in the near future, but at the current exponential rate that it is moving, sometime next month we'll have personal robots that respond to voice commands, be teleporting from coast to coast using only our thoughts, and the Internet will appear as a 3-D hologram hovering in front of us.

More to the point of this cartoon, computers actually did get too small to use. The most advanced cell phones of a only a couple years ago did everything the early desktop computers did but the keypads were so small and inefficient you might as well have been using Morse code and an abacus. Thank god for the ingenious new designs by Apple (again) and the new generation of phone screens and keyboards. How did we get by without them?

I know that when I describe the way my family and I lived when I was a kid, I sound like Abraham Lincoln reading by candlelight in a log cabin. But seriously, compared to now, we were practically barbarians squatting in tents in the wilderness. If you're currently a high school kid, chances are that by the time you're my age your description of today's Internet, email, texting, digital TV, etcetera, will seem like cavemen banging on logs with sticks. Get used to it.

That's if modern human civilization still exists by then, which is very unlikely, so never mind.

Sofa Self-Censure

Bizarro is brought to you today by Godzilla Goes Swimming.

Here we have a simple turn of a phrase, the sort I've always found fun. To me, any sofa long enough to accommodate me is a sofa bed. In fact, I'd much rather sleep on a sofa than a fold-out bed inside a sofa. The sofa cushion is invariably more comfortable than the thin mattress covering the wirey armature of the bed.

I know there are exceptions to this. Like futon sofa/beds, which are often more comfortable to sleep on as a futon opened up on the floor than they are as a thing to sit on, and modern sofas with platforms and big cushions or something. There are probably more wacky sofa bed inventions but I'm bored even thinking about it and I'm guessing you're nodding off reading about it, so let's move on to the next subject. It's just as boring, but at least it is a change of pace.

When I sent this cartoon in, it had a grievous typo. The woman was saying "Does is fold out?" Me editor caught it, corrected it on the black and white version, sent me an email reminding me to correct it on my version before I colored it, and sent it out to papers. That's our routine.

A handful of papers and all websites run Bizarro in color every day. The color files are sent electronically (as opposed to the b/w cartoons being mailed in hard copy, the old-fashioned way) so I have a little more time to finish them. I color the cartoons the week after they have been sent in and edited for b/w clients and that's when I usually correct mistakes or typos that my editor has found.

In this case, I was out of town when I got the email and forgot to refer to it when I got back and colored the cartoons. So the moronic version ran in papers and web sites all over America, making me look foolish. I hate it when that happens.

In a cartoon later that same week, a word was changed because of previous problems with it but again, I forgot to change it on the color version. That mistake could have gotten me into trouble with client editors all over North America. Everybody loves a cliffhanger so I'll post that cartoon later this week and 'splain.