Captain's Pellet
Today’s cartoon has no special meaning or second layer, it’s just a harmless giggle. Regardless of how well your city or country has handled the pandemic, we could all use a good laugh every day. This one is a collaboration between myself and a longtime reader in Canada, Martin B. He occasionally will send me a phrase or a pun in case I can make a cartoon out of it. When he sent me “Rats Trek,” I immediately loved it but it took some thinking to come up with a gag for it. When I thought of the oft-repeated line by the ship’s doctor, “Bones,” it made me laugh so here it is. Hope you got a smile.
And, anyone who gets the gag in the title I gave this week’s post gets 25 bonus points.
A few days ago, I posted that Wayno was up for a prestigious cartooning award to be given out yesterday. Although he didn’t win this time, I have no doubt there is one in his future. His nomination is evidence that industry folks have noticed what a cracking job he’s been doing with Bizarro.
In the comments to that post about Wayno’s nomination, a reader expressed confusion over how many of us there are and who is actually writing this blog. It’s a fair question if you’re new to our work. And here’s the EXCITING ANSWER!…
I’m Dan Piraro and I originated Bizarro in 1985 and this is my blog. I did the overwhelming majority of writing and drawing—seven cartoons each week for 33 years—until January of 2018 when I semi-retired and hired Wayno to write and draw the Monday-Saturday gags. Since then, I do only the Sunday cartoons (i.e. “Rats Trek,” above) and this weekly blog post. Wayno creates a weekly cartoon blog post, too, and you can read and bookmark it here! Wayno and I collaborate weekly via email but he lives in Pittsburgh while I live in Mexico.
Since semi-retiring, I’ve been painting and working on a very long and strange comic story. I launched my graphic novel, Peyote Cowboy, online a couple of weeks ago, free to read for anyone with Internet access. I’d love it if you’d have a look and let me know what you think. There are only five short episodes posted at the moment, so it won’t take you more than a few minutes to catch up. I post a new episode each Tuesday and this coming week’s will be entitled, “The Art of Visibility”. I hope you’ll like it and will tell your friends!
Now let’s find out what amusing things Wayno had to say about topics like herpetology in his Monday through Saturday Bizarro cartoons!…
Unless he’s still rolling, he might want to get that speedometer checked.
And you thought the college admissions bribery scandal was juicy.
No animals were injured in the production of this cartoon. (With the possible exception of Wayno, as he developed carpal tunnel syndrome while drawing the undersides of those crustaceans.)
One stupid reader assumed she was referring to her left ovary when she’s obviously referring to the adjacent eggplant.
This is my super fave comic of Wayno’s this week. I’m a big fan of early Popeye, especially the black and white ones, and I just love the wording of this gag. “Lively orchestral music” as an allergy symptom makes me laugh.
Also, over on Wayno’s blog post for this week’s batch, he includes a link under this Popeye cartoon about the dude who wrote a lot of the music for cartoons, many years before they were even invented! Check it out, for sure, I’m serious.
That concludes this week’s PowerPoint-free presentation, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for not throwing rotten tomatoes at our virtual projection screen. I hope you’ll have a look at my new project over at my Peyote Cowboy website and also peruse the links below, all of which help to support our ongoing comics production in these days of a shrinking newspaper industry.
Until next time, be the person you always wished you’d been. You’ll either love it or you’ll find out it wasn’t what you thought it’d be.