More Puzzling
Aloha, Jazz Pickles and other musical condiments. I’m happy you could join us. Today’s comics are in the form of puzzles again, which some readers have praised and others have cursed because they can’t figure them out. Yes, they are meant to be very challenging, but that just makes them more fun when you get the hang of it. Nonetheless, here’s another installment. SPOILER ALERT…the next sentences (in bold) will be the answers to these three. If you want to skip ahead, scroll down to the row of asterisks.
Left Panel: “Is that cake you are eating? Middle Panel: Sensuous Centaur Sentinel. Right Panel: “Are you a fugitive?” “I am a refugee in exile.” “Seek you asylum?” “I want to assimilate.” ELLIS ISLAND
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My good buddy, Cliff Harris, is the mastermind behind these puzzles. He’s always had a gift for manipulating words in surprising ways and I’ve done a buttload of cartoons over the years based on his puns and wordplay. My part in these puzzles is figuring out how to best illustrate them and I particularly like this batch. I think the cake lady looks sufficiently crazy or drunk to be asking that question of a stranger, and the sexy, Fabio centaur still makes me giggle. As does the real Fabio. I like the way the immigration characters turned out, too.
Since this post already has a miscellaneous feeling to it, let’s just go with that theme and cross some crap off of my to-do list. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a Sunday cartoon that had a drawing of one of my old band posters in the background. Here’s that other post. The photo below is the original from about 1980.
Last week, I wrote at length about having looked through old family photos. There were tons of great ones but this one of my older sister and me was perhaps my favorite. I’m glad Mom labeled it or I’d not know which of us was which; those disguises are pretty good.
This early experience no doubt played some part in my less-than-traditional fashion choices of later years. See below.
This somewhat disturbing photo is from the yearly National Cartoonists Society awards weekend convention thing which we call “The Reubens,” after Rube Goldberg. I was fooling around with a pink wig for some reason which I cannot now recall. The wig was fake, but the glasses and mustache were real.
Also at that event, a certain Wayno had brought his band the Chalk Outlines to play at our afterparty. That’s me crossing in front of the stage in the photo below, and Wayno as the frontman with the mic.
We'd collaborated on cartoons before but had not yet discussed his taking over the weekday Bizarros at this time, so it seems prescient that someone happened to snap this photo of him rising above me. The emptiness of the dancefloor, by the way, is more a sign of the uncoordinated and introverted nature of the average cartoonist than of the band’s abilities to rock the house, which they did.
We’ll finish this meandering post with one last photo from that Reuben weekend. This is three of my favorite cartoonist buddies and me sharing an amusing moment at lunch. Left to right: Dan McConnell, yours truly, Wayno, Jim Horwitz
By far, my favorite thing about this photo is that it is completely fake. One of us said, “Now let’s pretend we just heard the funniest thing ever!” We did, and Olive Oyl snapped this shot.
I trust we’ll all be laughing just as authentically as we read this week’s Bizarro cartoons from my multi-talented partner, Wayno…
This cartoon is a favorite with cat lovers and upholsterers alike.
On Wayno’s weekly blog post for this batch, he includes an earlier sketch of this cartoon that was too grotesque to print. If your curiosity gets the best of you, you can see it here.
I’d like to see Mr. Peanut as a full-fledged Bond villain.
In the near future, Wayno will be doing a companion piece called, “Comedic Light”. I can’t wait!
Does this mean that if I got contacts I’d sound even stupider?
Here’s a little something that’s more fun than stepping on bugs—NEW SECRET SYMBOL STICKERS! And also a couple of stickers from my graphic novel, Peyote Cowboy. Durable vinyl, even good outdoors, shop now.
And here’s what they look like on my laptop. That weird conglomeration in the upper left corner is to cover up some ugly-ass sticker I don’t recall ever putting on my laptop. I must have been drunk.
This is where the trail ends, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for sniffing along with our bloodhounds and us. If you enjoy what we do, have a look at some of the links below. They help us to keep this site ad-free, and also to keep living indoors.
Until next time, this is your final warning.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels