Water Foul
Hello, Jazz Pickles and other fellow temporary earthlings. As the writer of a weekly short essay on this blog, I periodically find that many readers are asking for the first time questions I’ve answered long ago. So this week, I’ll address some of those kinds of questions that I’ve gotten recently. I will attempt to make the answers amusing or interesting so that longtime readers who know the answers will not be bored.
Q: What is a Jazz Pickle? —Tanya, California
A: I affectionately call anyone who considers themselves a regular fan of Bizarro cartoons a Jazz Pickle. I happened to say that years ago in one of my weekly blog posts—“Thanks for reading, Jazz Pickles, I hope you have a great week”—and people liked it and started calling themselves that—as in, “I’ve been a Jazz Pickle for a long time but I don’t get this cartoon about the farting moose”.
Q: Are you and Wayne the same person or what? —Rick, Indiana
A: We are neither the same person nor what. Wayno (which is his pen name but his real name is actually Wayne) is a cartoonist living in Pittsburgh with his wife, and I am a cartoonist living in Mexico with my completely different wife. I started Bizarro as a daily newspaper comic back in the 1900s and did pretty much all of the writing and drawing for 33 years or so, then hired my longtime friend and colleague, Wayno, to write and draw the Monday-Saturday Bizarro cartoons while I still do the Sunday ones. He had a life as a cartoonist before Bizarro, of course, and it, too was different from my life before he joined Bizarro. So…no, not the same person or what.
Q: Are you okay? You haven’t posted a Peyote Cowboy episode in over a month! —Michael, Frankfurt
A: Yes, I’m super okay. Great, in fact! And thanks for asking because now I get to talk about my labor of love, a big-ass graphic novel that I’ve written and am now illustrating and serially posting online, free for anyone to read. For most people, graphic novels bring to mind either superheroes, sci-fi, and violence or, navel-gazing, angst-ridden hipsters feeling like misfits in a cruel world. Mine isn’t like that. It’s a story of magic realism in the Old West and it’s weird, fun, and mysterious. (In fact, that may just be my new mantra for life: weird, fun, and mysterious!) There’s plenty of action but it isn’t saturated with violence, there are mystical events but no superheroes, and time may be a bit unstuck but it isn’t sci-fi. Also, unlike some graphic novels that seem to be mostly about the art, I’ve paid great attention to character development and plot. But I still made it real pretty to look at. So, to answer your question, I was posting an episode every two weeks but had a technology failure that took me a while to replace. The good news is I’ll be posting a new episode THIS Tuesday, though, so sign up now for your email alert with a link to the new episode!
Q: What’s with the pink donkey and where can I get one? —Fermina, San Miguel de Allende
A: It’s a sneak preview snapshot from the next episode of Peyote Cowboy. I think you’re going to love it! And how did you know to ask that question before I posted this picture? And also, if someone is selling pink donkeys, please report them to the Humane Society.
Time now for some Bizarro cartoons from the week via that person other than me, Wayno…
I suspect our species will never run out of creative ways to display our insecurities.
This cartoon made me wonder if coroners are typically funny. At first, I thought probably not. But then I thought how scary a coroner who had no sense of humor would actually be. They’re probably not going to be on my first post-pandemic indoor cocktail party.
Again, Wayno answers the imaginary question, “Will you ever run out of clown jokes?” with a resounding, THAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN!
WOW is a good description for Wayno’s weekly cartoon blog post in which he says various things about various cartoons and includes an awesome “pipe of the week” drawing from his archives and a very strange version of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard”. How many of you are old enough to recognize the “Pinball Wizard” reference in this week’s batch of cartoons? Wayno’s weekly cartoon blog post has that answer and more!
One reason I think Wayno and I both like ventriloquist gags is because we’ve spent a fair amount of time in traditional, low-paying jobs in which we often felt we had someone’s hand up our ass, controlling our lives. Trying to make a living as an artist of any kind is a magic trick in this era, for sure.
Wayno has an interesting backstory about this gag in which a friend giving piano lessons online noticed something disturbing about his students. At least I found it disturbing. Read it in his post this week.
That’s this week’s sidewalk shell game, Jazz PIckles. Thanks for sticking around until you lost all of your money. If you like that we keep this show free of ads and paywalls, ask your karma if you should toss us a rupee or two via the links below. We’ll be humbled and thankful for your generosity.
Till next time, keep your pickles jazzy and your mind wide open.
BIZARRO SHOP We have new stuff in the shop that’s fun and cheap!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels