Welcoming the End
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics which I turned over to a colleague, Wayno, in January of 2018. Wayno does a weekly blog post, too, and I highly recommend it.
WELCOMING DISASTER
I’m a couple of days late posting this week because I’ve been traveling in the DSA (Divided States of America.) My beloved Olive Oyl and I have been gallivanting around the country visiting our relatives—some in good condition, some otherwise. It was in turns gratifying, frustrating, enjoyable, aggravating, rejuvenating, tiring, hilarious, tragic, and challenging; about what you’d expect from a mythological hero’s journey to a dragon’s cave perched on a perilous cliff above a fiery abyss, or a family visit.
It was gratifying, enjoyable, and hilarious because we love our families and they’re fun to be with. It was frustrating, challenging, and tragic because some of our loved ones have problems we’d like to solve but can’t, and some are actively dying at this moment, while others are looking into it as a destination in the not-too-distant future. In short, it’s just life.
It is difficult to know how to handle love and loss, but if we’re here for any reason, I’d guess learning that is part of it. Each of us certainly gets our fair share of practice at it and as we age, practice comes more frequently. My theory is that the combination of emotional loss and our bodies systematically falling apart like paper maché in the rain is the Universe’s way of saying, Had enough of this thrill ride yet? About ready to vacate the premises and make room for younger adventurers? I won’t know till I get there but I can imagine a day when I might say, Yup.—I’ve had enough of this kind of fun for a while. Adios, amigos.
Our travel cut into my work time on my graphic novel project, Peyote Cowboy. I’ll be back at it this week but I’m not sure when the next episode will be posted. In the meantime, I’ve completed another how-I-do-my-art post, which I will publish here on this blog probably tomorrow, and also to my Patreon supporters. If you’re signed up for an email alert for either my Bizarro Blog posts (orange bar at the bottom of this page) or the PeyCow posts, you’ll get an alert about it. In the meantime, here’s a sneak preview of a piece of one of the images from that upcoming post which I’ll publish in its entirety probably Wednesday.
Let’s scurry over to the cartoon shack now and see what Bizarro cartoons Wayno has been conjuring up this week…
A reader pointed out that “huff” and “puff” mean something different nowadays.
“I don’t have enough monkeys” is my go-to excuse for everything.
This is the crash dummy’s first chance to ride without a seatbelt.
In my opinion, warm milk is better for tub-soaking.
Wayno has an interesting story about this cartoon on his blog post this week. It is accompanied at the end with a not-to-be-missed Italian music video from the 60s. I don’t know where he finds this stuff!
If you can be disgruntled, why can you not be “gruntled”? I’ll leave that question hanging as we signal the end of this week’s snort fest. If you enjoy what we do and that we do it for free, please consider dropping us a shekel in thanks via one of the links below. We’ll thank you in our cartoon hearts.
Until next week, count your blessings and price them reasonably.
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