Pie Eyed
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.
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Welcome to this week’s post, Jazz Pickles. I really enjoy sharing my thoughts with you guys and am grateful for those of you who read my little essays as well as the cartoons, and also those who comment, of course. I read them all, even if I don’t respond to each individually.
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of background jokes. That’s more or less why I began hiding little things in my cartoons, which eventually evolved into the Bizarro Secret Symbols. But initially, I was only doing it to entertain myself. I never said anything about it on social media or anything, I just figured some people would notice and most probably wouldn’t. Whatever.
Slowly, however, word spread among fellow seek-n-find fans and it became more popular than I’d thought. At some point, readers were asking for a way to know if they’d found them all so I began placing a small number next to my signature to tell you how many were in each image. I borrowed that motif from Al Hirschfeld, of course, the genius artist responsible for the most recognizable caricature style of the 20th century, and who used to hide his daughter’s name, Nina, in many of his illustrations. I don’t know if Al had this problem but as those who play my little seek-n-find game frequently are painfully aware, I sometimes get the count wrong. Sorry about that. That’s the main reason I’m a cartoonist and not a physicist: math.
Anyway, I’m fascinated by background jokes and hidden images. I’m saying all this because the Sunday cartoon above is a prime example of my obsession. There are so many background gags in this one it almost overwhelms the main joke. I’m aware of that but I can’t stop myself.
I’ve included Bunny’s Pie Repair as a business in the background of cartoons on city streets a bunch of times, but I think this one is the most elaborate version I’ve done. Here’s an enlargement for your convenience.
It’s not shown in this detail shot but in the full cartoon at the top of this post, you can see from the sign by the door that no one is really sure when Bunny first opened the pie repair shop. It’s not unknowable, but it would take some serious archive-searching to figure it out and no one cares enough to spend the time.
As you can see in the enlarged detail above, since we last visited Bunny’s shop, they’ve added a line of pie-related products that make terrific gifts. I don’t know about you, but at our house, it seems we’re always out of pie cleaner; and who doesn’t want more pie health? And no matter how much you know about pie, I guarantee there are some tips in that K2 Pie Tips book that are new to you. I’m not sure what that blue cube is. Probably pie soap. And if you can’t decide which of these fine products to choose, the gift certificates are a pretty good deal this week, too. There’s so much goodness at Bunny’s, I almost can’t wait until our next pie mishap.
You’re probably sick to death of the virtues of Bunny’s Pie Repair by now but wasn’t it nice of Bunny to allow someone who’d lost their swine to hang a flyer in the window?
Let’s find out now how many pies and pigs are in Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons for the week, shall we?…
Vampire Cupid is definitely a cryptid whose time has come.
If you are reading this cartoon on your phone and you don’t know what one of the words means, before you ask in the comments section, remember that you are holding in your hand a dictionary of every language known to man.
Lots of people had trouble with the 7th Secret Symbol in this one but others saw it immediately. I admit that it took me a few passes around the image after I’d found the obvious 6.
Lots of children of the 80s really wuvved this one.
Of all of the Pinocchio/Kafka mash-ups in the history of comics, this one is among the best. Speaking of existential horrors, Wayno got to hear his voice on the radio this week as he was interviewed by Peter Anthony Holder’s, The Stuph File Program. If you want to hear the show, it is here, episode #0653 “Christopher Knight and Wayno”. If you want to skip to Wayno’s part, he’s introduced at 43 minutes in.
Wayno’s blog post this week has some fun extras including an award he won recently, so don’t forget to pop over and point your seeballs at it!
As for today’s cartoon cattle drive, we’ve driven them all to the bus stop and that’s as far as we’re going. Thanks for coming along for the ride. If you’re picking up what we’re laying down and it’s making you feel far out, man, please consider helping us keep this blog free of ads or paywalls by tossing us a nickel via the links below. We’ll thank you, not spank you.
Until next week, when doing karaoke, please don’t choose a song by the band, Journey.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels