Has Bizarro Been Canceled?
Before we get started, here’s the ANSWER KEY to the cartoon above.
Wayno and I have received numerous emails from readers this week about Bizarro having disappeared from their local newspaper. Sadly, it is true.
Lee Enterprises, a newspaper group that is majority-owned by a large investment firm, stopped running Bizarro and many other comics in their papers this past week. Lee Enterprises owns more than 75 newspapers across the United States and they are standardizing their comics pages with a handful of features they think Americans should read. For whatever reason, Bizarro is one that they cut, even in my hometown paper, The Tulsa World.
If Bizarro has disappeared from your local paper, we encourage you to contact the editors and express your disapproval. The most effective—and pretty much only—catalyst for newspapers to reverse this kind of decision is demand from their readers.
Although most of you who read these blog posts read our comics online, newspapers are our most reliable—and almost only—revenue source and provide the income that allows us to continue to make comics. Many readers figure that since Bizarro is well-known that I must be rich. That’s never been the case and as more people turn to reading comics exclusively online, the industry has continued to shrink along with my income.
Until now, newspaper client losses have been gradual and we’ve taken them in stride. But losing this many clients all at once is a real punch in the stomach. Expressing your unhappiness with Lee Enterprise’s attempt to make America more mediocre by standardizing all of their comics pages is one way you can help. You can find contact info for your local paper on their individual websites.
If you want to help support Bizarro into the future, you might also consider subscribing to Comics Kingdom. For a yearly fee, you’ll get daily access to all of King Features Syndicate's 250 thousand new and archived comics, plus ad-free reading, and the ability to receive your favorites in a daily email. Comics Kingdom subscription fees help pay your favorite cartoonists. They're currently offering a free 30-day trial. As the newspaper industry is destined to disappear eventually, new arrangements like this are how comics like ours will survive.
Thanks, as always, for your readership and support. If Bizarro has disappeared from your local paper, Wayno and I hope you will help to get it back in print. He weighs in on this in his blog post this week and he also has some fun news on the “secret project” he’s been talking for a while now.
And now let’s take a break from the dark side of reality to chuckle at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…
In the days when people got stoned on Roman numerals.
What’s the humiliation of a few pompoms in exchange for room and board?
And maybe some turn signals after that.
Apparently, the fly-in-the-soup motif goes all the way back to the ancient Egyptians.
Stakeouts go with covfefe like cops go with doumnets.
Not dressing like an extra from a Jimmy Cagney movie might help, too.
That concludes our weekly cartoon crafts class, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for sticking around until the glue guns cooled down. If you like what we do and want to help us keep doing it, perhaps give the list below a glance. We’ll appreciate it real big.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels