Spud Spouses
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 past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno whose weekly blog post I recommend highly.
Here’s the ANSWER KEY to this week’s Secret Symbols in the Sunday comic, above.
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Welcome Jazz Pickles. Thanks for your pointing your eyeballs at our cozy little web home once again.
We start today with the big news that my capable partner, Wayno, has been nominated by the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) for their Best Newspaper Panel award for 2022. Yay, Wayno!
After decades of writing and drawing a joke 365 days each year, cartoonists often feel as though they’ve been beaten up by a chuckle cudgel and consider hiring someone to replace them. Throughout the history of newspaper cartooning, many cartoonists have taken over the writing and drawing of established comic strips, as Wayno has done for me.
Unbeknownst to most readers, however, many cartoonists hire ghostwriters and ghost artists who emulate their style as closely as possible but don’t credit them. On any given day, there are plenty of cartoonists the public has never heard of who are creating famous cartoons daily. Folks like that don’t get the recognition they deserve but it bears noting that imitating someone else’s creation is quite a bit easier than inventing your own. Accordingly, the NCS is far more likely to award someone who originated a cartoon than those who take over for an established feature.
But in cases like Bizarro, there are no regular characters and so no jumping-off point, so Wayno must start from scratch every day, just as I did. It is much more like running his own feature than following in someone else’s footprints. The Secret Symbols are the only tangible thing that carried over from me to him: the gags are his, the drawings are in his own style (albeit somewhat similar to mine but that was true long before we started working together) and he signs his own name to his work. He’s done a stellar job in my opinion and this nomination is well-deserved.
In his blog post this week, Wayno graciously acknowledges the other two nominees and says the winners will be announced in September at the annual NCS convention. Good luck, amigo!
With fingers crossed, let’s have a look at the Bizarro cartoons Wayno generated from scratch this week…
Yeah, but that’s just what AI would say.
I can’t help but wonder what the larval critics will say about this scene from Masterbug Theater.
Except maybe your first steak.
Just putting the “ass” back in “ascot.”
Those who sew together and those who are sewn together.
The cruelty of cats knows no bounds.
And with that, we fold up our tent and drag it back under the rock from which we crawled. Thanks for poking your head in. If you’re enjoying that we post our work for free, without ads or paywalls, please consider helping us keep it that way via one of the links below. In gratitude, we promise never to send you cute videos of our pets.
Until next time, don’t forget the toilet water on your next stakeout.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
COMICS KINGDOM SHOP (now with Bizarro products!)
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels