Podge & Hodge
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.—————————————————————————
Bienvenido, Jazz Pickles. This week’s post is a hodgepodge of super-important things.
Thing 1: Last weekend I was visiting family in the States. In my weekly post, I cited that fact as the reason I needed to cut my post short—the house was just too noisy and chaotic to be able to concentrate. As evidence of that, I then accidentally posted the following week’s cartoons instead of the previous one’s, as I’d meant to.
Lots of readers caught the mistake right away and messaged me or left comments about it. I raced back and corrected my error, but what struck me about it was how many people noticed that the dates were wrong. I literally never look at the date on a cartoon I’m reading online (hence my mistake x 6 last week!) and so I was surprised so many others do. I have no larger point to make, I’m just reporting my curiosity. BTW: Thanks to everyone who wrote to tell me of my error. Obviously, I’d have never noticed it on my own!
Here’s a photo of me and my mom during this recent visit.
Thing 2: A few readers have recently complained about not being able to “like” a comment on this blog. Apparently, they get an error message of some sort. I asked my web guru about it and it turns out it is a known bug on the site that hosts this blog, Squarespace. In other words, there’s nothing we can do about it. Squarespace is aware of the problem and is, one can only assume, working to fix it.
Thing 3: Also because of my trip to the US, I’m a bit behind on my Peyote Cowboy episodes. I’ll be posting another one in a week or so, I think. That makes this a great time to catch up on the story so far. In the meantime, here are some images from various character style sheets, which artists commonly use to keep the look of characters more consistent over time.
From top to bottom: Skeleton guy (not yet named in the story, but will be), the title cowboy (also not yet named), Deputy Daag, and the newly widowed and always-melodramatic Candy Cornish.
Thing 4: Lastly, while at the anniversary party of my dear friends, Dean and Peggy recently, I ran into my future self. Rodolfo is a delightful fellow, an accomplished architect and designer, and a fellow dandy with excellent taste in chapeaus and spectacles, as you can see. His photos are awesome, too, which you can view on Instagram here: @Ybarrart
That does it for the podge. For the hodge, let’s get cozy with Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…
Wayno tells me this is a famous character named Harold who has something to do with a purple crayon. I confess I’d not heard of him until I saw the early sketch of this cartoon. He mentions a little more about him in his blog post this week.
Neighbors like this guy are what inspired taller privacy fences.
I can tell you from experience that tattoos referring to previous partners are not popular among current partners.
I wonder if they bother to sterilize the hammer.
Since I was a small child, I’ve dreamed of one day owning a portable toilet company said no one, ever.
I’m a big fan of therapy mostly because I like to talk about myself to people who will sit quietly and pay attention. Even if I have to pay them.
And with that, Jazz Pickles, we’ve reached the bottom of the cartoon barrel. Thanks for sticking around to help us scrape it. If you enjoy what we do and that we do it for free—without ads or pop-ups—please consider helping us keep it that way via one or more of the links below. We’ll think you’re swell and nominate you for a prize of some kind if the opportunity presents itself.
Until next time, challenge your consciousness by contemplating that the universe is both infinite and expanding.
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