We Are All Melting
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, a short essay, and then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner Wayno, whose weekly blog post I highly recommend.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
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Happy this, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for pointing your onboard skull computers at our cartoons.
Stacking descending sizes of balls of snow and dressing them as humans is a time-honored tradition anywhere that snow happens. Even in places where it doesn’t snow (YET—who knows what climate change will bring?!), people have seen pictures, cartoons, and other representations of these creations. What do these silent legions have to teach us?
Maybe the most obvious lesson is the transitory nature of life. Everything dies eventually, no matter how spiffy it looks in a filthy stocking cap and worn-out scarf. Like the snowmen we build, we, too, will become smaller, crooked, and leaky, and eventually be able to fit our entirety into a bucket—or even smaller, an urn—with room to spare. We can only hope our eyes, teeth, and noses don’t fall off before we’re done.
This cartoon has inspired me to craft a longer article about what snow people can teach us in The Naked Cartoonist very soon. Yes, that’s a tease for you to subscribe to my new writing project if you’ve not already. (More info here)
If you subscribe before Feb 25 (or have already), you’ll be entered into a random drawing to win one of five personalized sketch cards I will draw for you with my very own right hand. You can give me suggestions of what you’d like, or just let me go nuts. (See examples in last week’s blog post.)
In addition to the funny, thoughtful, lovingly crafted articles I’m writing for the NC, I’m including an audio version of each article (spoken with my own mouth) and a short introduction video of me at home. Here’s the video I did for an article I’ve posted called “The Power of Pretending.”
You’ll also get other extras, such as photos from my life, unpublished art, and behind-the-scenes stuff you shouldn’t even know about (and must swear not to share!)
I am completely serious when I say I’d love nothing more than to be able to give this content away for free. But even though I live in Mexico, where the cost of living is lower than in the U.S., very few shopkeepers will accept cartoons in exchange for beans and tortillas, so I find myself chasing filthy lucre just like everyone else. Fear not, I’m in no danger of getting rich off my cartoons or writing. I’m mostly just trying to avoid having to apply to be a greeter at Walmart.
And I also have to keep paying my talented partner Wayno to produce his clever Bizarro cartoons, as he has done again this week. Let’s smile at those now, shall we?…
As Wayno mentions on his blog post today, some people got upset about readers potentially being led to think cats could be vegetarian. They cannot. They must eat meat to live. Sorry about that!
Also, Bizarro is a cartoon strip, so it is inherently dangerous to use it as reference material for real life.
The problem with gene pools is that there are no lifeguards.
Prepare for Bat-dine-and-dash, Robin.
While sitting on my shoulder, a pet cockatoo got mad at someone walking by and bit a hole through my ear. Twenty years later, I still have a scar. Parrot beaks are supernaturally powerful. They can even bite through kryptonite.
That’s the actual mascot of the naugahyde company from back in the 70s. It was just one aspect of a generally unattractive decade.
Thank God phones have flashlights. Gone are the days of having to read menus by the light of kerosene lanterns.
That concludes this week’s cartoon dance party. Thanks for sticking around until the band packed up. If you like that we offer these cartoons for free, without ads or clickbait, please consider thanking us via one of the links below. In gratitude, we’ll stop throwing darts at your picture!
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