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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Saludos, Jass Peekles. Nice of you to drop by.

Around eight or ten years ago, King Features asked me to move my blog to their Comics Kingdom website. I like KF, they’ve done right by me, but I decided against it for several reasons, chief among them was that you’d have to have a subscription to that site to read my posts. (The second reason was that every page of that site was drenched in purple and yellow and it made me a little nauseous. I couldn’t see Bizarro bedecked in that manner.) They’ve recently redesigned the whole site and it’s much better, but I’m still staying here.

Because so many newspapers are in dire financial straits, the industry is changing. Until recently, three-dimensional newspapers would pay more for comics than the online editions they’ve become, because they could be the only paper in a given area with a given comic. Now that any comic can easily be found all over the internet, they are without that monopoly, so they pay a teeny fraction of what they used to. Virtually every syndicated cartoonist’s income has plummeted. Outside of the small percentage of cartoonists who got rich from their features, the rest of us are on the verge of applying for jobs at Walmart.

King Features has a service you can subscribe to in which you can choose which comics and other features they’ll send you each day in your email. That service is $4.99 per month and the profits are shared among KF and all of their cartoonists. It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to calculate that even under the best of circumstances, nobody’s going to make a living that way.

SO…to increase that tiny drip of income to a slightly bigger drip, they’ve instigated a new program by which you can subscribe to a single, specific comic for $2.99 per month, and that feature’s cartoonist shares your subscription fee 50/50 with KF. We’ve been asked to publicize this program, which is what I’m (sort of) doing now.

BUT HERE’S THE THING: For 5 bucks, you can get all their comics—for 3 bucks you get only one, but you feel you’re supporting your favorite cartoonist(s). Except those cartoonists are only getting $1.50 per month from that. Meanwhile, both Wayno and I have our own sites where we offer cartoons for free, and we each have tip jars in which readers can choose to support us one-time or monthly at any rate they decide.

You can choose to support us through KF’s Single-Comic Subscription program if you like, and we’d be grateful, but for obvious reasons, we’d rather you supported us through our own tip jars. (Dan’s tip jar) (Wayno’s tip jar)

Sorry for all that boring business crap but I’ve been trying to get to it for weeks. The world is changing and so must we if we want to be able to continue to call this our job. There may come a day when we have to paywall our sites completely but we’re resisting that as long as possible! In the meantime, thanks to all of you who donate. 

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Let’s shake off the unpleasant realities of the day with some chuckles from Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…

Thus concludes this week’s comedy drizzle. Thanks for letting us share your umbrella. Below are some of the ways we’re eking out a living these days. We always appreciate your generosity.

The Naked Cartoonist…My weekly subscription newsletter of humorous creative writing, photos, art, videos & more.

… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!

WAYNO’S TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!

…Signed, numbered, limited-edition prints and original Bizarro panels  

COMICS KINGDOM SHOP (now with Bizarro products!)

My wife, Olive Oyl’s, art, writing, and photography