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, Jazz Pickles. It’s good to imagine seeing you.

The two images above were not created with the other in mind. The Rorschach test cartoon is new, the title panel with marionettes is from a few years ago and was designed for this Sunday Bizarro cartoon. 

As I was posting them here today, the question of whether the puppet at right is yearning for freedom from an unseen overlord or intending to end his life suddenly occurred to me and has inspired me to write an essay about that question in The Naked Cartoonist in the very near future. As usual, it will be philosophical comedy or comedic philosophy. More on that in my yet-unwritten essay.

Today’s cartoon about the two gents above is a light-hearted jab at the popularity of cartoon caption contests, which have always reminded me a bit of Rorschach tests; they say as much or more about us as they do the image we’re looking at. 

The New Yorker has had a weekly cartoon caption contest since 2005 and it is currently the most famous, but they did not invent the concept. According to Wikipedia, caption contests originated in the late 19th century.

You may find it interesting that though I’ve written and published over 12,000 cartoons (remarkably, that is not a typo) I’m not good at caption contests. I usually can’t think of anything and give up quickly.

Readers often ask which comes first when writing cartoons—the words or pictures. It can happen either way, of course, but for me, the concept of the joke is first, the exact wording follows, and the final step is figuring out how best to illustrate it. So a caption contest is my usual process in reverse and is therefore wholly unnatural. Almost like riding a bike backward. I’m not saying I cannot do it, just that it isn’t as easy for seasoned professionals as you might imagine. 

When I lived in New York City, I participated a few times in live cartoon captioning events. They were typically held in a bar, theater, or comedy club and consisted of three or four professional cartoonists onstage with an emcee. I recall one that was organized by New Yorker cartoonist Matt Diffee. Drew Dernavich, another New Yorker veteran, was also a contestant, but I can’t remember who else participated. Matt would project a wordless cartoon onto a screen, and we contestants had 60 seconds to create a caption. We’d then take turns reading our attempts, then the audience would choose the winner by applause. 

If you think coming up with a funny line for a drawing is hard, try doing it on stage in front of an audience with a one-minute time limit. It’s a lot like that famous nightmare of public speaking with no pants. (Pro tip: When participating in a live cartoon captioning event always wear pants. And bring an extra pair in case you soil the first.)

Surprisingly, under that kind of pressure, my mind would kick into a different gear and I could manage a few ideas that verged on humorous; it must have been the tsunami of adrenaline racing through my brain as it entered fight-or-flight mode. I would even win a round or two on occasion, and the evenings were always tons of fun, regardless. 

But I’ve never participated in a caption contest in The New Yorker or anywhere else, probably for the same reason surgeons don’t operate on people in their spare time—it’s too much like my regular job. I suspect porn stars rarely have sex with their spouses for the same reason, but that’s just a guess.

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Let’s review the “work” Wayno did to create the week’s Bizarro cartoons…

Thanks for stopping by for some comedy coffee, Jazz Pickles. We hope to imagine seeing you again soon. If you like that we do this free of charge and without ads and clickbait, please consider helping us keep it that way via one or more of the links below. We’ll butter your name into a bagel in gratitude.

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