The Pie is Falling
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday Bizarro comic above is mine, as are the comments below. The past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics that follow were 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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Hey there, Jazz Pickles. Welcome to my weekly tangle of words and drawings.
This week’s Sunday cartoon (above) is an amusing look at a topic devoid of humor. Sorry about that. I first published this cartoon in 2006 but felt the time was right to revisit it.
I’d hoped back then that we might have learned this lesson more deeply by now. Hah! (I had also hoped we would never elect a comic-book villain to the White House, but we now have two.)
Bizarro is most often an attempt at good-natured humor, but I have occasionally snuck over to the editorial side of the comics world, dipped my toe in the fetid water, and run back to home base.
I never like reminding my readers of the darker sides of our existence, but sometimes I give in to the temptation.
Early in my career (because I was an opinionated know-it-all), I was strongly attracted to editorial cartooning. But I quickly realized it would require me to follow politics as closely as a flea on a dog. That felt like emotional and spiritual suicide, so I rushed back to the lighter side of that street and have mostly stayed here. I do not regret that decision.
However, things have gotten unforgivably horrendous of late, so my editorial side has briefly emerged once again.
But believe it or not, the storm clouds that came with the recent election may not be without a ray of hope.
The following are some positive thoughts about climate change and the morally bereft thugs who are willing to speed our species off a cliff for profit. And I don’t think this is simply pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking. A quick overview of history demonstrates that great leaps forward in humanity have often followed our deepest and darkest valleys.
Consider:
The American Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
The Great Depression resulted in Social Security and dozens of other social safety nets and protections for non-millionaires.
WWII led to unprecedented peace, prosperity, and cooperation among nations to combat aggression.
Widespread unrest and racial violence helped produce the Civil Rights Act.
The Vietnam War resulted in an end to the draft in the U.S. as well as improving medical treatments for veterans and official recognition of PTSD.
Human history has always been a succession of peaks and valleys. And quite often, the deepest valleys have led to the highest peaks.
The environmental and political valley we’re plummeting into is hellish, to be sure, but may well lay the foundations of a more compassionate world with a more rational and respectful relationship with each other and our fragile mothership.
That’s my hope, anyway, and it was born of what I consider to be a very reliable source, the daily reports from revered historian Heather Cox Richardson. Her (free) Substack newsletter, Letters from an American, puts current events in historical context and has shown me how often America has teetered on the edge and then pulled itself back from the abyss.
Here’s to that trick of history repeating itself soon!
In the meantime, my kith and kin are enjoying every good moment life brings despite the promise of trouble to come and are strapping ourselves in, donning our crash helmets, and stocking up on weed.
Now let's enjoy some good moments together with my partner Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons for the week!
Hey, it’s only a matter of time before one of President Musk’s mini-mes fires them both anyway.
Dr. Daddio has had an unbelievably long career.
Creativity is our species’ superpower. Using it to create a machine that does that for us is like Superman folding up his cape and taking budget airlines.
He’s about to find out that the Pillsbury penalty for murder is being torn to pieces and put into ice cream.
If you’re going to get shot by an arrow, the uncircumcised ones are less painful.
Next time you want to tell a creepy story around a campfire, you can’t beat the one about how kangaroos initially get to their mother’s pouches.
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