Escalating Danger
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.
Syndicated newspaper cartooning presents a challenge different from almost any other job: We are required to be unceasingly silly in the face of grief, depression, illness, despair, and terror. And it can be torturous.
That may sound melodramatic, but it is completely true.
There are two key factors at play. First, there is the difference between “funny pages” comics and editorial comics. A person sold as a political cartoonist can freely vent their feelings about the state of the world several times each week, if not every day. In contrast, a person sold as a funny pages cartoonist must produce lighthearted fun for the entire family; if we get too serious or political, newspaper clients will cancel our feature because it isn’t what they paid for.
So, the first part is not being allowed to include controversial opinions or topics in our cartoons; the second is the unrelenting daily deadline: a joke each day, 365 days a year.
***
When you giddily sign that first contract, it seems challenging but doable: Writing and drawing a joke every day may seem difficult, but it’s better than sitting in a cubicle shuffling bullshit for a jackass boss or heartless corporation.
But the unsaid, unwritten devil hidden in that syndication contract is that you’ll get no time off for holidays, sickness, injury, death of a loved one, political apocalypse, or anything else.
In the best of times, that’s a series of hills to climb, but when life takes a dump in your bed, it becomes a mountain range during a blizzard.
As Longfellow observed, “Into each life some rain must fall”—so you learn to write jokes under your umbrella. Sometimes, the wind kicks up, it storms, and you can barely hang onto your paper and pen, but you’ve got jokes to write. Sometimes, the earth collapses beneath your feet, and you find yourself at the bottom of a crevasse. You search through the rubble for your art supplies, scour your mind for a joke, and get to work; you’ve got deadlines.
I’ve faced a few humor-killing mountain ranges in my forty years in this job—most notably during two surprise divorces wrought from betrayal, lies, and theft, and a few periods of deep grief. Coming home from a funeral to face cartoon deadlines is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. (Well, maybe a few people who truly deserve it.)
***
And it isn’t only personal difficulties that can throw a wrench into your comedy cogs. In times like the present, when our government is selling out our democratic allies to a ruthless dictator, dismantling our economy for personal profit, and canceling all attempts to mitigate our species’ demise to lethal, manmade climate disasters, it can be particularly difficult to find humor. It’s like watching a crowded train speed toward a packed school bus stalled on the tracks in slow motion.
Like a jousting match on an escalator, but with millions of casualties.
(Admittedly not a great metaphor, but when you have to disguise your editorial slant, options are limited.)
But believe it or not, this isn’t about me.
I’m only producing one comic per week these days, but Wayno is cranking out six. He’s just as aware as the rest of us who follow politics and who’ve not bought into the intentional, billionaire-serving propaganda of Fox News and the right-wing grievance complex, but he soldiers on, creating six fun panels each week on deadline.
I know how hard that is, and I commend him for his ability to keep up the pace without succumbing to despair. It’s what we all must do in times like these, no matter our careers. As the British began saying at the start of WWII, “Keep calm and (cartoon) on.”
***
Modern (mainland) Americans have never endured a physical attack from an invading army as the British and the rest of Europe have (which is doubtless why so many Americans don’t realize the value of NATO), but we are under attack now from inside our own White House. It’s our turn now.
I thank all of you who continue to find ways to keep your heads up, cherish and honor the things that truly matter, resist the darkness, and not lose hope.
This world has always been a mixture of bar fights and happy hours. It may take a while, but I have confidence we’ll get to the half-price drinks part again.
Let’s exhibit that fortitude right now by cracking some smiles at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week!
She’s probably just not sacrificing enough of her real life to tend to her imaginary online one.
“Oh, does it say that? It should say afterlife.”
“Gets a driver’s license before they turn 25” could be a category.
It’s comforting to know that our Secret Symbols will continue into the afterlife.
With the exception of howler monkeys, my autistic brain is tortured by all kinds of random sounds. For that reason, this is my favorite cartoon of the week!
ALSO: Yes, there are four Secret Symbols in the cartoon above, not three. (Volume O2) Neither Wayno nor I are suited to careers involving complex math.
I’d love to see the Bavarian in his pretzelhosen.
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