Bizarro is brought to you today by Foot Fetish.
I’ve been busier than a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs this week, so I’m late on posting these. I hope I haven’t lost either of my readers.
Cartoon #1 is a visual joke, nothing more. Take it however you like. The patient is fashioned after my good friend, Tiny Tony T. Smith, who recorded my someday-to-be-released album recently. Eventually, I’m going to sell a CD of four or five of my original songs. They’re all serious songs, not meant to be comedy, but the lyrics are clever (or so I’ve heard) and people often get a chuckle or two from them. Would any of you be interested in buying said album and if so, how much should it cost? Maybe I can figure a way to download them for 99 cents a piece like they do on iTunes instead of creating 3-D discs. I don’t know anything about that stuff.
I hear they have online games where you build a virtual farm or city or something like that. From that scant knowledge, I wrote this cartoon. I hope it makes sense to someone. One reader from Pittsburgh thought I was making fun of his town and asked me what I had against Pburgh. I responded that I had nothing against it, I actually really like that town and have a few friends there that I enjoy visiting. He wrote back that he’d a few too many beers when he typed the email. There’s a lot of good beer in PB, so I can understand that.
I really like cartoon #3. For some folks, it might take a minute or two to make the connection between “steroids” and “asteroids,” but that’s okay. We’ll wait for you. This gag was dreamed up by my good friend, Cliff Harris, who has a way with wordplay that I think is unique. He thinks of things that would never occur to me. He has some really good ones coming up in the next month or so, keep your eyes peeled.
I should also say that I’m happy with the art on this one. Most cartoonists just never get tired of dreaming up aliens and monsters. Along those lines, here is one of Cliff’s cartoons from long ago that I did for Parade Magazine. It’s a bit of a mind-twister, but gratifying when you get the gag. Cliff is one clever dude and also just about the sweetest person I know.
Cartoon #4 is from my “known associate,” Wayno. He is one of the friends who lives in Pburgh that I mentioned above. I thought this was a fun new take on the classic waiter-there’s-a-fly-in-my-soup cartoon genre. He’s probably got tons of blabber about this collaboration on his own blog (along with two earlier pencil versions he submitted to me), which can be seen by your eyes if you apply some sort of electronic impulse to this link.
This concludes today’s entry. You may return to viewing porn, or better yet, go here and buy some Bizarro cartoons on swell products.
I would pick up some tunes.
I think $3 for 5 songs is fair.
$5 for a physical version w/ art is fair.
On topic: Shameless plug!!
My band: The Fitted Shirt
Love all the comics in this post, btw.
They all made me smile/chuckle.
Oh Dan, I have to say I was CRUSHED to click on your “GOOD BEER in Pittsburgh” link. We’ll keep trying to cloud the minds of your readers in the mean time, and maybe one day you’ll stop by for a taste… or maybe Wayno can hook you up the next time you’re in town.
Cheers,
Scott
BUY A GOOD FRIEND A GOOD BEER ™
Of course! My bad! I’ll change that link forthwith!
Awesome alien. Why noses aren’t ALWAYS on the top of heads, I have no idea.
Because unless you have antennae (which work by having the nerves on the outside and just waving through the air, and which is a rather easy appendage to lose accidentally) your nose works by pulling air in to sample it. That makes it necessary to be connected to your lungs. In the case of all higher animals that I can think of except for marine mammals (which incidentally have no sense of smell), this means being near your mouth. Putting your mouth on top of your head means food has to pass through your brain, which brings a whole new level of pain to choking.
Aren’t you glad you asked?
That being said, Dan’s Alien still rocks for being imaginative, and still looks fairly plausible. Obviously with the antennae and nose on top of its head, this alien evolved in an environment where it has to do a lot of probing with the top of its head for food or mates or something while the rest of the body stays protected or out of the way.
On this particular alien, the brain is in the scrotum. Just like Donald Trump.
I think I just figured where Manny Ramirez will be playing this year.
Dan, the comic book super-fan in me is curious about something: Did you purposely switch around the colouring on Spidey’s eyes for some reason (to avoid trademark infringement or some such thing?) Normally, the insides of his ‘eye pieces’ are white with a thick black line. Just wondering.
Nah, I just sort of colored them randomly without really referencing them and that’s how they turned out. :o) Copyright isn’t really an issue with satire and changing the eye color wouldn’t be nearly enough to avoid the issue.
Gross – the waiter is holding the fly with his bare hand. Who’d want to eat it now? Shouldn’t it come on a special serving mechanism (maybe) like a fly wheel?
“By George! You’ve done it again!” ALL 4 of them!!!!
Shouldn’t that be “By Dan!” ??
dan, stop making cartoons with puns.
This makes no sense in other languages
“I hope I haven’t lost either of my readers.”
Nope… still here.
The picture of you singing — with beard and mustache — brought to mind Mitch Miller.
(Sorry. I forgot to code this to open the picture in a new window/tab.)
Haha! I haven’t thought of Mitch Miller in years. My dad used to watch that show! Was it “Sing Along With Mitch”?
If possible, it seems to me that the option of downloading a song for a buck or two is the way to go. Eliminates shipping, packaging…. I suppose these days you don’t have to press a minimum number of CDs – you can just make them up as the orders come in? The thing to avoid is boxes full of product that you’ve had to pay for upfront that you then just wait to sell.
As for what to charge, I dunno. I buy a fair number of CDs from artists whose work isn’t going to be on sale at Walmart any time soon – the average price for a 10 – 12 song CD from an artist’s website seems to be in the $20 – $25 range, plus shipping. However, in that case it’s already been possible to listen to at least some of it on youtube (or live, of course) to see if you actually like it. And, I don’t know how representative I am, as I still buy CDs because I mostly listen to music in my car, and there’s no iPod dock there. I’ve got hundreds of CDs, while my kids have a handful each; when I was their age my record albums filled the house, but they carry all their music on their phones or someplace.
I saw this week of strips all in a horizontal format. Usually the excellent Bizarro series along with Pardon My Planet were in vertical rectangles (as shown above), but now they are compacted into the space of other comics. Could you please elaborate on this change? Is there a new mandate? Have you always been doing two formats for your daily strip?
I provide clients with two versions, the panel and the strip format. It’s up to the individual newspaper to decide which to use. Sounds like your local paper just decided to switch to better utilize their layout or whatever. Nothing to be alarmed about. :o)
Hey, that’s ME!