I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday comic above is mine, as are all of the comments below. 

Since January 2018, the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics have been written and drawn by my comics partner, Wayno. For more fun, check out Wayno’s weekly blog post.

And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.

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Howdy doody, Jpix. (A groovy new nickname for Jazz Pickles. Use it freely in your daily communication.)

My Sunday cartoon above references that ubiquitous “ego tell” called the “selfie.” With the exception of famed Muppet Miss Piggy, no other species is as obsessed with its own image as we humans are. 

Most primates are unable to realize that what they see in a mirror is a reflection of themselves, and react defensively or with fear. (The older I get, the more I can relate to that.)

However, great apes—gorillas, chimps, bonobos, orangutans (and us)—are the exception and consistently pass the self-realization test, using a mirror to inspect parts of themselves they can’t normally see. That would include their faces. 

Can you imagine living without ever having seen a clear image of your own face? Aside from the wavy, upside-down version occasionally reflected in water, millions of people for millions of years lived that way. To grab a “selfie,” they had to find a puddle.

In a recent article in my creative writing project, The Naked Cartoonist, I explore the topic of selfies and how they relate to puppetry. Usually only available by subscription ($5/mo), here’s the full article for free!

“Life With a Hand Up Your Butt”

A brief excerpt:

“Perhaps an…”

I told you it was brief.

As with all of my articles, this free sample includes an audio version of me telling my story in my own velvety-smooth voice, with Academy Award-level emoting bringing it fully to life. With no more than a single working ear and a click of a tiny white triangle, as shown in the screenshot below, you can find out how different my voice is from what you imagined it would be.

My subscription articles are among several ways I’m supporting myself now that income from newspapers is all but gone, so I hope you’ll enjoy this free one and subscribe. (Little-known fact: Cartoonists without licensable characters that can be sold as products are rarely wealthy. Wayno and I would be two such cartoonists.)

In all honesty, we mostly do this because we love to write and draw cartoons that enchuckle our readers, and we’d gladly do it without pay if food and housing were free. 

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Let’s see what Wayno would’ve done for free in a perfect world via his Bizarro cartoons for the week…

Keep in mind that if you’re too picky, he’ll whack that pizza paddle upside your head.

I hope a special medal is created for members of the military who help remove a certain fascist from his Epstein Ballroom Below-Ground Bunker when he refuses to accept the outcome of a future election. (And I pray it never comes to that.)

The monk in that final panel is St. Simon of Garfunkel.

Do the final exams involve a stool sample?

Etch-a-Sketch was the video game of the pre-computer age. I spent many hours developing my hand coordination with those things. It was among my favorite toys.

That final note was jotted by a raven, of course.

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That wraps up this week’s chuckle chapter, Jpix. Thanks for pausing to peek. If you appreciate our being here, please consider helping us continue to do so via the links below. Our gratitude will be as huge as a selfie addict’s ego.

The Naked Cartoonist…My every-other-week creative-writing subscription service.

Limited edition, signed & numbered prints of BIZARRO CARTOONS, and some ORIGINALS!

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

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

My (free) graphic novel in progress, PEYOTE COWBOY.

Watch my PITCH VIDEO and become a supporter of Peyote Cowboy here.

Super fun BIZARRO SWAG from ComicsKingdom, including women’s V-neck styles! (And some weird shit from other comics that doesn’t even belong in our shop. Sorry about that.)

Um disco instigante pra este final de semana, Anestesia, de Stela Campos e Érico Theobaldo, paulistas que trabalham em parceria há anos, mas só agora gravam disco juntos. Contando ainda com Luciano Buarque, parceiro de Stela em três faixas. Para os ligados em cinema certamente Érico Theobaldo é o mais conhecido da dupla, por ser um dos mais políticos autores de trilhas para filmes, séries, como. Quinze Dias, Barba Ensopada de Sangue e Cidade; Campo, de Aly Muritiba, e ainda se as series Cidade de Deus (HBO Max) e Cangaço Novo (Prime.
Vídeo).

Stela Campos, também jornalista em atividade, e veterana da música, e figurinha carimbada da era do manguebeat, parceira de Chico Science, com o qual animou muitas festinhas, integrou a cena com a banda Lara Hanouska, e influenciou mangueboys com um K-7 da Senza Vapuori, grupo que formou com membros do Fellini (de onde foi pinçada Criança de Domingo, incluída no Afrocibederlia, do CSNZ).
Feitas as apresentações a Anestesia, que circular nas plataformas de streaming desde 21 de agosto.

Um disco com inevitáveis influências do cinema (Stela participou de O Baile Perfumado). Grosso modo, Anestesia é art rock, com a variedade estética que o rótulo abarca. Cantado em português e inglês, com sons acústicos, eletrônicos, com os instrumentos quase todos tocados por Érico Theobaldo, as canções são bastante diferentes e interligam-se, poderia ser uma trilha, e tem música de trilha. A faixa Let’s Swim foi composta para o filme Quinze Dias de Daniel  Lieff. É dessas que resistem a classificações, poderia caber na prateleira do pós-punk, ou mesmo do tecno pop, ou apenas pop. A faixa é assinada e cantada pela dupla, com Theobaldo tocando todos os instrumentos.

Túnel (Stela e Luciano Buarque), abre o repertório, com efeitos na voz, ela e Érico Theobaldo, criam climas, atmosferas com sintetizadores minimalistas, com a guitarra de Roger Menn. O charme de Anestesia é a variedade dos beats, arranjos, andamentos das canções sempre melodiosas, e ao mesmo tempo com unidade estética, mesmo no único cover do álbum, Matte Kudasai, do King Crimson, aqui impregnada de lirismo, realçando a melodia. Um disco com 11 faixas, 42 minutos, um todo cujas canções são camadas superpostas, que se desdobram a medida que são tocadas.  

A drawing that riffs on the latest news and happenings.

The works in this exhibition are visually, iconographically and materially diverse but, when considered together, they present a comprehensive overview of drawing in the Low Countries during a period of great political and societal change. Some, including the only known drawing by Rogier van der Weyden, one of the most influential artists of the 15th century, are so rare you are unlikely ever to see them again.

Literary criticism is a supremely occasional skill, where you have to be bold enough to operate where there aren’t any clear rules and make up your own, and decide for yourself what you think, and maybe set that beside what other cleverer people have thought. Someone else might come along and see it differently, but if you’ve made them argue with you then you’ve done something worthwhile.

Rhoda Power sailed from Newcastle to Russia in the winter of 1916. She was 27, had a degree in political science and was engaged by a prosperous industrialist in Rostov-on-Don to teach his daughter English. ‘Awakened by screams and shots’, ‘awakened by cries of “Thief” and “Murder”’, she charts the waves of violence encircling her wealthy hosts steadily and without overt political comment.

The importance of Sicily to Leonardo Sciascia’s writing can’t be overstated, but Italo Calvino perhaps put it best when he said that Sciascia was a ‘local author, rooted, who had made the universal out of those roots’. Sicily and Italy don’t have a monopoly on racketeering; the dynamics of corruption that Sciascia dramatises in his novels are in many respects the same in Westminster or Washington as in Palermo.

We require heroism of our entertainers. We want them sacrificing themselves to a certain ultimate degree of input. No one can sing this loud, and yet she does. No one can dance this hard and long, but she goes on. No one can survive being this intensely cherished, but it is we who are wrung out like sponges watching her, hearts pounding, slightly afraid of what’s next.

Now that Southwark has become desirable, the patches of neglect are placeholders for the chains and high-end outlets the landlords expect to move in and pay higher rents when some version of the Berkeley development eventually gets built. To describe this as gentrification, as regeneration, as social cleansing, is valid, but none of these terms quite captures the force of a process that’s not only hard to resist but hard to avoid participating in.

If every accusation​ is a confession, then the US State Department report released on 20 July, which describes Cuba as ‘the capital of 21st-century communism’, must rank as one of...

Like the hippies and punks before them, slackers were characterised as figures of generational discontent. But theirs was a low-energy refusal. They weren’t writing protest songs, or getting their kicks by offending polite society.

Pandas have good PR, but they’re not as cuddly as people think. They have powerful teeth that can chew things a lot tougher than bamboo. One conservationist described watching a panda eat an aluminium pan (and documented the aluminium nuggets that were excreted a few hours later). Though technically vegetarian, they aren’t squeamish about attacking people.

how it didn’t wake us                         fritful sleeperspunching up             ...

One of Willie Wilde’s favourite acts was making jokes at the expense of his famous brother: ‘Oscar was NOT a man of bad character: you could have trusted him with a woman anywhere’; ‘Thank God my vices were decent.’ And he flogged the two trunks of fine clothes Oscar had given to him, raising around £12. 

When the reader​ of Gulliver’s Travels encounters the land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos (all of whom are engaged in slave labour), they are invited to consider a question that runs through the book: what does it mean to be recognised and treated as a human being? Is the ascription of humanity a matter of observable characteristics? 

Fairies are notorious shapeshifters. Their mutability has allowed them to survive, dodging censure by reinventing themselves as nature spirits, angels, birds and insects, monsters, Santa’s helpers, icons of body positivity. Spirits less skilled in glamour have been consigned to oblivion (Glycon? Sabazios?), but fairies in some shape or form have remained with us.

Project a Black Planet, the Barbican’s exhibition of the art and culture of Pan-Africa, is neither a comprehensive account of Pan-Africanism nor of the art associated with the movement; rather, the curators claim, the Pan-Africa explored here is an ‘imagined geography’. Viewers are invited to consider the way the artists on display navigated the movement’s uneasy and, at times, unstable relationship with race.

Thomas Arundel is badly in need of historical rehabilitation. The man who stands accused of spiritual tyranny over the people because he required the licensing of English Bibles played a central role in first managing and then deposing England’s most complicated royal tyrant. At a time when people were most immediately worried about arbitrary government and the possibility of civil war, Arundel sought to protect them from both.

​​‘I think it is the riskiest film I’ve ever made,’ Pedro Almodóvar said in a recent interview. ‘I took a whole bunch of risks, even knowing that some might not land.’ If what he means by this is that he risked making a diffuse and somewhat mannered movie, then I would say he has fallen squarely into the trap. 

The military exercises its power in all areas of Pakistani society. The question​ that faces Pakistan today is no longer ‘Who governs Pakistan?’ It’s ‘How will the field marshal use his power?’ Asim Munir’s personal history gives some clues.