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 non-cartoon 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.

Fùnyìhng, Jazz Pickles!

That’s Cantonese for “welcome,” according to Google Translate. Given the accuracy of AI, however, it might actually mean something else, like “your butt is showing.”

I chose it because it kind of looks like “funnying” or “funny thing,” which are concepts Wayno and I hope our comics will deliver.

I’ve always been impressed by language, but it’s among the easiest things in the world to take for granted—until you try to learn a new one late in life.

Being raised and schooled in the self-centered US in the late 1900s, I was never encouraged to learn a second language. Most of that time was spent in Oklahoma, one of the most backward and “unwoke” states in (what used to be) the Union, so that didn’t help. 

Spanish and French were offered in my high school, but they were “elective” classes, and we only got one elective. Another elective class was ART, so I chose the one with pencils, ink, paint, and papier-maché, not the one with homework and difficult jibberish puzzles.

Back then, I didn’t know a single Asian or Latino kid. Everyone in Oklahoma was a white or Black American. Before I hurried out of the state at age 18, I doubt I’d ever met anyone who spoke a second language. 

Time traveling forward to now, I’ve been living in Mexico for almost ten years and working daily on my Spanish. I am accustomed to being a quick study in most things, so I figured it would be like learning to cook; I didn’t think I’d ever have my own cooking show on TV, but figured I’d fairly quickly be functional enough to pull off a dinner party.

Not true. If Spanish were food, I’d confuse, disgust, and poison my dinner guests with unrecognizable glop not fit to be consumed by humans.

After ten years of practice, when I speak Spanish to Mexicans, they just stare at me, wondering if I’m drunk or insane. When they respond, I can pick out a word or two and usually figure out what they may be saying based on context, but it’s a game of chance at best.

When Olive Oyl and I watch foreign films (with subtitles), from an Asian or Arabic country—languages that do not resemble anything we’ve studied or heard often—I suddenly realize how ridiculously complex and miraculous language is.

Fundamentally, verbal communication is nothing but random noises fired from our facial orifices at the speed of hurricane winds. How anyone can make sense of anything communicated in this way is a miracle.

And yet, if you shoot those vocal ejaculations in the direction of a human baby for a few years, it effortlessly begins to understand and replicate them. WTF?! Are babies that much smarter than a man in his sixties?

English is said to be among the more difficult languages to learn because it has so many “exceptions” to phonetic “rules” (which should more accurately be called tendencies). Still, it was so easy to pick up, I don’t even remember learning it. 

Spanish is reputed to be easier, but understanding it is as difficult for me as glancing at a pile of Legos on the floor and instantly telling you how many there are, like Rain Man.

Now think about reading. Look at written Arabic or Mandarin, and try to imagine how anyone makes sense of those seemingly random scribbles, much less can comprehend complex, nuanced concepts from them in a split second. Consider how quickly you’re converting the chicken scratches on this screen right now into hurricane-fast mouth noises, and comprehending my thoughts! It’s astounding.

Why am I going on about this? Because when you experience a miracle, it’s hard to keep it to yourself.

Another miracle will be how I continue to support myself now that my cartoon income is almost gone. 

One way I’m trying is with my subscription creative writing project, The Naked Cartoonist. If you like my blog posts, you’ll love the articles I write for NC. They’re deeper, funnier, and I include a lot of comics for emphasis. And, unlike these posts, I even prufread them for tpyos before posting!

It’s only $5 for two articles a month, which goes a little further in Mexico than in the US, so Olive Oyl and I will use it responsibly and stretch it as far as it can go.

Yes! I want to buy you and O2 a plate of rice and beans!

Thank you so much. Your generosity humbles me.

Time now to explore the mysterious scribblings of my talented comics partner, Wayno, and chuckle at the miracle of humor…

I remember a time when confession booths didn’t have running water.

Or, maybe the “president” will dress up like a “doctor” and heal you with his glowing hands.

At least she’s working in the right department.

If there were giant bird-people dressed in human clothing, I’d spend more time at the beach.

But that amnesia drug they give you always makes me forget this lesson; or maybe I just want to forget it.

My favorite poet is Dr. Seuss. Everyone since then has been too lazy to bother rhyming.

Here’s where we’re drawing the line this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for using your miraculous scribble-deciphering skills on us. If you’d like to help us keep doing this, here are some more ways. We’ll love you like a hurricane.

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar. (ALL the comics are still funny, no matter what month it is!)

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 non-cartoon 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.

The comic above may look familiar. It was originally published in 2008, and it’s long been one of my favorites, so I thought it deserved a fresh view. 

Seeing Bigfoot and a space alien at the same moment would be as overwhelming as it would be hilarious. I added to it the popular social phenomenon of offering to take photos of strangers.

Making the offer when there is nothing in it for you is an act of altruism, and giving your phone or camera to a stranger requires trust that they won’t just run away with it. That combination of generosity toward our fellow humans always gives me hope for our species.

Here’s a funny, true story from my life that partially inspired this cartoon:

I was leaving a restaurant one evening many years ago, and a family group of 6 or 8 people was standing outside getting ready to take a picture to commemorate the occasion. A man walked out of the restaurant and generously asked the photographer if she’d like him to take it so she could be in it. She enthusiastically accepted his offer and handed the camera to him. 

As he prepared to snap a shot, another person exited the restaurant and asked him the same question. “Would you like me to take that for you, so you can be in it?” 

Hilariously, the original impromptu photographer said, “Sure,” handed him the camera, and walked off down the street. 

The look of utter confusion on the second volunteer photographer’s face was priceless.

Here are two more of my cartoons that were inspired by that experience.

This one was inspired by my mother’s uncanny ability with photography.

This one is a bit darker, but even funnier IMHO.

Time now to see what hilarity may be inspired by Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…

I love a good zen/nothing combo gag. For those not familiar with the concept, the philosophy of Zen Buddhism includes much to do about nothing.

A brilliant comic that anyone who has posted their thoughts (or comics) online will appreciate.

I still love the old Batman live-action TV series from the late sixties. It aired when I was ages 8 to 10, and was undoubtedly instrumental in my lifelong love of camp.

Wayno included the elaborate formatting of the art for the panel and strip versions of this one in his weekly newsletter, which is always fun and free to subscribe to.

In Wayno’s weekly blog post (different from the newsletter mentioned above), he features a photo of the original Mr. Potato Head toy as it was sold in the 1950s. I had that toy, remember it well, and I think it got me started thinking like a cartoonist.

Another stellar gag. For my money, this is one of Wayno’s best weeks of cartoons ever. Stand-up comics in the ‘60s routinely featured impressions of celebrities, and they were almost always introduced in this manner.

Wayno created a version of this cartoon flipped over with the woman at the top, and we discussed which one worked better. He showed that version in his most recent newsletter, too.

That’s how this week’s comedy crimes conclude, Jazz Pickles. We hope a kind stranger will offer to take a photo of you with them if you’re into that kind of thing. If you enjoy that we do this for free every week, please consider helping us keep it that way via a link below. We’ll smile about it and send you love.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar. (ALL the comics are still funny, no matter what month it is!)

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 non-cartoon 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.

It is Easter Sunday here in Mexico, maybe where you are, too. Never missing an opportunity to celebrate things, Mexicans celebrate Easter for several weeks. 

Last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week), but the week before that, there were processions and other goings-on, too. I’m not sure if that week has a special name. Today is called Domingo de Pascua (Easter Sunday), and it marks the end of Semana Santa and the beginning of Easter week, the third in the series. 

Unlike most other holidays here, Pascua does not include parties and parades. It is a more serious, reserved kind of religious holiday about church and family. Nor does it include giant, magical rabbits, egg hunts, or baskets full of candy. 

Those are features of what is called “syncretism,” the combination of different religions, and are, in this case, exclusive to the US, Canada, and parts of Europe.

The big bunny and colored eggs are leftovers from ancient pagan rites of spring. Christianity tried to replace the pagan holiday with Easter, and mostly succeeded, but folks enjoyed the bunny and egg-hunt parts enough to keep those in the mix, though they had no obvious connection to the savior of the world returning from the dead.

Mexican Easter may not include those forms of syncretism, but it does employ the firing of small rockets that explode in the air and make a big boom. There are different theories for why they do this, but I suspect it is also a form of syncretism going back to before the Spanish Conquest. 

In an effort to attract the attention of the gods, the Aztecs used to beat enormous drums that created a deafening sound as loud as thunder. I can’t help but wonder if the use of explosives here during pretty much all religious holidays is left over from that. 

Olive Oyl and I are mostly used to this sporadic, year-round practice, but it often begins as early as 5 a.m., which can be alarming for tourists and other visitors. Giant bunnies and baskets of candy at Easter make no more logical sense than explosions, but at least they are quieter.

Since Mexico has incorporated various aspects of American Halloween into its Dia de Muertos holiday, it may not be long before Mexicans in bunny costumes will awaken us on Easter morning by marching down the streets banging gigantic drums. Time will tell.

The cat in my Sunday comic above has a quieter, if no less gentle, way of awakening its gods. It’s always something, I guess.

Time now to be awakened by the sound of our own chucklement at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…

I’m a fan of Pug Rock from way back.

Unlike most people, I love being surrounded by the sound of cicadas. It drowns out my tinnitis.

My favorite white noise selection is called “Army of Cicadas.”

I can barely stand to be inside an airplane bathroom, so being in a submarine or a space capsule would be out of the question. Being in a submarine’s bathroom is about the worst thing I can imagine.

In Wayno’s blog post this week, he hastens to add that this cartoon was written, drawn, and submitted many weeks before the Sock Puppet in Chief flushed the US down the toilet in Iran. Neither of us thinks real wars are remotely humorous.

Jail is as scary to me as airplane bathrooms, so I have no humorous comments to add to this one.

That’s this week’s rude awakening, Jazz Pickles. If you are enchuckled by our weekly graphic shenanigans, please consider helping us keep these weekly adventures free of charge via the links below. We’ll thank you in our cartoon hearts.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar. (Snag yours before it’s 2027!)

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 non-cartoon 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.

Quickly: WHY WERE THERE ALMOST NO HIDDEN OBJECTS IN THIS PAST WEEK’S BIZARRO CARTOONS?!!! was a question I got a lot this week.

Since 2018, my partner in comics, Wayno, has written and drawn the Monday-Saturday Bizarro cartoons. When this past week’s cartoons were due to be submitted a few weeks ago, he was sick, so we nabbed a week of comics he did as a guest cartoonist over ten years ago. Back then, he was not the regular daily cartoonist and was not accustomed to packing each image with hidden stuff, so I didn’t insist on it. Yes, it was a scary week (see below!), but it’s over now, and the symbols are back for the foreseeable future.

Let’s progress to a more interesting topic.

My Sunday cartoon above is one of my favorites in a while. It’s a fun idea that was tons of fun to draw. I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi in general, and I’ve never believed that extraterrestrials have visited Earth, but in recent years I’ve changed my mind about that. 

Following are three (of several) reasons for my shift.

1) In a universe as incomprehensibly big as ours (don’t even try to comprehend it, you can’t), to assume this is the only planet where intelligent life happened to occur (or was intentionally planted) seems foolish.

2) For many decades, lots of very well-educated, successful, and powerful people have had personal experiences with aircraft and phenomena not explainable by human technology.

3) Not long ago, an elderly relative of mine said they’d seen an interesting documentary about UFOs, and asked me to watch it. To be polite, I turned my head while I rolled my eyes, then agreed to watch it, expecting to be as unimpressed by a bunch of speculative nonsense as I usually am with such efforts. What else would you expect from a skeptical (but polite) know-it-all like me?

But no. The film was well-made, and the testimonies from important, well-educated people not given to nonsense were extremely compelling. I came away convinced.

Yes, there are some disreputable human beings in the film, like Marco Rubio, but also some much less detestible ones.

I will admit that I openly hope aliens are here and watching us so that they might save the rest of us from the worst of us. Fingers crossed.

It’s called “The Age of Disclosure” and is available on Amazon Prime. Go ahead and roll your eyes. I won’t be able to see you.

Lastly, I quite liked this short, 10-minute set from the rapid-fire mind of my stand-up comic friend, Myq Kaplan, and thought I’d share it. It’s free to watch on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTCHv1H4etk

FINALLY! Here’s the Secret-Symbol-bereft week of Bizarro comics from the rabid-fire mind and quick-drawing hands of my partner in comedy, Wayno…

For me, few things would describe hell better than a PowerPoint presentation. Or, come to think of it, any kind of business meeting.

Admittedly, this cartoon is funnier if you aren’t in jail for accessory to murder. Or, maybe that person would find it particularly hilarious, which is a little scary.

I’d have guessed this kid would be more attracted to DuckDuckGo.

I’m a fan of a few team sports (American football, ice hockey), but I can’t deny Jerry Seinfeld’s assertion that what we’re really rooting for is the uniform. It doesn’t matter what player it is; if they’re wearing your uniform of choice, they’re the good guy.

This is one of my all-time favorite Wayno gags. It always makes me laugh. (I’m laughing now.)

This joke is originally from well before the “stable genius” who is ruining America and the world had declared himself King, but it’s even more apropos now than it was way back then.

That slams the door on this week’s Hallway of Haha. I hope you chucked a chuckle or two. If you dig our groovy vibe and want to help us keep it free of ads and paywalls, please peruse the links below. We’ll giggle in our sleep as we dream of you.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar. (Snag yours before it’s 2027!)

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 non-cartoon 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.

Bienvenue, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for giving us a few of your moments.

I’m given to sharing too much, so I’ll tell you I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I visited my fading parents in their “assisted living center”—that second word doesn’t seem entirely appropriate—and it’s always a depressing experience. My mother doesn’t know where she is or what’s happening and just wants to “go home,” while my father says he wishes he believed in suicide, but insists on letting God decide when it is his time.

Objectively, there’s no denying that it’s pharmacology that is keeping both of them alive. If they had truly let “God decide,” they’d both have been on their way over the rainbow bridge some time ago.

Speaking of gods, after I got home last Monday, I realized I’d picked up a god-foresaken virus from some random riffraff during my travels. It’s tormented me for nearly a week now and is making me wish I knew an exorcist. 

The visit with my parents, combined with the ongoing festival of misery I smuggled back home with me, has strengthened my resolve not to last longer than need be. If I get close to the end and I’m beginning to suffer as my parents are, I hope I have the sense and courage to say goodbye to my loved ones and evacuate this version of me.

Sorry for the downbeat opening. I warned you that I’m an over-sharer.

Now to the funnies: The title panel above is one of my personal favorites. It was originally a weekday panel cartoon that I later transformed into a title panel for the Sunday comics. To me, it represents the tendency some of us have to “knock ourselves out” with introspection and to create meaningful art. It’s also just funny in a surreal way.

It’s the perfect image for this week’s Sunday panel about Rodin’s The Thinker, as he thinks about his sculpture and wonders if it is finished. The reason for the color of the statue is that, though the final versions of this famous sculpture are bronze, it began as clay and was then cast in the molten alloy.

(To those of you who already knew that, I apologize for the mansplaining.)

Statues from ancient Greece, Rome, and Michelangelo’s amazing work were sculpted in marble, which is a faaaar more difficult undertaking, and much less forgiving. That’s not to say Rodin was not a genius brimming with talent. He was.

Now let’s enjoy the brimming chuckles of my comics partner, Wayno’s, Bizarro gags from the week…

Dopey and Goofy were only their nicknames. Their given names were Flatulence and Turdmuzzle.

I don’t even want to think about how many dogs it took to make that wiener.

Sadly, only two of the original members of The Beatless are still alive: Pawn MacArfry & Dingo Sklar.

I think all professions get idiotic questions like these as a result of the high incidence of stupidity among humans. Wayno and I, however, are fortunate to have a high percentage of intelligent readers.

May I suggest a large portfolio of expensive Non-Fungible Tokens?

This cartoon got a few questions from readers who are not Grammar Police, as I’m ashamed to admit I tend to be. I’m not sure about other English-speaking countries, but Americans tend to use “less'“ when they mean “fewer.”

For the non-grammar-obsessed among our readers, though this sign reflects the common phrasing used by stores, “less” is the wrong word in this context. The difference is that "less" is used for uncountable bulk or abstract measure (e.g., less water, less food), whereas "fewer" is used for countable, individual objects (e.g., fewer drops, fewer items).

Sorry.

That’s the whole enchilada for this week, Jazz Pickles. I hope you are not fewer amused for having visited. If you enjoy that we offer these bits of scribbles and wisdom for free, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We’ll be fewer unhappy if you do.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Greetings, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for your visit.

At certain junctures of this illusion of time we call history, it is difficult not to associate otherwise innocent attempts at humor with current events. My Sunday cartoon above is doing that to me now.

When I first drew it, I didn’t have world events in mind, just a simple pun about stuffed animals being stuffed*.  But when I look at it now, it reminds me of how certain people and entities cannot get enough. Whether it be food, money, businesses, countries, or forced fealty, they continue to conquer and acquire in what I can only suppose is an attempt to quell their existential angst. It must be hell to live with that kind of fear. It’s certainly hell to live under their reign.

*Stuffed means something very different in British slang, but I’m an American, so I’m taking license. Thanks to the Orange Menace, however, the entire free world is “stuffed” in the British sense.

A SPECIAL THING: My Naked Cartoonist article from a few days ago got a lot of positive comments, and a few readers asked me to make it shareable, so I have. The Naked Cartoonist is my subscription creative writing project. For $5 a month, subscribers get two of my original articles, usually sporadically illustrated with Bizarro cartoons from the past.

I’m offering this week’s article for free here. It’s a satire of the famous Sermon on the Mount, as delivered in the modern day from the 18th green by a certain Orange Menace whose existential angst knows no bounds. I hope you enjoy it, despite its sad truths.

Time now to stumble through my able comic partner Wayno’s orchard of Bizarro cartoons from the week.

Getting down to the fruit of the matter.

From the Great Chimera Cook-off.

Looks like he’s about to use that stick to knock the shillelagh out of him.

I went to Catholic school, too, and it can be hard to shake those indoctrination dreams.

We enjoy occasionally leaning into the editorial side of cartooning.

I visited Vermont once for a wedding and am happy to recall it wasn’t one of mine.

That concludes this week’s comedy syrup, Jazz Pickles. If you enjoy that we do this for free each week, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. You’re the best pickles around.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

*What Would Jesus Do?

(THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN DAN PIRARO’S NAKED CARTOONIST SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE. NUMEROUS READERS REQUESTED IT BE SHARABLE, SO IT’S OFFERED HERE FOR FREE. MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US ALL.)

Audio by Sound Legacy

“Brown Baby Jesus” photo by the author, all rights reserved

Multitudes of loaf- and fish-eating disciples around the globe have wondered why American evangelicals have chosen to follow the MAGA Messiah™, that voice wandering the moral wilderness by golf cart, wearing a red hat. Perhaps his famous Sermon on the 18th Green will enlighten the wicked.

The Gospel of Mar-a-Lago, Chapter 1, verses 1–18

1 For He stood by the pin after kicking the ball into the hole whilst none gazed upon Him, and many gathered, and He opened His mouth unto them and spake:

2 Blessed are the white, for they shall inherit the kingdom of Greenland. And possibly Canada.

3 Blessed are the masked, for they are heavily armed and quick to trigger, and suffer not restraint nor consequence.

4 Blessed are the bigoted and uneducated, for they recognize not the ways of fascism, and will tell us where their neighbors are hiding.

5 Blessed are they who utter not a word against the high prices of goods, services, and health care, nor the trampling of civil rights.

6 Blessed are the women who visit not the polls, lest they vote with justice and compassion that displeases the Lord, and could cast His minions to the wind.

7 Blessed are they who persecute for partisanship’s sake, and label their victims as perpetrators.

8 Blessed are those who lie freely, as doth the Lord, and knoweth that an untruth shall only be punished if the MAGA faithful fall not for it.

9 Blessed are they who turn away from the Epstein Hoax, accepting that boys will be boys, and girls are not to be believed nor valued.

10 Blessed are the redactors.

11 Cursed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called domestic terrorists. And verily, I say unto thee, he who lives by the phone shall die by the bullet, for vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.

12 Foolish are the merciful, for they shall be called Communists and Socialists, and Haters of America, and shall not be admitted to my private clubs.

13 For ye of the red headwear are the salt of the earth: white, granular, and stinging to wounds. It is the pepper, the Dark Spices, that shall be cast out, to be trodden under the feet of men (as women watch through the kitchen window, where they belongeth).

14 Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out as Trans, and compete against women, for thou art faster, even in heels.

15 Cursed be the midterms and the power they giveth to the wicked, and the Lord shall forever cast such elections into the Lake of Fire for displeasing Him.

16 Woe to those who trust not the embrace of Russia, and curse not NATO for daring to utter against the whims and bloviations of the Lord Thy Daddy, and ignore not the Constitution and thus deny the Lord to maintain the throne for a third, fourth, and fifth term for eternity.

17 For Daddy is home, and thus shall the feast be prepared with burgers, and fries, and ice cream, and Diet Pepsi, and many bottles of ketchup, that He may heave them against the gold, tchotchke-bedecked walls of the Lord’s house in His displeasure with the infidels, heathens, and worshippers of the Constitution.

18 For MINE is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. PRAISE BE FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

There you have it, plain and simple. Any questions?

People talk about TDS, ”Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and it’s real. But it isn’t people like me who suffer from it, it’s those who think such a dishonest, heartless grifter is a messiah, and not the Antichrist.

It’s enough to make a person wonder, what would Jesus do?

If you’re enjoying my articles in The Naked Cartoonist, please recommend it to your friends—two articles for $5/mo: bizarro.com/signup. Reader support is how I feed myself these days. Thanks!

My graphic novel in progress: PeyoteCowboy.net.

My video inviting you to become a supporter of Peyote Cowboy.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Howdy, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for your attention.

If your job was writing cartoons on a ceaseless schedule, you’d find yourself forever on the lookout for an image, phrase, or concept that you can twist into a chuckle. Not all jokes are the result of twisting the familiar into something new, but those that are must start with something that is common knowledge. 

But sometimes, unbeknownst to you, something you’ve been aware of all your life isn’t common knowledge for your entire readership, and the majority won’t understand that joke. I’d guess all cartoonists stumble into that pothole from time to time, and don’t realize it until people online begin questioning the point of a joke, so this is a pitfall you learn to avoid.

A quick internet search of the topic or phrase can usually tell you if the basis of your gag is widely known, but sometimes you assume it will be and neglect to look it up. I’m only mentioning this because I drew and submitted today’s comic (above) without researching how widely known the “dog ate my homework” trope is. It wasn’t until I sat down to write this post that I wondered if that may have been a mistake, so I looked it up.

"My dog ate my homework" is an iconic, widely recognized idiom in English-speaking cultures, peaking in popularity during the 1970s–1980s as a stereotypical, flimsy excuse for missing assignments.”

The Almighty Internet (AI) says it’s common enough to pass the test, so I’m good. Phew!

And, while the title of this post clearly pertains to the cartoon canine above, I won’t deny that it immediately reminded me of a real-world criminal authority figure who will remain unmentioned today. 

Let’s pivot to Wayno’s Bizarro comics for the week and see what common idioms he may have played on…

I have a casual friendship with Teller* of Penn and Teller, which began when he commented on a cartoon I did about them decades ago. This week, he texted me about this cartoon…

“Jesus, this is so true.  We just attended a Neil DeGrasse Tyson lecture.  Were you guys there, too?”

We were not, but it’s a perfect example of a cartoon built on common knowledge. Anyone who’s been to one of these events has endured this.

*Please excuse my shameless name-dropping.

A Hollywood pet peeve of mine is how getaway cars are always shown careening through traffic at top speed, when driving slowly and carefully would be a much better way of avoiding the attention of the police. In that regard, self-driving cars would be perfect for bank robberies.

Waiter, there’s an amphibian’s tongue in my soup.

Of course, Waldo’s entire career is built on being impossible to find despite his blatant conspicuousness.

Don’t forget to leave any attachment you may have to the truth at home.

Constructing and consuming s’mores is so much more gratifying.

That concludes our tenuous connection to comedy for today, Jazz Pickles. If you’re enjoying that we do this for free, while not threatening democracy, the stability of your national economy, alienating our allies, or trying to sell you worthless, overpriced crap with our names emblazoned on it, please consider helping us keep it this way via the links below. Whether you do or not, rest assured that we will never whine about not having won any Nobel prizes for things we have not done.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Bene venisti, Benvenuto, y Bienvenido, Jazz Pickles.

That’s “welcome” in Latin, Italian, and Spanish. The B-syllable means “good” or “well,” the V-syllable means “to come.” That’s how English became “welcome,” meaning “it is well that you have come.”

I enjoy thinking about language and use it daily, although I’m not as good at acquiring it as I used to be. 

When I was very young, learning English was so easy that I don’t even remember doing it. At an age when I was too intellectually deficient to tie my shoe or wipe my own butt, I managed to master English. WTF?

By the time I moved to Mexico in my late fifties, I was proficient in many things much more complex than shoe maintenance or bathroom routines, and I was fluent in one of the most difficult and least phonetic languages in the human world (this one), so I expected learning Spanish to be as easy as making a sandwich. I was wrong.

After nine years of daily effort, I can’t claim to be anything more than an advanced beginner or a dimwitted intermediate. I can get my idea across okay, but my Spanish must seem to native speakers like a peanut butter and petroleum jelly sandwich with sauerkraut between two slices of foam rubber. 

People have told me that if I got a non-English-speaking girlfriend, I’d learn much more quickly, but my wife reminded me of how expensive girlfriends can be, especially when you’ve got a wife with a good lawyer, so I’ve given up on that idea.

One of the things I like most about speaking English is making people laugh, and I did that as a stand-up comic for about a decade. That job requires being on the road quite a lot of the time, a lifestyle that doesn’t suit me, so I eventually gave it up. 

One of my friends from that era, Myq Kaplan, a successful stand-up comic (who is also funny in a variety of other positions), sent me the photo below from 2011 when I performed in a comedy show for charity at the Gotham Comedy Club in NYC. We think this is the night we met.

This is the most prestigious group of comics I ever worked with, and I was by far the least talented and most inexperienced among the group.

From left to right: Some dipshit in a hat, Gary Gullman, Myq Kaplan, John Oliver, Olivia Munn, Wyatt Cenac, Jamie Kilstein. A few months after this show, I left NYC and that shirt behind forever.

ALSO!!! My friend and Spanish tutor, Ricardo, is in need of some new clients. If you’d like to improve your Spanish skills, you can visit with him online via Google Meet for as much or little time each week as you’d like, as I do. He and I converse in Spanish for an hour each week and despite my comedic account above, my Spanish has improved immensely since working with Ricardo. He got me from “hopeless nitwit” to “dimwitted intermediate” in record time!

Ricardo was born and raised in Mexico, attended university in the US, is fluent in English, and is a published author. He can teach you via a PDF book he’ll email to you, or you can just converse, as we do.

Contact him here, you’ll like him: kayuko1@gmail.com

If the photo of that shirt wasn’t enough comedy for you, let’s have a peeper-gaze at Wayno’s Bizarro comics from the week…

The silver lining is that they were completely out of kazoos.

BTW: Wayno’s title for his blog post this week is worth a visit all by itself. It made me LOL, and as a humor professional, that’s not easy to do. He also includes a terrific political rant before he gets to his comics, and that’s always a highlight for those of us who care about the state of the world.

Dogs don’t normally make me hungry, but I’d like to bake and butter that little guy.

“Here comes the queen, everybody look busy!”

When this happens to me, I first try changing to a different color beret.

She and the dwarves ended up in an apartment building after Dopey burned down the cottage.

That’s this week’s craptastic comic caper, Jazz Pickles. We appreciate your ocular attention. If you appreciate that we’re still doing this for free, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. Our former employer (the newspaper industry) is going the way of the Titanic, and we’re trying to stay afloat until help arrives.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Bienvenido, Jazz Pickles. Have a seat and moisturize your lips in case you feel a smile coming on.

Believe it or not, the title of this week’s post, “If Ice Absorbed the Salvation Army,” was an afterthought. 

I arrived at the idea for this comic by combining the Salvation Army with the military expression “special forces,” then concocting a ludicrous scenario to illustrate it. 

As soon as I dropped the image into this week’s blog post and began searching for a title, however, it occurred to me that if the current demented resident of the Casa Blanca were to mistake the Salvation Army for a functional arm of the military (which would be not at all out of character for him) and put it under the supervision of ICE, the scene above would not stand out at all among the already enormous and growing list of pointless constitutional violations.

That CLICK! you may have heard just now was likely the sound of a few more people unsubscribing from my mailing list because I disrespected Dear Leader.

Seriously, folks, if you’re still supporting this grifting, criminal administration, ask yourself which of the only three following reasons you could possibly have at this point applies to you:

1. You are a bigot and want any and all non-whites persecuted.

2. You believe fascism is preferable to democracy.

3. You only expose yourself to right-wing propaganda and have no idea how much you are being lied to.

“CLICK!” There go a few more unsubscribes. Oh well.

I persist with these political mini-rants because it is up to us, the common citizens, to end this. The spineless Republican majority in Congress is not going to lift a finger to stop it, so it’s up to us. We all have a duty to speak out, protest, and boycott. Whatever you can, and whatever it takes.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTENTION TO HIS BLATHER.

But we don’t have to let it ruin every waking moment of our days (a challenge, I know), so let’s have a few chuckles with Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week.

I have to admit, this comic drags my mind right into the gutter.

Franky might have chosen “death metal,” and the cat could’ve said, “Pussy Riot.” (That’s an actual feminist protest punk rock band in Russia. Doing that in Russia is SO punk rock.)

I’m digging the beatnik bunny, but wonder if beatniks would be into hip-hop. Personally, I prefer salsa, especially with chips.

I usually let promotional opportunities slide by unused, but today I’m feeling adventurous, so I’ll tell you that the shirt the guy in the first panel above is wearing could be yours. (Sadly, the outfit Tarzan is wearing is not available in the Bizarro shop.)

This is off topic, but if you’ve not heard comedian Emo Phillips do his routine voted "Best Religion Joke Ever,” enjoy it now.

Sorry kids! To get this final comic, you have to be old enough to remember what three-dimensional magazines were.

If you’re still here, thanks for reading. We hope you needed that lip balm once or twice. If you like that we’re doing this for free each week, please help us keep it that way in this era of collapsing newspapers (and comics income) via the links below. We’ll use up a whole stick of lip balm smiling in gratitude.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Bienvenido, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for stopping by.

My Sunday cartoon above was inspired by a kitchen renovation project some twenty years ago, when I lived in Brooklyn. An asshole, excuse me, contractor quoted a price and a time for a complete redo of my kitchen. I agreed, I gave him money, he tore out the existing kitchen, and began work. Then disappeared, came back, disappeared, came back; the usual behavior for that industry. 

Over the subsequent eons, he gradually squeezed more money and time from me, and I was naive enough to allow it. In the end, the project (literally) took four times longer and cost ten times more than his estimate. With one fewer molecule of self-control, I’d now be serving time in prison for murder instead of posting a cartoon about it.

But that’s water under the bridge. Let’s get out of Brooklyn and jump ahead to last year, here in Mexico.

A few months back, I took time off from my ongoing graphic novel project, Peyote Cowboy, to allow the smell of burnout to clear from my studio. The story was finished long ago, but I’ve been posting the illustrations as I go along, free for anyone to read at PeyoteCowboy.net.

I’m back to illustrating and have posted a new episode called “Headlights,” for reasons the illustration below should make clear.  

I invite you to join the fun and follow my weird, magical-surrealism Western by signing up to get an email each time I post a new episode. (No strings attached, and I would NEVER share or sell your email info.)

And, since I’m not being paid for this overwhelming amount of work, if you’d like to feel the glow of satisfaction that comes from supporting the arts, have a look at my pitch video here. 

To catch up with the story, see the Episodes page.

Enough already! Where are Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week?

Oh, right below. Enjoy!

Stay away from Grumpy and Sneezy.

I just hope that’s a sound-proof box.

That rapper reminds me of my first-grade teacher, Sister Mary Contusion.

One way to save money on gifts and greeting cards.

I am amazed he felt he needed to explain that.

What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with a congregation of venomous siphonophores?

Thanks for not shooting down our comic party balloons with anti-drone lasers, Jazz Pickles. If you’re enjoying our FREE content, please consider tossing us some thanks via the links below.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Greetings, jazzy pickle peoples,

It’s been a crazy week on Planet Earth, but rest assured that the house of cards the US Dunning-Kruger Cabal has built won’t stand forever. The (mad) King of (the) Heart(less) is starting to wobble.

Instead, let’s talk about the comic above. 

I’ve long been fascinated by our species’ aversion to public nudity. Don’t jump to conclusions, I’m no nudist. I’m just as quick to throw on a shirt and a pair of pants before I leave the house as anyone else. But intellectually, I am acutely aware of the silliness of it.

For millions of years, we were as naked as every other animal on the planet. So what happened to make us ashamed and afraid of our own bodies? There are various theories about how we became so self-conscious and nudity-averse. 

Going back tens of thousands of years, one obvious step resulted from our insatiable curiosity about what’s beyond the next mountain range. Once we traveled far enough from our more equatorial birthplace, it got cold, and we needed to cover ourselves. 

But that can’t be the reason we still wear layers of clothing in the heat of summer.

Another theory is about ownership. When humans invented agriculture, they began to declare the piece of land on which they toiled for food as their own—a concept generally unknown to hunter-gatherers. 

Once the concept of property was established, which children belonged to whom became more important, so men wanted to control who their women got sweaty with, and monogamy became fashionable to ensure birthright. Humans are visually oriented, so sexy bits were hidden to reduce temptation. Some cultures still exaggerate this custom by requiring women to wear tarpulins with no more than a tiny screened window to peek out of. (Even though anyone who has raised a teenager knows that taboos only serve to increase curiosity.)

In recent times, some psychologists have theorized that clothing is a means to avoid being reminded of our mortality as animals. That sounds logical.

(An amusing aside: some anthropologists have surmised that the reason human females are the only mammals that have noticeable chest bumps when not breastfeeding their young is an evolutionary trick to make them resemble buttocks. Before primitive humans began walking upright, the female buttocks were the visual cue that encouraged mating. Under this premise, boobs are chest-butts. One cleavage is as exciting as another. I told you it was amusing.)

These are all good theories, and I don’t have a favorite—except for the chest-butt premise—but I suspect that artists like to employ nudity for a couple of reasons: to depict the beauty of our natural form, and to strip away the personas we project with our clothing.

My cartoon above is a simple reversal of societal tendencies. In a world where nudity is common, artists might be inspired to turn the convention upside-down and depict the opposite. 

Even if you don’t think it’s funny, I hope you appreciate how rare it is to be able to sneak that much nudity into the Sunday comics section.

P.S. Some of my Peyote Cowboy readers have asked when the next episode is coming out. I took some time off to dust off my brain, but am back at the grindstone and should post a new episode this week!

Now it’s time to turn our frowns upside down with Wayno’s week of Bizarro cartoons. 

Virtual lawns can be mown with just a click of a button, Dad. Just saying.

I blame the people who taught this guy to read.

In Spanish, “Nosferatu” translates to “our feratu.”

This would be even funnier if it didn’t ring so true.

I wasn’t the only one to sneak forbidden topics into the comics pages this week.

She’s not alone. The entire western world now realizes the danger of ignoring the red flags of a narcissist.

That’s this week’s comedy salvo, Jazz Pickles. We hope you escaped injury. If you enjoy what we do and that we and that we do it for free, please consider helping us keep it that way and living indoors via one of the support portals below. We’ll send you jumbo-sized love.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Bienvenido, Pepinillos Jazz,

A few days ago, on the 22nd of January, I realized that the day before had been the 41st anniversary of Bizarro. That seems to happen at least once yearly, but I often forget about it until it’s passed, and never celebrate it unless someone in my life (Olive Oyl) notices ahead of time and insists, which has happened a few times.

I have mixed feelings about these anniversaries. On the one hand, I recognize the accomplishment of maintaining a cartoon strip for over forty years, but on the other hand, it can make me feel old and irrelevant. 

On yet another hand (I often need more than two), the passage of time and transition from young to old is the way of nature, and there is no denying it, escaping it, or shame in it. As the body melts away like a figure in an equatorial wax museum during a power outage, the mind becomes wiser, and that’s a wonderful thing.

On the fourth hand, I am profoundly grateful for having been able to make a living in a creative field of my choice without having to struggle my whole life with what are often called “real jobs.” I did my share of meaningless toil in my youth—minimum-wage labor of all sorts, kowtowing to egomaniacal advertising executives while illustrating products that I would never consume or allow in my own home—but by my mid-thirties, I was able to give those up and survive in middle-class comfort with my income from Bizarro. That seemed like a miracle, and still does, and I am eternally grateful for whatever gods or good karma allowed it to happen.

On the fifth hand, I am grateful for my partnership with Wayno for the past eight years. 

By January of 2018, I had written, drawn, and published over 12,000 cartoons, and I was mentally exhausted by it. Historically, syndicated cartoonists (who could afford it) have often turned their features over to ghostwriters and artists in midlife and retired early, but I’d been told that, since Bizarro was not a feature with regular characters and jokes that could be easily emulated by others, I’d never be able to do that. Bizarro had always been a personal expression of my own unique way of thinking and drawing, my syndication distributor said, so that option was not available to comics like mine.

But along came Wayno. Our humor and art are not identical, but they are similar enough that he could assume most of my responsibilities without losing my hard-earned readership. Another miracle. 

He has not tried to impersonate me, and I’ve never expected or wanted that, which is why he’s not been relegated to being a ghostwriter. 

Thanks for doing such a good job, pal.

This post is quickly sounding like something I did not intend it to when I began writing this morning. I’m not quitting Bizarro, I haven’t been diagnosed with anything terminal (yet), and I haven’t won an Oscar. It just feels like a good time to count my blessings.

My greatest blessing thus far has been my beloved Olive Oyl, who has been a supporting and invaluable partner in my life and career for the past twelve years. When we first got together, she did a terrific job coloring my daily cartoons for a few years, and from the very beginning, she’s been a savvy investor of my meager savings. That slowly-growing nest egg, and our decision to move to Mexico almost ten years ago, have been what allowed me to semi-retire and afford to pay Wayno to do his thing. 

I’ve run out of hands for all the things I’m thankful for, but lastly, I’ll thank you, dear readers, who have continued to help me stay in business. Wayno, Olive Oyl, and I cherish you all.

That makes it time to enjoy some chuckelation provided by Wayno’s Bizarro comics from the week…

The name of the deli above is explained in Wayno’s blog post for this week. I had no idea he had a connection to America’s original zombie filmmaker.

Zest is getting as hard to find as justice these days.

Ah, the good old days when criminals wore funny outfits, got what they deserved in the end, and weren’t fascist dictators posing as presidents of former democracies. (You didn’t think I could go a whole week without mentioning that, did you?)

I know a few charter members.

If you know who these two characters are, this is a brilliant gag. If you don’t, look them up.

Or are you just glad to see me?

Let’s put this episode to bed before we all drown in our tears of laughter. If you've enjoyed our comics and that we present them here each week for free, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We’ll be as happy as a superhero with a new pair of tights.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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. He’s got some particularly disturbing news about Pittsburgh this week!

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

Welcome, Jazz Pickles and pastry pirates.

Pirates are among the most enduring figures in pop culture history. Untold billions have been made from movies about pirates, and there is no shortage of pirate costumes and accessories for those who want to cosplay as one. 

But have you ever thought about how this affectionate fascination contrasts with the fact that these were among the most ruthless, godawful thieves, enslavers, murderers, and all-around barbarians our species has ever concocted? The fact that they rarely bathed was just rancid icing on the cake.

I wrote about our odd fascination with pirates, Vikings, and other despots in one of my bi-weekly Naked Cartoonist articles not long ago. It’s titled, “What’s so Funny about Ruthless Murderers?” and it includes my theory on why so many cartoonists have done so many cartoons about such horrible people. I’m no exception. A few years ago, I filled a book with such cartoons of my own from Bizarro.

Wayno and I actually met at a pirate-themed art event in Pittsburgh back in the late 1900s. The photo below is from that fateful evening. It bears mentioning that neither of us committed a crime or an atrocity that night, other than to agree to consider working together one day.

Piraro, left, Wayno right

While we’re on the topic of ruthless despots, my most recent Naked Cartoonist article centers on a well-known orange tyrant and was well-received by my subscribers on NC, as well as readers on medium.com and Substack. So I’ve decided to offer it to our non-subscribing blog readers here as well.

You can read “Being a Lobster of Hope: Swimming to freedom as the ship sinks”  (or listen to a recording of me reading it) without a subscription. (And it falls right in with some disturbing news from Pittsburgh that Wayno relates in his blog post this week.)

(Note: If you’ve already read that article, I’ve changed the comic at the end, and you may find it worth checking out.)

Time to move on to the chucklements awaiting us in Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week!…

I thank the universe daily that I was able to escape the corporate world early on. If you haven’t, you have my deepest sympathy. Unless you really enjoy it. That’s cool, too.

I have to be careful where I sit in airplanes because I am allergic to people with peanut allergies.

They don’t call him the Cootie Kid for nothing.

I wish I’d thought of this before I filled out my dating profile after my second divorce.

From which floor can I access the “flabbergasted” mezzanine?

Well, it’s better than the single, flashing, twinkle light and miniature beanie propeller I’ll probably get.

That completes this week’s comedy catastrophe, Jazz Pickles. We hope we twitched your chuckle meter at least a couple of times. If you’re digging the groovy vibe we’re laying down and that we do it for free, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. Your generosity may win you a bigger halo and larger propeller in cartoon heaven.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

By Dan Piraro

Audio production by Sound Legacy

(Comic by my partner in Bizarro, Wayno®)

This aphorism recently floated across my screen:

When you think there’s no hope, remember the lobsters in the tank at the restaurant on the Titanic.

The wisdom of those words slapped me in the ass like hot butter. Then I realized it is sort of what I’ve already been doing. (The remembering, not the butter-slapping.)

As the country I’ve come to know and believe in is being flushed down a gaudy, gold toilet, engaging in wars of material conquest as though it were Russia, I’ve been wondering if it might somehow work out for the best in the end. Could all this turmoil and suffering wake up enough people to turn the tide and rebuild our government in a different direction? Could this be another painful but necessary step toward a planet based on compassion and cooperation rather than greed and dominance?

It’s a long-shot fairytale ending, I know, but when our current titanic systems of government and economics finally sink to the bottom of the ocean, to the din of a small band of billionaires playing an AI-generated tune as they drown in their own icy greed, maybe we lobsters who remain will swim away in a flood of revelation and reason.

Sensible citizens of the West agree that the US is suddenly and surprisingly going to hell under the direction of a Nazi copycat regime. Of the many clever, recent protest signs flooding America’s streets, one that caught my eye read, “I was told there’d be handbaskets.” (The phrase in your region may be “Going to hell in a handcart.”)

Most of us thought that what’s happening now can’t happen here, and we are shocked by how suddenly the American experiment in equal opportunity, human rights, and self-governance is being scuttled.

But it isn’t as sudden as it seems, and it isn’t the first time.

A brief look at the history of humans vs. humanitarians: For at least the last ten thousand years, small, privileged handfuls of the wealthy and powerful have consistently ruled over the rest of humanity with unconscionable brutality. With very few exceptions, it is only in modern times that any large government has declared that basic humans (non-rich, non-powerful) should have basic human rights.

Up until around 150 years ago, slavery was legal in most of the world. In the US, in the 1860s, more than half a million people died to either defend or defeat the practice. By 1900, with the Civil War behind them, Americans considered this style of malignant cruelty-for-profit a settled issue. We’d washed our hands of such barbarism for good.

But it was only an illusion.

The slaves-are-fine-if-you-can-get-away-with-it class never gave up; they only systematized it in the form of poor education, limited job opportunities, and low pay. The wealthy few were still cracking the whip for most of the rest of us, and getting obscenely rich off the sweat and misery of others.

Although we may think the current trend of handing control over our lives to ruthless oligarchs is a new idea, it’s not. Americans did exactly that around a hundred years ago when a previous group of smug, super-rich, privileged assholes took control of every arm of the government and judiciary, and began raking in cash like a Shop-Vac inhales sawdust.

They were dubbed “robber barons,” and they amassed generational wealth and created the Great Depression while the rest of America stood in line for a crust of bread. That previous group of shameless assfruits threw the original “Great Gatsby parties” as the rest of the country huddled around trash fires in homeless campsites all across the country. That nightmare of greed and cruelty went on for more than a decade.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, forceful invasions and brutal, racist-driven genocide were being ramped up in Europe by the original Nazis (whom the Tangerine Tumor and his cronies have openly admired), which led to half the planet being at war, and a noticeable decrease in the population of basic humans asking for basic rights.

Big-budget Hollywood musicals aside, the first half of the 20th century was a terrifying, ball-busting bitch.

But after that particular “Titanic” tribute to feudalism sank, we lobsters who remained swam away and remodeled our government into something that served more than just those citizens with multiple mansions full of priceless art and sleds named Rosebud.

Those early-20th-century Americans woke the fuck up and turned to progressive Democrats — yes, Rupert Murdoch, the Democrats — to build a government that allowed virtually everyone to afford essentials, get an education, live indoors, and bring home more than 1/300th of their boss’s pay. (Citation)

With multiple social safety nets in place, we thought the robber barons were gone for good. But that, too, was an illusion.

So how did we get here again?

Well, as generations of Americans enjoyed the fruits of social safety nets, we became spoiled and complacent. Bad things usually happened “elsewhere,” while we Americans sat in our vibrating recliners watching Monday Night Football, complaining that the pizza delivered to our doors wasn’t hot enough.

We mistakenly thought we were entitled to human rights and common comforts, and that no one could ever take those things away. We assumed we didn’t need to do anything to protect those rights, such as bothering to know more about the people we were voting for than what the slogan on their hats said. And worse, almost half of us didn’t think we needed to vote at all.

Meanwhile, the super-rich assholes who survived the sinking of the Civil War and Great Depression Titanics never went away. These shameless comic-book-style villains go into hiding for a while, but they always reemerge. Sadly, there’s never a shortage of despots and would-be dictators arrogantly shitting in their solid gold toilets and onto the heads of “We the People” from AI-generated fighter jets.

These self-appointed supremacists from yesteryear raised their descendants on the same greedy soup of arrogance and privilege, and continued to complain about the lazy poor, dishonest foreigners, and unpatriotic “thinkers” who harbor a hatred for America; their enmity for freedom, the fairytale goes, is evident in their desire to care for lazy non-white people with taxes collected from hard-working white folks. They labeled basic concern for your fellow man as “socialism” and convinced the uneducated that this word is somehow synonymous with slavery.

Enter the aforementioned Rupert Murdoch, that champion of something that is actually synonymous with slavery: unregulated free-market capitalism.

By launching a multi-million-dollar propaganda channel that looked like a real news service, he began to attract viewers with flags, conspiracies, and fashion models, where facts and journalism would be on a legitimate news channel.

Even their original motto was a lie: We report, you decide. The subtext was, “We’ll tell you what billionaires want you to believe, and you can pretend you came up with it yourself.”

And they did.

Convincing the struggling middle class and poor to surrender their social safety nets and climb into the aristocracy’s lobster tank seemed like an impossible task, but Murdoch understood that all it would require was a steady feed of conspiratorial bullshit wrapped in a flag. Turns out if you give uneducated folks plenty of patriotic-sounding grievances and attractive teleprompter readers, they’ll sign up to be a billionaire’s next meal.

Now, just eleven months into the latest Titanic’s voyage, many have lost their jobs, their farms, their food assistance, and benefits of all sorts. They may soon lose their health insurance, too. And most recently, Americans may be going to war on multiple fronts, including with our most valuable allies, NATO, and our own military on the streets of our hometowns.

So why do they continue to vote for GOP candidates when Republican-led states are ahead of blue states by a wide margin in such glamorous categories as poverty, homicide, suicide, divorce, spousal abuse, homelessness, teen pregnancy, rape, welfare recipients, crime, drug addiction, and more? (Citation)

Because with the help of Fox News and the internet, Republicans have systematically replaced education with propaganda. Knowing history makes folks less likely to repeat it, so Republican legislatures are more likely to ban books than to encourage anyone to read them.

Now that they’ve commandeered the ship, we’re all in the lobster tank together once again — red, blue, independent, and non-voters alike — as we steer straight for the same damned iceberg.

It may be wishful thinking, and I may not live to see it, but I hope those who remain after this ship of fools sinks will have the sense to build a better boat and put it into the hands of more responsible sailors.

For the time being, I remain a lobster of hope and will continue to work toward a way out of this pot before the water starts to boil.

***

To support my work and receive an article every other Friday, subscribe to The Naked Cartoonist.

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 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.

Welcome, fellow illusions.

Perhaps because reality has become increasingly unattractive of late, I’ve been thinking, reading, and writing about the illusory nature of reality. It’s a fascinating topic. 

I won’t go into the science of it today, but I’ve always enjoyed art that challenges reality and frame of reference. Claus Oldenburg’s giant sculptures of everyday objects fascinated me in my youth because they encouraged me to realize the power of one’s perspective: I am enormous compared to an ant, and I am smaller than a molecule compared to the Milky Way Galaxy. And a galaxy is a quark compared to the universe.

That leads me to wonder if there’s anything our universe is tiny compared to, and anything a quark might seem gigantic next to.

My comic above touches on my fascination with scale. How much would you love to stumble upon that scene in the wilderness unexpectedly? You’d probably assume it was built by normal humans, but for a few seconds, you might be tempted to look over your shoulder for any colossal children hiding nearby.

I think of this kind of size differential when I see a teacup Chihuahua being walked on a leash through a heavily trafficked area like Manhattan at rush hour. I’m not sure I’d be capable of that level of courage.

While Oldenburg’s objects were fun and impressive, the current champion of mind-blowing relativity sculpture is Ron Mueck. I once saw a few of his sculptures in person, and they are alarming.

From a scientific, subatomic perspective, all matter—including humans—is something of an illusion, so Mueck’s sculptures become an illusion of an illusion, constructed of substances that are also illusions. The mind reels. 

But, illusion or not, this is our reality for the time being, and to help you navigate it, I’d like to recommend a newsletter on Substack by another historian. I’ve recommended the wonderful “Letters from an American” by historian Heather Cox Richardson before, and here’s another.

I’ve found the work of historian Emily Glankler to be a useful companion. With a casual, engaging style, “Anti-Social Studies” provides historical insight into the daily headlines with more clarity and detail than you’ll get from corporate-owned media. Her articles are not too long or difficult to understand for us laymen, and she’s good about delineating fact and opinion. (She also presents information via video posts, but I’m old-school and prefer the written material.)

I’m recommending her because I’ve gotten a lot out of her posts, and I also happen to know her personally and can vouch for her dependability and depth of knowledge.

Finally, now that we’re in a new year, you may want to know what number society has assigned to each day of it and get a chuckle while doing so, so nab yourself a Bizarro wall calendar. It has numbered days and comics.

I now find myself in the mood for more comics. Let’s enjoy Wayno’s Bizarro comics from the week, now beginning his ninth year of giving me Mondays-Saturdays off! Thanks, amigo!

Probably a legacy admission.

He was the first person to buy one of our Bizarro 2026 calendars.

It’s fun to occasionally sneak a little comedy smut into the funny pages.

He needs out of pocket insurance.

Whose sarcophagus wasn’t quite shut.

Wrapped up like a mummy, his skin became gummy,

And you couldn’t tell his face from his butt.

The case of the insufferable detective.

Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of next week’s post. Until then, if you’re enjoying that we do this for free every week, without checking your immigration status, please consider helping us keep it this way via the links below. And while you’re at it, have a great week.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.

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 non-cartoon 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.

Welcome to the end of 2025, Jazz Pickles. For most of us, it seems like good riddance, but all years are a mixture of good and bad, depending on our perspective and situation. I hope your situation was not hit too hard this year, and your perspective in the coming year will be more to your liking.

As evidenced by my cartoon above, I’ve been thinking about myths lately. I used to think they were all nonsense, and that the world would be a better place if people only paid attention to reality. But in my advancing years, I’m beginning to see not only the value of myths, but the unavoidable reality behind them. Bear with me a moment.

Psychologists and anthropologists alike say that we humans have always been story-makers. All civilizations have invented stories about what we are, where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. These stories are how every alliance, from families to villages to societies, accomplishes common goals. This is the value of myths.

I’ve been thinking that one reason we are so hardwired toward stories may be that we literally spend our entire lives inside a myth: what we call “reality.”

Gurus and philosophers have said for centuries that life is an illusion, and modern physicists have more or less proven it. 

***

Let’s start at the beginning. Everything is made of the same stuff: atoms. And all atoms are made of the same stuff: smaller things with funny names like quarks, leptons, and gluons. Everything from your precious grandchild to Mt. Everest, from a styrofoam cup to the Andromeda Galaxy, is a slightly different collection of these exact same elements of energy, hovering together in slightly different ways. 

And while these tiny, funny-named things are attracted to each other, they aren’t actually even touching. The solid matter we call “reality” isn’t what we think of as “solid.” And nothing (other than energy) is permanent; not this planet, not our galaxy, not even the popularity of Taylor Swift.

You could plausibly say that what we call “reality” is an illusion of innumerable, fleeting groupings of energy.

Even your thoughts, the stuff you’re using to read this blog post, are a result of energy created by the impermanent collection of disconnected subatomic particles that are temporarily making up your brain. On the subatomic level, our brains are made of exactly the same stuff as a bowling ball and the Rock of Gibraltar. (And plenty of us act like it.)

In this sense, we’re all illusions, and so is everything we believe to be “real.”

So we invent characters and stories in an attempt to make sense of this illusion we’re temporarily participating in, and to give some meaning to existence. Is that such a crime?

Well, it can be. How those myths direct our behavior is a whole other can of beans. (Which are also illusions of energy.)

***

We all have our myths: Ours is the greatest country, our school, town, state, or sports team is the best, our religion, political party, or notions about whether or not there is a “god” is true, and that we know what it/he/she/they thinks (or doesn’t think because it doesn’t exist); any other version of morality or god is a lie.

You see where I’m going. 

These myths are fine as personal beliefs. But when we attempt to force them on others, either individually or collectively through governments or a mob of like-minded fans of our mythology, there’s hell to pay.

Socrates said, “Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.” Put another way, true knowledge comes from realizing how wrong you can be.

Myths can be beneficial or even essential, and may represent an underlying conceptual truth, but they lose their benefit when we convince ourselves they are solid, permanent, and “real.” Nothing is solid or permanent, and “real” is a highly debatable concept.

***

Here’s one of my favorite personal myths: the greedy, criminal, inhumane behavior of the powers that currently be—the sort that has made the more compassionate and sensible among us say good riddance to 2025—will awaken in the collective a renewed awareness of the importance of kindness over conquest, and will eventually be vanquished in favor of building a better world.

I’m hoping that’s how this story will go, but of course, I could be wrong.

Let’s redirect our collective gaze now to Wayno’s current collection of subatomic particles in the form of his Bizarro cartoons for the week…

Those Ikea baby corrals are a lot harder to assemble than the instructions make them look.

Call me crazy, but I prefer to heat my pie with a toaster.

Well, it was successful for the creatures in the saucer.

Don’t miss that he’s giving him a bunny buck.

By slipping this naughtiness into the comics the day after Christmas, Wayno is hoping Santa will have forgotten by next year.

If this business were owned by a believer in reincarnation, it might be named “Temporary Rest.”

That’s where the comedy copter landed this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for enduring us for another year. If you’ve enjoyed our FREE content, please consider sending us a little end-of-year gratitude via any of the links below. We’ll thank you in our humorous hearts.

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

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 our 2026 Bizarro wall calendar.