More Anniversary Ranting

Bizarro is brought to you today by Personally Humiliating Work From The Past.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, tomorrow, Friday the 22nd of January, 2010, is the 25th anniversary of Bizarro. A few readers understandably wondered if the cartoon posted yesterday was the first one that ever ran. It was not, the abomination posted here entitled, "Sock Exchange" was the very first, as you can see by the publication date nestled beneath the psychotically scrawled signature.

Let's deconstruct the awfulness, shall we? At present, I draw everything with a small brush on bristol board, which is a kind of very thick paper that is standard among professional cartoonists. Back then, not knowing what I was doing, how I should do it, or my ass from my elbow, I drew with a rapidograph technical pen on tracing paper. Yes, TRACING paper! So if you were wondering why the image above looks as though it were etched by an asylum inmate on wax with a piece of wire, now you know. Using a tech pen is perfectly fine if you're drawing in a clean, neat style. Like this guy. But I was was trying to use a pen to do things a brush does. Took me a few years to figure that out. Perhaps I shouldn't have dropped out of art school.

The joke isn't so bad, I'd use it today if I'd just thought of it, but the drawing is really something hideous. I had been doing ultra-realistic commercial illustrations of food products for a living, similar to this, and had not been drawing cartoons long enough nor consistently enough to have developed any kind of style. My biggest influence was B. Kliban, but my early work didn't look anything like his, either. Besides, I didn't want people to think I was borrowing from someone else's style, so I just flew off in a random direction in hopes of developing my own look. Which I eventually did, but it took a few years.

And check out that winsome signature. Such style, such grace, such suckage. It looks like it was constructed of burned fragments of a wooden fence.

I'm happy my work isn't this clumsy anymore, that's one good thing about getting older.

Below are two earlier cartoons of mine from 1995 and 1998. By this time I was drawing with a brush and you can see that I changed my lettering style somewhere between those dates. I was still using a tech pen to letter, but later did that with a brush, too.

Tomorrow I'll post a cartoon or two from different years throughout the process to show how my drawings have changed.

Time Flies Coach

Bizarro is brought to you today by Socially Bold Deserts.

As a change of pace, here is an old old old Bizarro from the late 1900s. I just realized a few minutes ago that Friday, January 22, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the first Bizarro cartoon that appeared in newspapers. I had seven client papers on opening day: Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, and I can't remember the other four. Now I have something under a million client papers. (Keeping in mind that any number under one million qualifies for that statement.)

Wow. I don't want to bore you with a lot of talk about how the time has flown by and I can't believe I've been doing this for a quarter of a century, but damn. All of that is true. To be honest, it fills me with a mixture of pride and sadness. Time is a mindf*ck.

Twenty five years is a long time to be doing anything. Before Bizarro I don't think I held any job for an entire year – as I recall, 11 months was my record. Of course, this job is more like freelancing than a "real" job, in that nobody cares what I do all day as long as I send them seven cartoons each week.

Things that have changed about this job in 25 years:

• 1985-1987, I finished my cartoons a week ahead of deadline so I could send them by U.S. post to my editor. I was making so little money that I could not justify any other means.

• 1988, I started making enough to get by and began overnighting them with Fed Ex. Now I could work on the cartoons up until 6:30pm the night before they were due and get them to the Fed Ex office by 7.

• In the early '90s I got a computer and email, but it was still a few years before Internet was fast and secure enough to send large images easily. I hadn't yet learned to color my Sunday panels myself yet, either, so I was still marking them up with colored pencil with CMYK percentages and having them done at a coloring service that the entire industry used. This was the way everyone did it then. I had no idea what the image would really look like until it printed in papers many weeks later. It was difficult, required a lot of guessing and the early Sunday panels were not as intricate as they are now, but I tried.

• In the late 90s I began doing all my own coloring and things haven't changed too much since then. Now I can achieve almost any coloring effect I can dream up and can wait until the last second to finish my work and send it by Internet in a few seconds. Usually, though, I send them a day or two after they are due. I'm bad, I know, but this creativity thing is difficult to do on schedule.

More reminiscing tomorrow, unless I die of old age in my sleep.

Cats, Pillows, Pain, Death

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dangers of the Forest.

I've always found the underdog irresistible, so cartoons about animals eating people are automatically fun for me. That doesn't mean they're also "funny" but I think this one is kind of a giggle. Bacon bits, indeed. Ha.

My back hurts today. It is one of those sore muscles right in between my shoulder blades, you know the one. Evidently, anything you attempt to do with your body starts with this muscle. I can't touch my forefinger to my thumb without feeling a twinge in the middle of my back.

The way I achieved this unbearable malady was by throwing something at a cat in the middle of the night. There is a cat door in our bedroom and two nights ago when I went to bed the wind was blowing so hard that the cat door was staying open by a few inches and cold air was flowing in like a mini tornado. So I taped a piece of cardboard over it.

Even though none of our three cats had been out for hours because of the weather, they found this temporary barrier unacceptable and began picking at the edges of the cardboard with their little cat hands. I shouted at them a few times, which is as effective as blinking real hard at them, then eventually I rose up on one elbow and threw a pillow. Pinch went the back muscle, the cats scattered, and here I am.

Curse this mortal coil.

Happy Trails

Bizarro is brought to you today by High Class Motors.

I got lots of emails about this one. A few were from people who liked it because they'd had various types of personal experiences with babies on motorcycles (!) and the rest were from so-called "airheads," people who are fans of the BMW air-cooled "slash-5" series motorcycles from the early 1970s.

The bike in the pic is fashioned after mine, although mine is white, and many readers familiar with this era of BMW bikes recognized it and wrote to ask if I am an airhead. It was nice to meet so many other airheads around the country, thanks for checking in. Once the weather turns nice here in the northeast, how about we all meet for a weekend ride?

Thanks also to all of you who wrote to me with suggestions of where I should move to escape the NY winters. All were good suggestions, and I adding them to my research list. I suspect that eventually I shall end up in California somewhere, probably more southern than northern if only because of the weather, but you never know.

One thing that surprised me was how many people suggested Austin, Texas. It's a great town and I love it but I always sort of thought that it was because I used to live in Texas. It is nice to see that it ranked so highly among people nationwide, right alongside the SF Bay Area and southern California in general. Way to go, Austin!

Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, B.C. are all great and I'm very fond of it up there, but it rains too much. I've definitely got that light deprivation thing where if I don't get a LOT of sunshine, I begin invading neighboring countries and impaling people on tall sticks. Just bought one of those light-therapy-box-things and I hope it works.

Here's wishing you sunshine and unicorn until we meet again...

Shell X Games

Bizarro is brought to you today by Bag of Death.

The idea of snails attempting to jump pretzels was suggested by my good friend, Dick Cabeza. I loved the idea and am really happy with the way the illustration turned out. I like to draw abstracted, cartoony images, but for some reason this sort of idea is more appealing to me as a realistic drawing. It adds to the surreal quality.

Brooklyn warmed up yesterday and I took "the Beast" out for a spin for the first time in months. So rejuvinating. At times like these I wish I lived in one of those year-round-nice-weather climates that you hear about. The problem is, those places are understandably very expensive and often full of rich people who tend to skew conservative. Does anyone know of a terrific warm weather community of liberals and artsy types? Could be a big city or a small town, would prefer the U.S but it's not a deal breaker. Here in America, those kinds of communities tend to be in the north for some reason. Hawaii seems like a good option, but it's so isolated from the rest of the world and live events come on TV so early there.

Dr. Prevaricator

Bizarro is brought to you today by a Visit to the Doctor.

Regular readers will remember that two days ago I claimed it was my birthday and that I was off to the doctor for my yearly checkup. Both things happened, here is the update:

1. Because of my birthday claim, a handful of you donated funds to my paypal account and received a personal email of thanks from me. I am touched. My heart is weeping. I feel goo in my shoes. Honestly, you are too kind and I assure you that the money will not be spent on booze, courtesans, cheap cigars or flashy clothing. Nor will I spend it on unnecessary items. (ba da boom)

2.Doctor visit was fine. He looked at, around, over, and in me and found nothing alarming. He also borrowed some bodily fluids for further testing (I told him he could keep them, no need to give them back) and told me to call next week for results. I'll let you know if any particularly dark news comes my way, but I'm not expecting any, as I have no symptoms.

Except for my gushing eyes, which continue to weep from the kindness shown by those of you who hit the "donate" button at right. Garsh, I'm beside myself.

Dog Day

Bizarro is brought to you today by Navin's Cake.

I haven't had a birthday in a while, so let's say today is my birthday. Please donate lots of money to me with the PayPal donation button on the right. I'm only a little bit famous and not rich at all, so I could really use it. Go for it. If everyone who reads this blog donates just $5, I'll have over $40 to spend on something nice for myself!

I normally post a contest on Thursdays, but I'm not going to be able to today because I have to pay a relative stranger to put his finger in my butt. Yes, it's time for my yearly checkup. To find out what I'm going to die of and how soon, check this blog tomorrow.

You're dandy and deep down inside, you know it.