The Silent Treatment
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, a short essay, and then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner Wayno, whose weekly blog post I highly recommend.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
* * * *
Greetings and welcome, Jazz Pickles. It’s good to imagine seeing your faces. Thanks for virtually dropping by.
I’m not a person with a lot of phobias, but one I have suffered since childhood is that of incarceration. I blame Dr. Spock.
Not the Star Trek character, Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, but rather, the famous pediatrician who, in the 1940s, wrote one of the best-selling books of the 20th century. In Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare, he advised a radical new way of raising children that is still popular today as the book continues to sell. His approach advocated treating your children as individuals and giving them plenty of affection. (Gasp!)
This crazy theory was in stark contrast to the traditional methods of childrearing: beating them half to death for any infraction and sending them off to work in a factory by the age of five. Conservatives criticized him for what they saw as an overly liberal approach that they thought would ruin the world. What a surprise.
One of his basic tenets was to replace spanking with a kind of “time out” (though it was not he who coined that term); confining a misbehaving child to their room for half an hour or so. My mother adopted this practice, and it quickly taught me how much I would hate prison. I’ve been terrified of any form of confinement ever since.
I also hate being beaten, though, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. If nothing else, “time outs” kept me out of prison. Thanks, Mom! And Dr. Spock.
Flash forward to the 21st century…
In the past dozen years or so, amusement venues called “escape rooms” (among a few other names) have become quite popular all over the world. Typically, a small group of people will pay a few bucks to be locked in a room in which they have to look for clues and solve puzzles to gain entry into the next room, then the next, and the next, until they get out. I participated in an escape room once, and the resulting panic attack I suffered was profoundly embarrassing, setting off alarms and resulting in someone calling an ambulance.
Okay, I did not panic, but it would have made for a better story if I had. My wife, daughters, sons-in-law, and I solved the puzzles, and we all got out alive and chuckly. It was kind of fun.
Flash forward to last year when Olive Oyl and I were honeymooning in Europe. A couple of friends of ours, Chris and Mitchell, were also traveling there, and via a little texting, we realized we were all going to be in the same little town in Switzerland on the same day; we were heading from Italy to Paris, they were traveling from Paris to somewhere East or South. So we got together for fondue (a Swiss invention, I’m told) and had a jolly time.
As we dipped bread into hot cheese, Chris suggested a cartoon idea to me—a “mime escape room”—and the drawing above was the eventual result. I love the simplicity and weirdness of this one, with each cliché mime acting out their efforts to escape. The lady at left grasps a doorknob (that never works!), the guy in the back is swinging an invisible sledgehammer or axe (a rule violation), the dude in front is battling with the ubiquitous invisible box (he must have brought the damn thing with him), and the guy on the far right is just leaning against the omnipresent invisible mantle, stumped.
A few years ago, I’d done another cartoon that Chris suggested (below), which he reminded me of when I told him how excited I was to illustrate the mime one. Thanks for both suggestions, Chris! I’ll be expecting a new brilliant idea in another six years.
Finally, I’ve been typing like a durability tester at a keyboard factory lately and have some fresh articles, stories, and essays in the queue for my new subscription newsletter! I am very close to launching it and inviting folks to subscribe. Details about that soon!
I think you’re going to like it. I’ve even been making myself laugh while writing, and that’s a good sign.
The Naked Cartoonist—coming soon! (The newsletter, not the exhibitionist.)
* * * *
Time now to see what Wayno is exhibiting in his Bizarro cartoons from the week!…
They both brought their better half. (The guy and his dummy, that is.)
It is said that Satan has an extensive collection of antiques. Also a gold toilet and a desire to rule the world. (Who does that remind me of?)
You gotta protect that brain, kid. It was a bitch to install.
Magic balls: oldest line in the world.
Now also available as a whistle.
FUN ALERT: Wayno’s band (sans tuba) just released a new album. Check it out here. Buy the CD here!
Thanks for joining us for another stroll through ‘toon town. We hope you didn’t get mugged.
If you enjoy what we do and that we do it for free, please consider helping us keep this site free of ads and clickbait via one of the links below. These email lists are expensive, and newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur. (The real ones, not the ones Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says were on Noah’s Ark.)
Till next time, try to strike a reasonable balance between loving and dumping.
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels
King Features Subscription + archive access
COMICS KINGDOM SHOP (now with Bizarro products!)
WAYNO’S TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!