Tired Myths
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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.