A Head of Its Time
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday Bizarro comic above is mine, as are the comments below. The past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics that follow were written and drawn by my 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.
My Sunday comic this week (above) memorializes both the ancient comic strip, Nancy, and the ancient giant Olmec heads found in Mexico. There have been 17 of these carved heads found to date, weighing several tons each. Dating from around 1000 BCE to 1500 BCE, they were carved long before Columbus stumbled upon the New World.
Similarly, the comic strip, Nancy, is from a time before humor, but that was its creator, Ernie Bushmiller’s intent. Over the nearly fifty years he drew Nancy, he intentionally directed the strip to be the definition of simple in both graphics and content.
Beetle Bailey’s creator, Mort Walker, told me that as a young cartoonist, he was excited to meet the already-famous Bushmiller and asked what he thought of his own relatively new comic about a dimwitted army private. Bushmiller responded enthusiastically, “It’s good, but you’ve got to dumb it down. Dumb it down!”
Bushmiller died in 1982, but the strip continues to this day, having been passed from artist to artist every few years, all of whom have tried to update it and make it funny.
In recent years, the original Nancy has come to be revered and almost deified by professional cartoonists. I don’t follow newspaper comics and can’t say I’ve seen a single version done since Bushmiller’s death, but I suspect it is safe to say that the admiration Nancy has engendered among cartoonists is because it was simple and lame. It seems to me that updating its graphics or content is a losing game, like adding furniture and appliances to a zen garden.
I confess that while I can (sort of) understand my colleagues’ reverence for Nancy, I’ve never been a fan. Though I’m not immune to loving something for its awfulness—Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda by writer/director Ed Wood are two of my favorite films for that very reason—Nancy isn’t in my wheelhouse. The Olmec heads are, however!
I’ve read a bit about them and have seen one at the National Museum of Archeology in Mexico City. All of them have facial features that are reminiscent of Africans, which led early researchers to the fascinating theory that Africans may have crossed the Atlantic long before Columbus, but that theory has been debunked. Indigenous people from the Mexican Gulf coast still look much like the sculptures, and genetic testing has shown they have no African heritage.
Since moving to Mexico, Olive Oyl and I have visited many of the amazing archeological sites scattered about the country. It is truly heartbreaking how many people, cultures, buildings, and artifacts were destroyed by the conquerors, but such is human history.
Luckily, that kind of barbarism is behind us now, and we can look forward to a more just and peaceful future.
Yeah, right.
On a happier note, let’s find out what Wayno has been up to with his Bizarro cartoons from the week…
We had a poltergeist in our laundry room last week. Our washer and dryer conked out within a couple of days of each other and they were not bought around the same time. We hope the geist left with the old units because its poltern was expensive and inconvenient.
In Wayno’s blog post this week, he features a vintage book of French swear words that could have inspired this gag.
This cartoon is a challenge for native English speakers, but students of the language would likely be completely lost. (Hint: that’s not a typo.)
For my Sunday cartoon at the top of this page, I planned a head.
I could’ve included this cartoon in my blog post from last week about ventriloquists, but that would have been a spoiler.
I suspect this is why so many women dye their hair red.
That concludes this week’s cartoon shenanigans, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for your eyes and chuckles. If you’re enjoying our free content, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We’ll consider you a full partner of our Bizarro mission.
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.
Signed, numbered, limited-edition prints and original Bizarro panels
COMICS KINGDOM SHOP Now with Bizarro shirts, prints, & other crap!
