Talons of Faith
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.
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.