Geek Tragedy
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 this week.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
Cock-a-doodle-doo, Jazz Pickles.
That greeting seems appropriate this week as we discuss lesser-known characters of Greek Mythology.
You’re probably familiar with centaurs (half-human, half-horse) and satyrs (half-horny-human, half-goat), but few are acquainted with the half-human, half-chicken, poultraurs.
Poultraurs subsisted on a diet of insects, worms, greens, and berries, just like regular chickens. This made them unpopular dinner guests, as they were almost as difficult to cook for as vegans.
On the plus side, watching them prance around the yard on human legs, pecking the ground, could be amusing. I won’t even get into their reproductive process, as it was fairly disturbing.
I confess the above comic contains an inaccuracy: the poultraur I’ve drawn has the head of a hen, which are female, but is referred to as a “brother.” My bad. I chose the head of a hen because it is inherently funnier than that of a rooster. I’m not sure why, exactly, but that’s my comedy instinct after nearly half a century as a humorist.
Sadly, poultraurs are extinct. During the severe famine Greece endured during WWII, the top half of poultraurs were widely consumed. It led to the expression, “finger-licking semi-cannibalism,” a phrase that was partially appropriated by a certain American fast-food chain a few years later.
If you enjoy these little cloud-burst blog posts, you’ll doubtless thrill to my creative writing project, The Naked Cartoonist. It’s $5 a month for the entire archive and a new article every two weeks. It’s one of the ways I’m supporting Olive Oyl and myself, as well as paying Wayno to do his award-winning thing.
My most recent article is titled “Ten Things I Have in Common with Trump.” It’s a political satire that includes such points as: “We have each been married three times,” (though none of my wives left me because I cheated on them with a porn star); “I have put my name on things” (such as my underwear when I went to summer camp, but never buildings that were already named or a catalog of cheap crap), etc. Here’s a preview:
I Have Fantasized About Being a Superhero
When I was four years old, my mother ordered a Superman suit for me from a catalog and snapped a photo as I posed before running outside to pretend to fly. I was not an 80-year-old leader of the (previously) free world, nor did I share those images on social media, but my mother kept the photo in my childhood scrapbook.
That’s an actual photo of me on the left, while the image at right is some of the stellar work of a mindless robot. This article will doubtless cost me a few subscriptions if I have any MAGA fans left, which I doubt. Oh well.
Time now for the week’s Bizarro comics by Wayno, or Captain Chuckles, as they call him in the Marvel Universe.
The third and fourth Secret Symbols in this one were hard to find even for me.
O2 and I recently endured a cafe musician who was worse than a tone-deaf, drunken, karaoke singer.
Full disclosure: I’m completely against live music in restaurants. It is invariably too loud. If I wanted to eliminate any chance of meaningful conversation with unbearable noise, I’d dine in a teenager’s bedroom.
Once they start to embed computer chips in our brains, this will be inevitable. Rented movies & series on Amazon Prime now include commercial breaks, I guess because Bezos doesn’t have enough money to keep up with his new wife’s plastic surgery addiction.
Speaking of big brass, years ago, in NYC, I happened upon a performance by Edward Babb and the McCullough Sons of Thunder. I can honestly say it was a spiritual experience. Here’s a short clip on YouTube. To skip the long intro, the music starts at 3:25.
In contrast, I’ve never encountered a sermon that could do what that thundering band I mentioned in the comment above did. IMHO, music has an unexplainable, mystical power.
If there were one of these in the White House, a certain grievance-baby-in-chief would never come above ground.
That brings us to the end of this week’s thingamajig. If you enjoy the things we do and that we offer this majig for free, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We will think of you fondly, with gratitude.
The Naked Cartoonist…My every-other-week creative-writing subscription service.
Limited edition, signed & numbered prints of BIZARRO CARTOONS, and some ORIGINALS!
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. (ALL the comics are still funny, no matter what month it is now!)