Big Noise
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 below-cartoon comments to follow.
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.
Season’s greetings, Jazz Pickles. No, it isn’t Christmastime yet—thank Santa—but it is still a season, and I greet you.
Gulliver’s Travels was a favorite story of mine as a kid. I loved how it inspired me to think of the highly relative nature of size. Quite naturally, it is easy to unconsciously assume that the starting point for size is us, and that anything smaller is “small,” and anything larger is “large.”
A couple of seconds is all you need to realize how misleading that can be. Compared to us, an ant is small, but compared to the Grand Canyon, we are smaller than an ant’s turd.
To envision your size relative to the Earth, imagine a ball with a diameter that reaches from Seattle to Baltimore—30% larger than our moon. If it were sitting atop Kansas (it would crush everything beneath it, but that’s not the point), its equator would stretch from California to the East Coast.
Now imagine the period at the end of this sentence on a ball that size, and you’ll be approximating the size of a single human relative to the Earth.
That’s why, for millions of years, humans thought the Earth was flat. Where you’re standing, it doesn’t look like a globe, but even on a flat, featureless plane, you’re only seeing 0.0000157% of the surface. To the period in my example above, it would be as if it were in the middle of a dinner plate sitting on Mercury.
At this scale, it is impossible to get a sense of the sphere on which we spin. To do that, you’d have to observe the movement of other celestial bodies and understand what that implies, and watch tall ships slipping below the horizon as they sail away, and be smart enough to figure out what all that meant. That was well beyond the capabilities of common Homo sapiens for a very long time, and still is.
However, why so many modern humans in possession of cell phones that work because of satellites orbiting this globe still think the Earth is flat is beyond even those brilliant early astronomers. More evidence that not every member of a species evolves at the same rate, I guess.
I’ll add that I’m not nearly as smart as those who figured out the world is round before space travel was possible. I would never be able to figure that out on my own had I not benefitted from the knowledge of so many much smarter people before me. I’m just not smart enough.
But I am smart enough to know that others are smarter than I am, and therein lies the key to why trusting experts is essential: most of us are dumbasses, but there are geniuses among us willing to help keep us from shooting ourselves in the face. One big trick to success in life is being smart enough not to refuse their help.
And that’s the reason that those who wish to dominate a society with authoritarianism routinely denounce experts and encourage people to disparage them. Once the masses distrust experts, they are living in a bubble of ignorance in which they will believe any nonsense you repeat often enough.
Anthony Fauci knows this very well, as do all of the scientists, medical professionals, academics, historians, and other invaluable experts who’ve lost their jobs or research funding since January of 2025.
Surely you didn’t think I’d make it through an entire post without going there.
Now let’s turn those frowns upside down by seeing where Wayno’s week of Bizarro cartoons goes…
In today’s world, unless you’re already a billionaire, that seminar isn’t going to do anything but remove a few more bucks from your pocket.
I submitted a similar comic years ago with the caption: The Princess and the Pee. My editor at King Features felt it was too coarse to publish. Shows you how much times have changed since the spoiled potty-mouth has been in office.
“Trump.”
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” “Grappling with hormonal forces.”
You just know they’re going to pee in that fountain before they leave.
They’d sleep better if they didn’t read that stuff.
That concludes another week of running poolside with scissors, Jazz Pickles. If you’re enjoying our free content each week, please recommend it to your friends and consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We promise not to pee in your fountain out of 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 women’s V-neck styles! (And some weird shit from other comics that doesn’t even belong in our shop. Sorry about that.)