Giant Steps
Your cartoonist appears in another cartoonist's cartoon.
Happy Saturday, and welcome to the last newsletter for September 2024.
In today’s blog entry, we give thanks for the life and music of John Coltrane, and share a pipe pic with a sweet backstory.
The calendar says September, but in the studio, I’ve been thinking of late November and working on gags for Thanksgiving week, plus some non-holiday jokes.
Looking Ahead & Looking Back
Here’s one of three turkeys appearing the week of November 25. I’m referring to characters within the comics, not the comics themselves (hopefully).
Our first throwback is a contemplative portrait of John Coltrane, commissioned by Rhino Records in the early 2000s.
On a sillier note, here’s a “recordhead” photo I did before I had daily cartoon deadlines.
Finally, this sketch was done at a charity event in 2016. It’s not exactly a self-portrait. Maybe it’s my spirit animal.
Cartoonists as Characters
A recent installment of Dee Fish’s autobiographical comic Finding Dee (a Silver Reuben nominee) featured fellow cartoonists Dana Simpson, Jamar Nicholas, and yours truly. Dee is a terrific cartoonist, and her inking skills are spectacular. I particularly like the way she incorporated each person’s comics into their panel. Very nice job on the Secret Symbols, Dee!
You can support Dee’s work as an independent cartoonist for as little as one dollar per month via her Patreon page, where you can read new installments of Finding Dee, her humor strip Dandy & Company, and read chapters of The Havenwolf Chronicles, her series of werewolf novels.
This Week in Bizarro History
Laffs From the Past
This meta gag was one of my favorites from last year. Despite the expanse of white space, drawing the wallpaper and showing the character looking at a wall we can’t see took as much time as any other panel.
The strip version was extra fun, showing the back of several sheets of wallpaper. The closest I’ve ever come to a blank, text-only strip.
As always, thank you for subscribing to the blog and reading Bizarro.
Keep those pipe pics, questions, and t-shirt modeling photos coming in! This newsletter is for you, and your input makes it better.
See you next week.
With best wishes from your cartoonist,
Wayno
I’m pretty much always impressed with the wording of your captions as punchlines, but I wonder if “Fourth Wallpaper” might have been snappier in this case?