Bizarro is a single-panelcartoon written and drawn by AmericancartoonistDan Piraro and later by cartoonist Wayne "Wayno" Honath. The cartoon specializes in surrealist humor and at times is slightly cryptic in its humor. The creator often includes hidden symbols in the drawing that refer to inside jokes or other elements.
On January 1, 2018, Piraro's friend and colleague Wayne "Wayno" Honath took over creative duties on the daily strip, with Piraro continuing to do theSunday strip. Honath had collaborated on writing the strip since 2009, and drew it for a few previous stretches.[3]
Bizarro offers an eccentric, exaggerated and, as the name implies, bizarre look at everyday life. Piraro described it as "about the incredibly surreal things that happen to all of us in our so-called 'normal' lives."[4] The situations are surreal, yet often plausible. Some cartoons involve celebrities, while others makereference to themselves or characters from comics or animation (such asSuperman andGumby). Comics critic Tom Heintjes describedBizarro's themes, cryptic aspects and expansion into performance art:
Piraro has taken his panel in directions simultaneously surreal and topical. In a comic universe where world-weary talking dogs exist alongside nihilistic housewives, Piraro gives his cartoons heft by skewering his ownbêtes noires: wasteful consumerism, environmental destruction, corporate greed and sheeplike people, to name a few. (He also espouses animal rights in his work, for which the Humane Society honored him in January with its Genesis Award.) Though his humor is never didactic, Piraro's work is remarkable in its unwillingness to pander, even when the occasional panel borders on the inscrutable. (For example, he once used theEtruscans as a punchline; if you skipped history class that day, tough.) The 54-year-oldKansas City, Missouri, native has also begun participating in the nascent vaudeville revival with his one-manBizarro Bologna Show, an entertainment potpourri into which he incorporates puppetry, song, ventriloquism, mind reading and drawing (not to mention slides ofBizarro cartoons too blue for newspaper publication). Creatively restive, Piraro also produces fine art, some of which uses the Catholic imagery that he was exposed to at parochial school.[5]
The strip and its creator have received several awards, including theNational Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award (1999, 2000 and 2001). They were nominated for the NCSReuben Award each year from 2002 to 2010, finally winning in 2010.
In 2005, Piraro was seen in the 75th anniversary edition ofBlondie.
