July 28th, 2011

Komic Kavalcade

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Sweet Fashion.

I don’t know if there is an “official” name for this trick of combining names that match front-to-back or whatever, but I call it a “name train.” I’ve always thought they were fun so here’s one I hadn’t heard before. If you’re wondering who any of these people are, they can be found on Wikipedia. For you younger readers, Gore Vidal is the guy in the middle. (Who names their baby “Gore,” and why?)

Our French painter (we know he is French because he has a big nose, a funny mustache, and a beret, in spite of his absurd lack of a cigarette) is an amusing little visual gag the likes of which one might have found in MAD Magazine back in the day. I, too, have a big nose and a funny mustache, but I never wear a beret. So I am not French.

The thing I enjoyed most about drawing the Graffiti Nerds cartoon was thinking up the graffiti. This gag is actually based on old-school graffiti, which virtually always had an angry message of some sort. Nowadays, graffitizers, or “taggers,” as they are called, only write their name. I must admit that the point of this “tagging” escapes me. Messages or drawings I understand, but just painting a name on everything seems a little unambitious.When I see a name numerous times in my neighborhood all I really know about this person is that he has a lot of free time.