Moby Richard

(For an enlarged view of this cartoon, click any character’s ear. For a look at your neighbors in their pajamas, click their doorbell at 7am on a Sunday.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Belly of the Whale.

This cartoon is a combination of the Moby Dick story and the common movie mechanism wherein a woman who is being followed by a spooky man goes up to a stranger and asks if he will pretend they are together so she can either hide or appear to have protection from her would-be assailant, thus scaring him away for the time being. In the movies, the kind stranger usually ends up helping her solve her dilemma and they fall in love. This also happens after this cartoon, but she and Moby can’t make it work because he is a violin-playing opium addict who is so involved with his career as a solver of crimes by means of acute observation that he is not available for an emotional commitment. It’s kind of sad, really.

The small number above the copyright symbol on my signature says there are 9 “secret symbols” in this cartoon, but I just found 10. You will likely need to enlarge the cartoon to find them all.