Brief Visits

(To see any image on this page largerated, click on any object in any cartoon that starts with an “S”.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Baby Cheeses.

I was once on the back deck of a ship, tossing pieces of bread up into the air to watch seagulls catch them. After a while, I held them up in my hand and they would dip down and take them from me. Eventually, I decided to hold one in my mouth and, as predicted, a seagull swooped down and took it from my mouth. It also cut my lip pretty well with its razor-sharp, man-eating beak. The seagull in my title panel above was drawn from memory as the last thing I saw before I got this scar on my lip. Try it sometime, it’s fun.

Today’s  cartoon is one of my favorites, of late. I love the notion that even though this poor slob is stranded on a tiny island, he cannot escape evangelists. I currently live in a guest house behind a “real” house, so I’m removed from the street by about sixty yards and a locked gate. I love that I don’t have to answer the door for strangers. I often see well-dressed, door-to-door Jesus salesmen in the neighborhood as I come and go, however, and I can’t help but wonder if anyone ever lets these people in and then converts to their faith. For the people trudging up and down the street, I always wonder if they ever, ever, even once have any success in their evangelistic efforts, or if it is the payoff is simply the process of sacrifice as they walk mile after mile being rejected time and time again.

As a person who was taught to use my brain in all things, gather evidence, and then decide for myself about any given situation, I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone has ever been converted to a new religion by a door-to-door salesman. I’m sure I’m wrong, it’s just that I am loathe to imagine a person so willing to accept an enormous, enternal, invisible world full of super heroes and villains from the mouth of a random stranger. Takes all kinds, I guess.

VINTAGE JAZZ: Here’s another favorite cartoon of mine, this one from 1999. I came up with this idea while thinking about the actual physics of a “bottomless pit,” if such a thing existed. I enjoy pointless mental exercises like this. I guess that’s one reason I’m a cartoonist. Another reason is that it keeps me off the streets where evangelists can accost me.