Yesterday in Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine:
A Stephan Pastis specialty, the formula pun — or setup / payoff pun — joke (with a final panel in which the character Rat threatens the cartoonist (as a cartoon character) with violence for committing a preposterous pun
Two things then: The joke form, and Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young”.
The 10/7 Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, posted here because it’s sweetly bizarre (true to the strip’s title), multifariously playful, cleverly goofy. Something to enjoy for a moment in the midst of terrible times.
(#1) It’s all about the original Star Trek tv series (if you have somehow missed learning about the show, the cartoon will be incomprehensible to you); the top-level joke is in the title: the flannel frontier, a silly pun on the final frontier — but there’s a lot more (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
Say the secret word, and a prop duck made in the image of Groucho Marx drops down, to riotous applause and blaring horns — and you get prize money. That was American tv’s You Bet Your Life from 1950 to 1961 (roughly, my teenage years). And then in a Pearls Before Swine comic strip from 2006:
(#1) Another self-referential strip by Stephan Pastis (it’s one of his specialties) — the secret word is the idiomatic (originally biblical) phrase (cast) pearls before swine — turning on shtick that disappeared from live tv about 65 years ago (but apparently lives on in pop-cultural consciousness, or at least in Pastis’s)
A comic poem and a cartoon for October.
In the new issue of the New Yorker (9/29/25), two monsters stalk the cartoons in its pages: Joe Dator’s hysterically creepy Wine That Breathes (It’s alive!) and Michael Maslin’s Cyclops waiter at work in an intimate little urban restaurant otherwise located in the waiter’s home territory, the hills of ancient Greco-Roman mythology.
🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to bring September in (also to bring in the first fall month in the northern hemisphere) and, this year, to celebrate (US) Labor Day (recognizing the union movement and honoring workers) — so that I bring you (cartoon) rabbits in hard hats:
(#1) Lola and Bugs Bunny, in an HBO Max series from 2023, Bugs Bunny Builders: Hard Hat Time
Which takes me to September cartoons from the New Yorker, beginning with a scene-setting item from 2022:
Today’s Dan Piraro Bizarro cartoon, in which the roles of ordinary life are Bizarro-reversed:
(#1) Those are living, breathing inkblots sitting in the chairs: a therapist inkblot showing a picture to a client inkblot; where you expect people, you get inkblot entities, and where you expect the picture of an inkblot, you get the picture of a person (in the title panel and the main panel, there are a ton of odd symbols; if you’re puzzled by them, see this Page)
Abstracting away from the details, we’re looking at two instances of the situation XXY:
— XXY: a situation in which three entities — two Xs (a therapist and a client) and a Y — are participants in an event in which the therapist X shows a reproduction of a Y to the client X
Today’s Bizarro brings us the percussion section of a marching band, a section composed entirely of Grim Reapers — yes, Reaper percussion, portmanteaued to Reapercussion:
Wayno’s title: “Halftime Dirge” — since they’re marching on a (US) football field (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
Today’s Pearls Before Swine (by Stephan Pastis), with one of the cartoonist’s formula pun jokes (in a set-up / pay-off format):
(#1) The 5/18/25 strip “Four Scored”: Rat engages in a wandering conversation with his neighbor Nancy, then summarizes their talk for Pig, in a gigantic complex pun on the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”; in the last (meta) panel, Lincoln appears, to shame the cartoonist for his outrage
… and your buddy’s on the case, we’ll get the miscreant, trust me! That’s the burden of this goofy Desert Island cartoon in the latest (5/12&19/25) issue of the New Yorker:
(#1) Bill’s priceless facial expression suggests that he’s not buying his companion’s attempt at deflection (more…)
