# 519 “Bizarro” creator Dan Piraro

Bizarro

When Dan Piraro started his cartoon “Bizarro“, some of the factors you might expect were involved in the decision, but the Superman character wasn’t one of them! Dan wasn’t into superhero comics; in this episode we hear the rather, er, bizarro story of how he learned of his strip’s non-namesake (it involves Jerry Seinfeld!); how The Far Side blazed a trail for Bizarro (not in the way you might think!); if having a syndicated comic is still a good deal (if, in fact, it ever was); his forays into fine art, vaudeville, and coloring books; and much more.

#330 “Doonesbury”: Polarizing and Unifying

Doonesbury castWhen Doonesbury started nearly 42 years ago, Garry Trudeau was a hot young property, the undergrad student cartoonist who spoke the language of “today’s youth”. Now age 64, Trudeau can hardly make that claim, but instead he can take credit for a monumental strip chronicling the lives of his many cast members and their lives growing old in the social and political environments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Tim and Kumar assess the strip’s legacy, discuss Brian Walker’s Doonesbury and the Art of G. B. Trudeau, and review the past year’s worth of strips.