Bizarro has been here (well the word has been used) for a decade. It has gained a lot of momentum. There are novels (of course), collections of short fiction, podcasts, music, movies, and more. We have become something more than a genre. We became a community.
Then, that community communicated and found out that some of them/a lot of them/most of them had other things in common.
A personal example: My (now) wife and I went to Indianapolis with our son for a week last March to get married. After being there for a couple days, I noticed that one of my Bizarro social media friends lived in Indianapolis. We messaged back and forth a few times. He ended up inviting my family to a dinner at his house one night. We arrived that evening and met his family; wife, kids, and even parents.
Bizarro is like that. We become more than people that read the same books. We become family. And, like any family, we need a symbol of where we came from. So here it is.
I made a Bizarro coat of arms topped with none other than a logo of the father of Bizarro himself, Carlton Mellick III. It then goes into the shield. The shield division of the checkerboard at the top and the color at the bottom symbolizes authority. The checkerboard pattern symbolizes both the wisdom and sincerity of the white and the resistance from the black showing that we can use our wisdom to resist traditional paths and still create sincere art. Purple symbolizes majesty and justice. The floating blue shapes represent truth and loyalty. These are all held together by the golden chevron, the core values of understanding and respect that we show our brothers and sisters. It is surrounded by an image of a fat cat (guess who) drawn by David Barbee. The cat on a coat of arms symbolizes liberty, vigilance, and courage. And, finally, it ends with the great publishing house that brings us some of the best Bizarro that eyes have ever read: The Eraserhead Press logo.
This is the Bizarro coat of arms. It can be used by anyone in our family (as long as Eraserhead Press does not mind and as long as you are not directly making money from it). If anyone would like, I can send you a much higher quality PDF.
