Mystery Solved!
Last toke: 19 days
Last smoke: 12 days

Dan Piraro, creator of the Bizarro comic, was kind enough to reply to my email regarding the dual captions in his comic published last week. I submit the explanation in his own words:

Thanks for writing, Drake.

Here's the story behind the duel captions.

The cartoon with the "stupid rant" was my original submission. My editor at King Features, however, informed me that he had been getting a lot of complaints from various editors about my left-wing politics and that running this cartoon could result in some cancellations. King is totally on my side in these things, but always warn me when something can potentially affect my client list.
Not wishing to lose my voice entirely, I sent in a replacement caption for the same picture. Here's where it turns into a French farce.

I routinely send in the black and white versions of my cartoons a week before I send the color. When I colored that cartoon and sent it in electronically, I forgot to substitute the tamer caption. So some markets, the one's that buy Bizarro in color and any web sites where Bizarro appears, ran the gay spouse cartoon. The others ran the more tame version.

Based on your indelicate email I'm certain you are among those who support this sort of bigotry, so I won't bother defending my beliefs.

Thanks again for writing, hope this clears things up.

Cheers,
Dan

I appreciate Dan's willingness to respond, being a national celebrity and all. I'm sure it must be comforting to some of my other Internet contacts, that I am no respecter of persons when it comes to insulting and pissing off people of the liberal persuasion.

It's also good to know that there was nothing more insidious than a simple oversight by an artist who is truly gifted, albeit a bit misguided.
- posted by The Drake @ 7:33 AM