This week’s comic is “All the President’s Billionaires,” about fearless journalism in the age of Trump.
Read this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug on GoComics HERE.
Read this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug on BoingBoing HERE.
Read this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug on DailyKos HERE.
Brought to you by the Inner Hive, including longtime member the Dread Pirate Joseph and new member Rob S..
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This week’s comic is in response to a disgraceful development at The Washington Post. On Friday, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned in protest from her position at the paper after her editor killed her comic depicting Post owner Jeff Bezos, among others, offering up a bag of cash to Trump.
Here’s a post I wrote about the Telnaes story; it appeared Saturday morning on Boing Boing:
I hope you won’t mind me using this opportunity to make a pitch for supporting the endeavors of political cartoonists. As billionaires and giant corporations gobble up outlets, our opportunities for cartooning with integrity at media organizations have been whittled down to almost zero, and even gaining an audience on social media has become riddled with difficult moral choices. I had to throw away my Twitter account and a significant audience I had built up over years there.
It looks like Ann is throwing her creative energies into a paid Substack page, and I applaud her. (I offered to help her with my experience in the subscription model, but after our conversation, I don’t think I was much help — she already had a good handle on what she wanted to do.)
For a combination of economic, technological, and, I’m sure, political reasons, I’ve gone from about 150 print newspapers clients (e.g., Tom the Dancing Bug was in The Washington Post for about ten years) to a relative handful. It was the direct reader subscription model — what I call Tom the Dancing Bug’s Inner Hive — that saved the strip.
The Inner Hive is the most important component of the various sources — the Hive, web clients, print clients, book sales, etc. — from which I’ve been able to cobble a viable cartooning enterprise.
So whether it’s Ann, or me, or someone else, or any combination: If you like a political cartoonist, please do consider throwing something our way if you can, so that we can continue satirizing the powerful, including the powerful media that used to employ us.
If you haven’t joined already, won’t you consider supporting your friendly neighborhood comic strip, and joining the team that makes Tom the Dancing Bug possible?
The weekly Inner Hive Dispatches include each week’s comic, at least a day before it’s published anywhere else, plus other exclusive content and commentary. For example, this past week’s included exclusive information about The Washington Post situation.
You can upgrade to the Inner Hive here on Substack by choosing one of the paid options at the “Upgrade to the Inner Hive” button below👇
If you want to help out in the horrific situation in Los Angeles, here are some ideas for places you can donate to.
UPDATE: 1/10/25 4:45pm ET
If you were thinking of signing up for the Inner Hive, this would be a good time to do it.
From now (Friday, 1/10/25, 1pm ET) until midnight Sunday night (ET), if you sign up for any annual Inner Hive membership, I’ll donate $33* to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation to help the LAFD save lives and protect property, such as creating emergency fire shelters, and purchasing essential equipment such as hydration backpacks and woodland brush tools.
You can purchase an annual membership on Patreon here(toggle the “Pay annually” switch).
You can purchase a membership on Substack here. (Hit the Subscribe button, and choose a paid annual membership).
Members of the Inner Hive get each week’s Tom the Dancing Bug comic emailed to them at least a day before it’s published, plus extra comics, commentary, exclusive info, etc.
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*$33 (comes to $2.79 per month) is the base price of an annual Inner Hive membership on Patreon.
By the way, I’m not sure if you noticed that our presidentially appointed Billionaire Overlord is using the fires to scapegoat Blacks and Jews.
Good job, America!
Rb
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