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Hello, everybody.
This week’s comic:
News of the Times: School Shooter Kills Conservative Child Pundit.
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.
Read this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug on The Contrarian HERE.
Brought to you by the Inner Hive, including longtime member Ms. Willow and new member Mark Anderson.
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The Tom the Dancing Bug Review welcomes its first advertiser, and it’s one you can believe in. LifeLogic offers schools various lessons that can teach students about actual life skills. Things that are important for life — like how to write a check, what is insurance, how to check a car’s oil — but that schools, and usually not even parents, ever teach kids.
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Apologies for the broken GoComics link to last week’s comic. They apparently had unexplained (at least, unexplained to me) technical issues. The page has been fixed, but I’ll still just post the comic here.
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Je Suis Jimmy
I’ve got to tell you, this Jimmy Kimmel thing has got me rattled. Remember, he was not suspended for saying anything insensitive or offensive about Charlie Kirk or his murder. He was suspended simply for challenging the Trump administration’s narrative that Kirk was killed by the Left.
And he was suspended because Trump’s FCC Commissioner explicitly said that if Kimmel wasn’t punished, “there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” So the FCC threatened to abuse its regulatory power over ABC unless it silenced Kimmel. Like a mob lieutenant, he actually said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
The Colbert situation was horrifying enough (see the graphic in this week’s comic, drawn and published days before Kimmel was suspended: “Captured Broadcasting System”), but that was a general cowardly decision by a conservative conglomerate to bend the knee to the administration and remove liberal-leaning (reality-based) content.
This is the administration making a specific threat of illegal regulatory retribution for a commentator saying something that contradicts its position. (Which, by the way, is in itself an un-American and counter-factual position: That Trump is justified in abusing his power to try to destroy left-leaning institutions because liberals are “violent.”)
Yesterday morning, Trump called for the cancellation of Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. He’s raged like that for years, but it always seemed ineffectual and pathetic. Now it sounds like marching orders to his federal goons.
If he gets away with this, and I don’t doubt that he will, it truly portends the end of Democracy. We have a State Media in which only praise of Trump is permitted. This is Authoritarianism 101. Putin’s done it. Orban’s done it. God knows Mussolini and Hitler did it. Create an atmosphere in which people are afraid to criticize the government, and you’re left with a nation of state propaganda.
Trump doesn’t have to threaten every network and program. The chilling effect of the Kimmel example will cause everyone in the media to think twice before criticizing or even contradicting Trump.
In just a couple of hours, I’ll be at the a Writers Guild of America East rally to demand ABC bring back Jimmy Kimmel.
Here is a list of things you can do, from
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During this Trump administration, people have asked me if I’m worried about my own situation. And I’ve said that I’m protected by my relative obscurity. Why would Trumpists come after some online cartoonist when Colbert, Kimmel, etc. are satirizing him daily on giant television networks?
Well, now that level of insulation is pretty much gone, and who knows what commentator the moronic and unpredictable Trumpists will want to make an example of next? Or next? or next?
I have no doubt that if they want to harm me, they can. But at least the Inner Hive gives me some measure of financial safety. It’s made up of many free-thinking individuals, as opposed to one giant shareholder-beholden company. It may be crass to use this moment to pitch my own subscription service, but it is my lifeline, and if you want to throw a few bucks to support an independent voice in these times, I’d sure appreciate it.
(As I wrote above, the base annual fee for new sign-ups the rest of the month will get donated to help immigrants’ legal rights, so if you join today, it will be a financial boost for Immigration Law & Justice New York, and a morale boost for me.)
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Here’s an interview I did in anticipation of October's launch of the Kickstarter for Volumes One and Two of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug Library (Clover Press). I spoke to the energetic Kuya P at Nerds Rule the World about Tom the Dancing Bug, and it's now available on YouTube.
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This week’s Classic Tom the Dancing Bug (published on GoComics yesterday) is from 2016, but seems even more relevant today “ATTENTION ‘ILLEGALS’.”
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And the GoComics Super-Fun-Pak Comix page has recently featured comics from this installment (from 2024).
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I’m now occasionally writing posts for Boing Boing. Here are a couple of the items I wrote recently:
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And that’s it for this week. Information about LifeLogic is below. So is lots of info about how to Tom the Dancing Bug.
Have a good week, and stay out of trouble, except for Good Trouble,
Rb
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COMING: TWO NEW TOM THE DANCING BUG BOOKS!
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VOLUME 1 OF THE COMPLETE TOM THE DANCING BUG LIBRARY
Tom the Dancing Bug: Secret Origins, collecting the years 1990-1994
and
VOLUME 2 OF THE COMPLETE TOM THE DANCING BUG LIBRARY
Sex, Tom the Dancing Bug, & Rock 'n' Roll, collecting the years 1995-1998
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AND THE OTHER RELEASED VOLUMES OF THE COMPLETE TOM THE DANCING BUG LIBRARY
Volume 3, On the Trail of Tom the Dancing Bug (1999-2002), published June 2023
Volume 4, Tom the Dancing Bug: All-Mighty Comics (2003-2006), published October 2022.
Volume 5, Tom the Dancing Bug: Eat the Poor (2007-2011), published June 2022.
Volume 6, Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens (2012-2015), published December 2021.
Volume 7, Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse (2016-2019), published August 2020.
Volume 8, “It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug!” (2020-2023), published July 2024
Clover Press's promotional copy for the latest volume, Volume 8: “It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug!”:
Clover Press’s Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program bursts forward with the eighth chronological volume, covering all of the most recent installments of the comic strip, a two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist, from 2020-2023.
It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug! includes Bolling’s award-winning work covering the last year of the Trump presidency and the post-term MAGA insanity. All the favorite Tom the Dancing Bug characters try to make sense of the dark times of the early 2020s, including: the Smythe family of Chagrin Falls; Lucky Ducky, the poor little duck who’s rich in luck; and Billy Dare, boy adventurer. Also in the volume is Bolling’s comic contribution to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s hit graphic novel, The Illustrated Al.
Tom the Dancing Bug is the wildly popular, groundbreaking comic strip that has won multiple awards, including the Herblock Prize, the Berryman Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Mark Hamill called it “wondrous, whimsical, and witty,” and Seth Meyers recently wrote, “The fact that Tom the bug can keep dancing in this day and age is a testament to Ruben Bolling’s skills as a cartoonist!”
Buy your SIGNED/SKETCHED/SWAGGED copy of It's the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug, and you get:
Your copy of IT’S THE GREAT STORM, TOM THE DANCING BUG! signed/dated by me, and personalized if requested;
Your copy of IT’S THE GREAT STORM, TOM THE DANCING BUG! will have an illustration hand-drawn by me in it
A special authenticated (i.e. signed) It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug! bookmark;
A special It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug sticker (3.25″ x 4″)
An exclusive pdf booklet, The It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug, “Artist’s” Edition,
The option of purchasing another book from The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug Collection for only and extra $10, $20 or $30 (depending on volume), if you choose one of the GREAT STORM COMBOS
The 2024 Tom the Dancing Bug Annual pdf, containing every comic from the 2024, is available here.
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The Tom the Dancing Bug Review. Copyright 2025 Ruben Bolling.