It's a wonderful billionaire life

"No man is a failure who has a billion dollars."

Dec 20, 2024

Seasoned Greetings.

As billionaires have completed their hostile takeover of the country, and it is now up to the whim of Elon Musk whether the government functions or not, I present this week’s comic, “It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter,” a look at that Christmas classic from the perspective of our current billionocracy.

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 Tokyo & J. and new member for Steve Kostelecky.

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Today starts the annual countdown of the Top Ten Tom the Dancing Bugs of the year, and you can follow along on the Tom the Dancing Bug blog, or on social media on Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, or right here on Substack’s Notes.

The countdown will take the weekend off, but then resume on Monday, and continue right through to New Year’s Eve Day, when the NUMBER ONE TOM THE DANCING BUG OF 2024 will be revealed.

Note that slots ten through four have been determined by an objective proprietary scientific process, but that process’s TOP THREE will be voted on by the flawlessly accurate Inner Hive next week for final judgement.

And so, to be posted on the blog and to social media later today, I reveal exclusively to readers of the Tom the Dancing Bug Review, THE NUMBER TEN TOM THE DANCING BUG OF 2024:

SUPER-FUN-PAK COMIX: MICKEY MOUSE, from the week of January 1.

Number Nine to be revealed Monday on the blog and social media.

Join the Inner Hive today, and one of the many, many rights and privileges of your membership is that early next week, you’ll exclusively find out the top three and be granted voting rights to determine their final order!

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Ah, but the truth is, I don’t wait for a Disney character to lapse into the public domain before I use them for my own nefariously satirical purposes. This week’s Classic Tom the Dancing Bug (published on GoComics yesterday) is “Pinocchio, Inc.,” from 2014.

(A total coincidence: these Classics are queued up months in advance.)

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THE 2024 TOM THE DANCING BUG ANNUAL

Now available for sale: The 2024 Tom the Dancing Bug Annual, a pdf containing every Tom the Dancing Bug comic of the year (the year has closed: next week will be a rerun). Imagine the thrill of owning this virtual keepsake and comprehensive chronicle of the year in Tom the Dancing Bug.

You can buy this at my Patreon store. $14.99 cheap.

(If the price you are seeing is more than $14.99, you are viewing the store on Patreon’s Apple phone iOS app. Simply leave the app, and access the store any other way, such as on a web browser.)

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The GoComics Super-Fun-Pak Comix page has recently featured comics from this installment from 2014…

… and this installment from 2015.

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I’m now occasionally writing posts for Boing Boing. Here are a few of the items I wrote recently:

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Please have the very Happiest and Merriest of all Holidays, dear readers. 2025 is going to be a tough one, in ways Americans haven’t ever experienced. So let’s gather around our loved ones, and gather our strength and will for what’s ahead.

And if you’d like to join me for the struggles, and do a little bit to help ensure Tom the Dancing Bug survives them, I’d be honored if you’d join my Inner Hive for the coming year.

And more ways to Tom the Dancing Bug are below.

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Clover Press's promotional copy for the book:

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;
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The Tom the Dancing Bug shop at Threadless is growing.

Confuse your friends. Perplex your neighbors. Confound yourself. Various colors, styles, sizes available.

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In case you are interested:

Here is the official Tom the Dancing Bug webpage: tomthedancingbug.com

You can join me on:

Bluesky (@rubenbolling.bsky.social)
Threads (@rubenbolling)
Instagram (@rubenbolling)
Facebook (facebook.com/rubenbolling)
Mastodon (@rubenbolling@mastodon.social)
Substack’s Notes (@tomthedancingbug)

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My email address is tomdbug at gmail dot com