Welcome to the Tom the Dancing Bug Review.
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Good morning, good people.
Still trying to figure out Substack’s new social media feature, Notes. Will it destroy and replace Twitter? Or is it just a way to bother my newsletter subscribers?
Why not both?
This week’s comic is a SUPER-FUN-PAK COMIX, featuring “Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler from 1909,” “How to Not Draw Doug,” and MORE!
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 @ed_mundy and new member Tonto Svensen.
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My friend and hero Al Jaffee passed away on Monday. (NYT obituary here. Michael Cavna Washington Post article here. The Comics Journal article, with the fascinating biographical details here. My Twitter thread starts here.)
Al had a storied, legendary 65 year career at Mad magazine, where he did features like the Fold-In and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, and countless others, and was an essential part of an institution that helped shape American humor in the 20th century.
What a giant of cartooning and humor. I’m proud to have known him, and to know that he was as kind, charming, and funny a man as anyone would hope the cartoonist would be.
Just a few weeks ago, it was Al’s 102nd birthday, and I wrote a little bit about him in the Inner Hive mailing. I’ll lift the veil of exclusivity and share the passage here.
“One of the great pleasures of my own cartooning life has been becoming friends with Al. I met him at a party very early in my career, and I couldn't believe I was standing before of one of my great cartooning heroes. And I was absolutely floored when he said that he knew my comics, and then discussed them with me.
"Anyway, I bring this all up because I want to show you one of my favorite pictures -- I can't believe it exists. This is Al (left) and fellow Mad Magazine legend Will Elder clowning around at lunchtime in school! Two of the great cartoonists of all time, caught in an historic photo as kids.
“Al told me of the time in junior high school he and Will and some other kids were called out of class and brought to a room where they were each given a pencil and paper, and told to draw something. Al thought they were in trouble for something, but his friend Will whispered to him (Al performed this line in a heavy Bronx accent), "I t'ink dey're gonna to send us ta art school!" Will was right; they were among the first to attend what later became known as the LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts in NYC. Al said it changed his life.”
In May of 2020 word got out that Al was ailing. His beloved wife Joyce had passed away, and he had what was believed to be Covid. He couldn’t have visitors, so I went to his building and dropped off this get well card, a takeoff of his Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.
A few months later, when my The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader book came out, I dropped if off at his building. His work has been an inspiration for my entire career, but I feel that my SFPC comics are in a particularly direct lineage, and I just wanted to leave the compilation at the doorstep of the master.
Anyway, at least I know one of our conversations was memorialized: I interviewed him, with Mark Frauenfelder, at Al’s studio, for the podcast Gweek, in 2011. You can listen in to this fascinating man here. (You can also search for it on Apple podcasts.)
Please forgive me for starting the interview and then taking too long to get to Al’s first question — I hadn’t yet learned the podcaster’s trick of giving a preamble, and then introducing the guest and starting the interview.
Somewhere in my office I have an illustration he drew of me at my drawing table with two heads (because I use a pen name). I’m going to go on an all-out search for that — hopefully I can share it in this space soon. Or maybe just the Inner Hive… (?)
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This week’s Classic Tom the Dancing Bug (published on GoComics yesterday) is the oft-reprinted “Hummer: Now Everyone Will Know” (from 2006).
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And this week the GoComics Super-Fun-Pak Comix page has featured comics from this installment (from 1999).
Alterna-Laffs: Was I the first satirist to do a vicious satirical takedown of himself?
Anyway, apparently waffle irons are to my comics what fish skeletons were to Al Jaffee’s.
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Please remember that we are in the middle of the April 2023 Inner Hive Drive! You can join the team that makes Tom the Dancing Bug possible, get some comics, and save children. Info below!
Yours Indeed,
Rb
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The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program continues with its brand newest book:
Volume 4 - Tom the Dancing Bug: All-Mighty Comics!!
PERSONALIZED, SIGNED, AND SKETCHED-IN BOOKS ARE BEING SENT OUT EVEN AS YOU READ THIS SENTENCE.
TOM THE DANCING BUG: ALL-MIGHTY COMIC S, VOLUME 4 IN THE COMPLETE TOM THE DANCING BUG -- 2003-2006. Clover Press’s Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program streaks forward with the fourth chronological volume, covering every installment of the award-winning (and two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist) comic strip, from 2003-2006.
This volume includes favorite characters of Tom the Dancing Bug, such as: God-Man, the Omnipotent Superhero; Charley the Australopithecine; Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer; Dinkle, the Un-Lovable Loser; and even the origin of Lucky Ducky. It also includes a special comic Bolling created for Mad Magazine during the covered years: “Educa-Fun.”
Tom the Dancing Bug is the wildly popular, groundbreaking comic strip that Mark Hamill called “wondrous, whimsical, and witty,” and that led Seth Meyers to recently write, “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!”
Order any of the Complete Tom the Dancing Bug books directly from me (with the “SIGNED/SKETCHED OFFERS” here’s the link again), and I’ll sign the book(s) and draw an illustration in it/them.
AND you will get an authenticated bookmark with your copy of All-Mighty Comics. (You’ll also get corresponding signed bookmarks with any of the other books, but only while supplies last.) Who doesn’t love bookmarks? PLUS you will get a special sticker with your purchase of All-Mighty Comics!
VISIT THE TOM THE NEW DANCING BUG STORE to peruse the entire Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program, and more!
Buy one, buy two, collect ‘em all!
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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
Join me on Mastadon (@rubenbolling@mastodon.social) and/or on Post.news (@rubenbolling) and/or on Spoutible (@rubenbolling). I’m also dabbling in Counter.Social. I’m still on Twitter, but not happy about it and it will probably self-destruct any minute.
I am also on (mostly just posting comics): Facebook and Instagram.
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My email address is tomdbug at gmail dot com
The Tom the Dancing Bug Review. Copyright 2023 Ruben Bolling.