Tom the Dancing Bug

Last updated
Tom the Dancing Bug
Author(s) Ruben Bolling
Website https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug
Current status/scheduleWeekly
Launch dateJune 8, 1990;33 years ago (June 8, 1990) (on New York Perspectives )
Syndicate(s) Quaternary Features (1990–1997)
Universal Press Syndicate/Universal Uclick/Andrews McMeel Syndication (1997–present)
Publisher(s) HarperPerennial, NBM Publishing, Andrews McMeel Publishing
Genre(s) Humor, comedy political humor, satire, absurdist humour, postmodernist comedy

Tom the Dancing Bug is a weekly satirical comic strip by cartoonist and political commentator Ruben Bolling that covers mostly US current events from a liberal point of view. Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008, [1] and 2009 [2] Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards for Best Cartoon. The strip was awarded the 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial cartooning by the Society of Professional Journalists [3] and best cartoon in the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards. [4] His work on the strip won Bolling the 2017 Herblock Prize [5] [6] and the 2021 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons, [7] [8] [9] and he was a finalist in the Editorial Cartooning category for the 2019 [10] and 2021 [11] Pulitzer Prize.

Contents

Publication history

As Bolling recounted in an interview:

I started Tom the Dancing Bug in 1990 in a small New York newspaper. It was called New York Perspectives, then it was called New York Weekly, then it was called "bankrupt." But before it went bankrupt, I was able to sell the strip to a few other papers. For seven years, I was sending packages out and following up with phone calls, trying to get editors to run the strip. I ended up selling it to about 60 newspapers [under the name Quaternary Features]. I was surprised at the success I had, especially in selling to daily newspapers. I didn't think it would be my market. In 1997, the Universal Press Syndicate approached me and asked if we could work together. That came at just the right time, as I was starting a more serious day job, and I was about to have my first baby. I just didn't have the time and energy to devote to the selling of the strip. I decided that whatever job they did would be better than whatever I could put forth at that time. [12]

The strip appears in mainstream and alternative weekly newspapers, as well as on the Boing Boing website. At its peak, it was syndicated in print in over 100 newspapers. [13] It ran on Salon.com from 1995 until March 18, 2010. [14]

In 2012, Bolling launched a subscription service, the Inner Hive, [15] which he credits with keeping the comic going amid declines in print newspapers. [16]

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, and especially with the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, Tom the Dancing Bug's focus became more overtly political. When accepting the Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons on May 4, 2022, Bolling said, "When it started, it was just about apolitical. It was usually about a prehistoric ape-man, or an idiotic time traveler, or something even sillier. The comic strip got more political, more often, as it went along, certainly taking a turn after 9/11. But it was at the rise of Trump in 2016 that I just about handed the comic strip to what I saw as the most important political phenomenon of my lifetime." [9]

Bolling also explained his approach to satire, pre- and post-Trump, at the same dinner:

In the before days, pre-Trumpism, my age-old satirist trick was to exaggerate and twist my target's position to expose its hypocrisy or flaws. But you can't exaggerate Trump. He does it before you can. And he's better at it. And then he'll double down on that. And forget about exposing the logical flaws in Trumpist positions - let's just say that logic is not their intended feature. So one technique I've developed is that instead of exaggerating, I'll recontextualize. I take exactly what's happening and put it in a new context to shine a different light on it. ... So I'll take the January 6 insurrection and the QAnon followers waiting for the Great Storm, and put it in the context of the Peanuts comic strip and cartoon, and Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. After all, what comes after Peanuts, but Q-Nuts. In a similar vein, when it was revealed back in 2016 that Donald Trump used to call reporters and pretend to be his own publicist, I started this Calvin and Hobbes pastiche series with little Donald and his imaginary publicist John. ... In this 2020 comic, I put certain Americans' refusal to wear masks during a pandemic into the context of a 1940s newsreel about the sacrifices Americans will and won't make for the good of the country. [9]

Recurring characters and segments

Tom the Dancing Bug has no real narrative continuity. The title itself is a dadaist non-sequitur, as there is no character called "Tom the Dancing Bug" ever seen or referred to in the strip.

Some individual strips are one-shot "stand-alone" presentations, but certain recurring features within the strip are seen regularly on a rotating basis. One of the most popular recurring segments, "Super-Fun-Pak Comix", appears roughly once every month or two, and is dealt with in a separate entry, below. Other features currently seen on a fairly frequent basis include:

Super-Fun-Pak Comix

A recurring feature, Super Fun-Pak Comix consists of four to six smaller strips, grouped together. These collections of smaller comic strips poke fun at the typical conventions and clichés of modern comic strips. For example, they commonly make fun of stereotypical New Yorker cartoon settings, such as two people sitting across a desk or a husband and wife at home reading the paper. Individual comics can also be based around peculiar or bizarre concepts, like 'Funny Only to Six-year-olds' or 'Comic Designed to Fit Vertical Spaces'. Many Fun-Pak strips are one-offs, but there are also numerous recurring strips, and occasionally, some Fun-Pak space is taken up by a fake ad for unlikely products. As well, some recurring long-form Tom The Dancing Bug comics occasionally make Fun-Pak appearances in a shorter format, and a few recurring Fun-Pak characters (Percival Dunwoody, Dinkle) have made appearances in a long-form strip.

Super-Fun-Pak Comix also appears as a daily strip on gocomix.com. [19]

Currently recurring mini-strips (not always seen in every Fun-Pak) include:

Following the September 11 attacks, Bolling used the Super Fun Pak Comix format to acknowledge the events; the punchline to each one of the comics was, "Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, killing thousands". [20]

Books

Several book-form collections have been published:

In 2020, Bolling began publishing a series containing the complete set of Tom the Dancing Bug comic strips. The first volume, Into the Trumpverse, collected strips from 2016-2019. Bolling then began adding volumes in reverse chronological order, dubbing Into the Trumpverse as Volume 7. Thus far, volumes 7 through 3 have been published.

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References

  1. ↑ Gardner, Alan. Ruben Bolling Wins Best Cartoon Award from AAN Archived 2021-03-03 at the Wayback Machine . The Daily Cartoonist (June 10, 2008)
  2. ↑ Xerexes, Xavier. Onward Into the Webcomics Breach Archived 2021-03-01 at the Wayback Machine . Comix Talk (July 1, 2009)
  3. ↑ "Tom the Dancing Bug Blog". Gocomics.typepad.com. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved 2014-02-22.
  4. ↑ FULL LIST: 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Award Winners Archived 2021-02-25 at the Wayback Machine (May 3, 2018)
  5. ↑ "'Tom The Dancing Bug' Creator Ruben Bolling Awarded The 2017 Herblock Prize". GoComics. Archived from the original on 2018-03-03. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
  6. ↑ "Ruben Bolling (Pen name of Ken Fisher) | the Herb Block Foundation". Archived from the original on 2017-03-06. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
  7. ↑ Degg, D. D. (May 11, 2022). "Ruben Bolling Wins 2021 Berryman Award". The Daily Cartoonist. Archived from the original on January 17, 2024. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Ruben Bolling wins 2021 Berryman Cartoonist Award". National Press Foundation. November 1, 2021. Archived from the original on January 20, 2022. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 Winning Editorial Cartoonist Accepts Berryman Award Archived 2022-05-11 at the Wayback Machine (May 10, 2022)
  10. ↑ "Finalist in editorial cartooning: Ken Fisher, drawing as Ruben Bolling, freelancer". Pulitzer Prize. 2019. Archived from the original on 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  11. ↑ "Finalist: Ken Fisher, drawing as Ruben Bolling, for "Tom the Dancing Bug," Andrews McMeel Syndicate". Pulitzer Prize. 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-06-13. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
  12. 1 2 Pikul, Corrie (2005-01-14). "The mystery man behind "Tom the Dancing Bug"". Archived from the original on 2006-07-19.
  13. ↑ @RubenBolling (March 21, 2021). "This is sadly true. Tom the Dancing Bug used to be in well over 100 print newspapers, and for a while in the NYT ab…" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  14. ↑ Bolling, Ruben (2010-03-22). "Salon, so long". Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2010-03-29. Salon.com has informed me that they have canceled Tom the Dancing Bug.... I was told that the cancellation was made because of 'severe budget constraints,' and that traffic for the comic continued to be good.
  15. ↑ Bolling, Reuben (May 9, 2012). "Come on and join Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE!". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on 2015-07-29. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  16. ↑ Roth, Stephen (November 26, 2018). "Politics Through the Compound Eyes of 'Tom the Dancing Bug". GoComics. Archived from the original on 2021-04-18. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  17. ↑ Manjoo, Farhad (2002), "March of the "lucky duckies"", Salon, archived from the original on 2024-05-20, retrieved 2010-05-13
  18. ↑ Bolonik, Kera (2006). "The world according to Ruben Bolling". Archived from the original on 2009-11-04. Retrieved 2010-11-19.
  19. ↑ Bolling, Ruben. "Super-Fun-Pak Comix by Ruben Bolling". GoComics. Archived from the original on 2020-04-16. Retrieved 2020-04-27.
  20. ↑ Bolling, Ruben (2001-09-29). "Tom the Dancing Bug Comic Strip, September 29, 2001 on GoComics.com". Tom the Dancing Bug. GoComics.com. Archived from the original on 2010-07-11. Retrieved 13 May 2010.
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