Author: Ruben Bolling

The Number Six Tom the Dancing Bug of 2023:

The Republican Circus: Woke (from the week of March 20)

(I can’t help but mention that members of Tom the Dancing Bug’s Inner Hive received a secret, exclusive FIFTH Republican Circus Woke cartoon!)

The Number Seven Tom the Dancing Bug of 2023:

The Super-Fun-Pak Comix from the week of January 16

The Number Eight Tom the Dancing Bug of 2023:

Chagrin Falls: “The Online Life” (from the week of July 10)

The Number Nine Tom the Dancing Bug of 2023:

MAGAbert (from the week of February 27)

In case you’ve forgotten:

Ring the bells, alert the media. It’s time once again for that beloved year-end tradition, the annual Top Ten Tom the Dancing Bugs of the Year Countdown!

Coming in at Number Ten:

Donald and John, in “Little Donald’s Brain” (from the week of November 13)

What is the Number Nine Tom the Dancing Bug of 2023? You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out!

Here is a year-end rundown of Tom the Dancing Bug links and ways to get more Tom the Dancing Bug in your life:

👉 First and easiest, you can sign up for the free weekly Tom the Dancing Bug Review newsletter here. In each edition, you’ll get links to the weekly comic, plus other comics and stuff. No muss, no fuss.

👉 Second and bestest, you join Tom the Dancing Bug’s INNER HIVE! What is the Inner Hive?  It’s a paid subscription service. It’s a secret society. It’s a ragtag group of ne’er-do-wells with ideas that are so crazy, they just might work.

It’s the team that literally makes it possible for Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this world.

And we want YOU as a member!  Every week, you’ll get an email with that week’s Tom the Dancing Bug AT LEAST A DAY BEFORE IT’S PUBLISHED ANYWHERE ONLINE.  Plus exclusive commentary, insights, process pics, extra comics, jokes, puzzles, recipes, and all benefits accruing.

How can you join?  Let me count the ways:

1. You can join on Patreon, now the most popular platform for new Inner Hivers, offering not only emails but also a website on which you can read the posts.  Plus, the Patreon option offers different levels of membership, with varying benefits.  (Monthly automatic recurring payments.)

2.  You can join at MailChimp/CampaignZee, the platform on which the Inner Hive was first launched, way back in 2012, offering weekly emails only (no website option). (Semi-annual automatic recurring payments.)

3.  You can join on Substack, the latest platform to join the Inner Hive family.  (Monthly or annual automatic recurring payments.)

4.  You can avoid third-party subscriptions services and automatic recurring payments by joining on a two-year non-recurring membership, directly from me.

No matter how you join, you’ll earn the adoration of a grateful nation and world.

👉 Third and most exciting, there is the ongoing Complete Tom the Dancing Bug book program. Every single Tom the Dancing Bug comic EVER, lusciously published by Clover Press in multiple volumes, each covering a four or five year period of the strip’s 33(!) year history.

The books are sold at online retailers and whatever brick-and-mortar retailers are still around, but you can also buy them directly from me, right here! There are various options for buying them signed, personalized, with a hand-drawn illustration, with additional swag, etc. FUN!

👉 Fourth, I guess, is following me on social media. You can follow @RubenBolling on Threads, Bluesky,  Mastodon, Spoutible, and/or Post. And Facebook and Instagram. Aside from posting comics, I’ve recently been spending the most time on Threads and Bluesky.

–

However you choose to read, subscribe, join, buy or follow, I thank you for joining me on my Tom the Dancing Bug journey!

Yours in Comics,

Ruben

This holiday season, you can give that special someone(s) a 2024 Gift Membership(s) to Tom the Dancing Bug’s INNER HIVE.

That’s right, you can give a loved one / friend / frenemy a membership to the INNER HIVE, and from the moment you sign them up (e.g., today?) and throughout 2024 they will receive the weekly INNER HIVE emails containing:

👉 that week’s Tom the Dancing Bug comic, at least a day before it’s published online; and

👉 exclusive commentary, extra comics, contests, giveaways, word-find puzzles, and advice for the lovelorn

👉 and all other benefits and privileges of membership will be conferred up on them.

$49.99.  Simply sign up here, by entering the recipient’s name and the email address the INNER HIVE mailings should be sent to. Then click the “Buy Now” button.

Name of gift RECIPIENT

Email address of gift RECIPIENT

It is for you to inform the recipient of the gift.  The recipient will simply receive the next INNER HIVE email after you sign them up.  I do provide you with a spiffy and festive graphic announcing the gift that you can use.

*You can also use the above form to RENEW an existing gift membership.*

Alternatively, $77.00 annual and $7 monthly gift subscriptions through Substack can be purchased here. These annual subscriptions last for exactly one year from the time of sign-up. (Note: the page calls it a “The Tom the Dancing Bug Review Subscription,” but because it is paid, it is also an Inner Hive subscription)

-Terms and Conditions apply. They always do.

-The $49.99 Gift Membership offer here is for an Inner Hive membership through MailChimp from time of sign-up through 12/31/24.  Payment is for starting the membership.  Recipient may cancel at any time (there’s no accounting for taste). These $49.99 Gift Memberships DO NOT AUTOMATICALLY RENEW; they will terminate on 12/31/24 without any action on your or the recipient’s part.

More info on the INNER HIVE is here.

IT’S THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING, EVERY DING-DONG WEEK, UNTIL IT STOPS.

Thank you, and have a Merry/Happy Everything.

Rb

For any questions, you can contact me at tomdbug at gmail dot com

Yes, I wrote the headline in the third person. Sounds just a bit more exciting.

I’m announcing this later than I’d have liked because it took a while for this to all come together, but I’ll be at the New York Comic Con on Sunday, October 15 for two signings:

One is with the National Cartoonists Society, at table #4106, where I’ll be selling /signing / sketching in copies of the new book On the Trail of Tom the Dancing Bug. I’ll bring along some other books in addition. You might want to come early (and come often), because there’s only so many books I can lug around. I’ll be sure to be there 10am – noon.

Then from 2pm-3pm, I’ll be at the Z2 Comics table, #4509, where I’ll be participating in a signing for the book The Illustrated Al: The Songs of “Weird Al” Yankovic, for which I contributed some pages. The answer to your question is: No, “Weird Al” will not be there. Just a bunch of happy-go-lucky cartoonists who are all his close, personal friends.

Check back here for any changes or updates prior to Sunday. On Sunday, any unanticipated changes or updates will be announced (unfortunately) on Twitter/X at @rubenbolling.

GUARANTEED: High fives, fist bumps, belly laughs, kissed babies, lifelong friendships made.

I’m so proud of the list of people who came out to endorse and support my Complete Tom the Dancing Bug books when its first volume was published, I can’t help overhyping the blurbs. I was blown away that these people, each of whom who I consider personal inspirations and heroes, would do this for my comic strip. It’s honestly one of the best things that’s happened in my career, and I’m forever grateful to each one of these people.

–

“Ruben Bolling’s craft and commentary are as powerful and as pointed, as capable of making you laugh while breaking your heart as they were when we were all so very young.” – from Neil Gaiman’s Foreword to Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse

“God bless Tom the Dancing Bug! Funny, succinct, and highly original, Ruben Bolling is able to make sense from the chaos and tragedy of America’s political nightmares and make you laugh while doing it. An increasingly rare and more difficult feat these extra bleak days. This is worth your time and money. Do it!” -David Cross

“Behold the wondrous, whimsical, witty world that is Tom the Dancing Bug! If you’re someone who’s not a fan of potent political humor with an incisive absurdist twist that’s not only consistently funny, but downright therapeutic for an ailing world, I suggest you avoid this book like the plague. For everyone else, it’s a MUST-READ!” -Mark Hamill

“Delve into the dementia, the dread, and the delightfulness of this collection of Tom the Dancing Bug’s strips — it’s history through the lens of a self-loathing insomniac. In a way, it’s all of us.” -Patton Oswalt

“Ruben Bolling has been sending me his secret messages for years, in the form of comics printed first on paper, and then, once paper became extinct, on the internet. I don’t know exactly what he’s trying to tell me, except he seems to know about everything I find funny, delightful, strange and inexplicable to get my attention, from obscure literary references to negging deep dish pizza. I don’t understand exactly what exactly he’s trying to say to me, but I still obsessively keep reading, not just because he’s hilarious, but because someday I hope to find out who this Tom the bug is, and why he is dancing.” -Peter Sagal

“This fine collection of work by Mr. Bolling provides ample evidence as to why he is unanimously considered one of the greatest cartoonists in the known universe. How he would rank in that other part of the universe is, of course, a matter that’s still being hotly debated within the scientific community.” -“Weird Al” Yankovic

“I am a HUGE fan of Tom the Dancing Bug! It makes me laugh and think of course but it makes me feel better. No kidding, I read it and I think, someone else thinks like me, only funnier and better informed and I feel good. Thank you Ruben Bolling for giving us Tom The Dancing Bug. (Can’t decide whether to capitalize ‘the’).” -Gary Gulman

“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!” -Seth Meyers

“Each week Ruben Bolling takes an unassuming little blank white rectangle and fills it up with clever cartoonery, sneaky commentary, and more political laughs than you can shake a stick at. All hail Tom the Dancing Bug!” -Matt Groening 

–

Please be sure not to press the CLICK HERE! button too hard; you may damage your computer.

🙏