Author: Ruben Bolling

Scalia’s Dissent

Ruben Bolling

Loyal Team Dancing Bug member @grok_ (I assume that's merely her Twitter name, not her full name) reports that this morning she met Justice Antonin Scalia, presented him with this Tom the Dancing Bug comic and requested that he sign it.

 

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@grok_ reports:  

 

Scalia reads the last three panels, looks up at me, and says "You're very pretty, but NO." … [H]e said his signature "could be construed the wrong way"

 

Isn't that just like the live-on-the-razor's-edge Judge Scalia of the comics?  He's afraid of the interpretation of his signature on a comic strip, but not of hitting on someone.  Rock on, Judge Scalia!

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

 

Keeping the Spirit Alive

Ruben Bolling

As Google has stylishly noted, today would have been the late cartoonist Will Eisner's 94th birthday.

 

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Eisner was a comics master and pioneer, a true genius and absolutely revered by his and every successive generation of cartoonists.

 

This past Thursday night, I went to a reception for the opening of an amazing exhibit, "Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel," at the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art in NYC.  

 

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It's an astounding show, with many, many knee-buckling, historic originals on display.  For example, it's got the originals for ALL SEVEN PAGES of one of Eisner's most famous works, his Spirit episode, "The Story of Gerhard Shnobble"!  (At the reception, I had the thrill of walking through these pages with Jules Feiffer, himself a legendary cartoonist, for whom Eisner was a mentor, employer and collaborator.  Wow.)

 

There's another part of the show, "In the Spirit of Will Eisner:  Creators Influenced by the Legendary Cartoonist," that's also amazing.  Cartoonists explain, often quite eloquently, how Eisner influenced them in a specific original piece shown.  What a group:

 

Neal Adams, Sergio Aragones, Terry Beatty, Nick Cardy, Darwyn Cooke, Eric Drooker, Jules Feiffer, Michael T. Gilbert, Dean Haspiel, Al Jaffee, Klaus Janson, Jack Kirby, Denis Kitchen, Joe Kubert, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Batton Lash, Steve Leialoha, Michael Avon Oeming, Peter Poplaski, Joe Quesada, Paul Rivoche, Trina Robbins, Jerry Robinson, Stan Sakai, Mark Schultz, R. Sikoryak, Art Spiegelman, Wally Wood and Steve Ditko.

 

By the way, in addition to an Eisner-esque street scene, Neal Adams contributed the Eisner-irrelevant but awesome original to his 1970's insane masterpiece cover for Superman vs. Muhammad Ali comic book.  It's worth the price of admission alone for its blend of kitsch and genuine artistry.

 

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But this section of the exhibit brought to mind the power Eisner's work had over my own career.  I discovered his work when I was just stating to draw comics in my school newspaper, and I was in awe of it.  It truly was an inspiration, and his work not only permeates my career in countless subtle ways, but one of my very earliest school-based Tom the Dancing Bug comics was an explicit homage, although a very awkward one, to his style.

 

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If you are in or near NYC from now through June 30, I'd highly recommend checking out this exhibit.

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

 

 

 

 

 

Comment of the week (so far)

Ruben Bolling

 

 

From "Anonymous," at Boing Boing:

 

"As a mental health professional, and having heard Charlie Sheen's recent rants, I think there is a very high probability that his current mental state is reflective of either a hypomanic or manic episode. He is thought disordered, with tangentiality in his speech which could be an indication of a psychosis, and there is evident grandiosity in his thought content.

 

I think he is likely suffering from a severe mental illness at this time.
It is sad to see people making fun out of this, and it's consequences in terms of his own actions and utterances, but it's probably out of ignorance rather than malice.

 

If the guy is a being a bit quirky, by all means have a go at him, but if he's evidently mentally ill, don't contribute to the ubiquitous stigma that people with real mental illnesses have to put up with on a daily basis.

 

Go look up 'mania' on wikipedia for a start."

 

You know, I thought about this briefly before I did the comic.  But this comment, which makes some fair points, made me stop and think about it again.  I decided to go ahead with the comic because I personally have no idea what Charlie Sheen's diagnosis is.  Yes, his behavior and thought process have been erratic (and, I'm sure, display some textbook symptoms), but making fun of the erratic, dumb  and/or hypocritical behavior of those who have power and fame is what satirists do.  To take a far easier case, I wouldn't hesitate to make fun of Qaddafi for fear of being insensitive, and he even more clearly has some sort of mental illness.  More to the point, unless Sheen had been actually and publicly diagnosed, it's very unlikely that anyone reading the comic would ever think the intent of the comic was to poke fun at mental illness.  

 

But while this seems to be about a contractual dispute involving a lucrative TV sitcom, there are obviously tragic and horrific elements to Charlie Sheen's behavior, including violence toward women.  And the story took a very sad turn this morning when his children were taken away from him by court order.  But I wouldn't have done the comic if I didn't feel I could compartmentalize his recent public performances and contractual dispute, as distinct from his family and personal situation.  Look, in the past 10 years I've had to satirize and find humor in various, compartmentalized elements of national tragedies, terrifying wars and economic disasters.

 

In any case, I found Sheen's interviews hilarious and entertaining, and did a comic about them.  Aside from that, I do recognize that this is a man in a terrible crisis that goes way beyond his employment situation (in doing "research" for the comic I learned a lot more about him), and I hope he and his family come through it well and healthy.

 

THIS WEEK’S COMIC

Ruben Bolling

HERE is this week's comic, "After the Revolution."

 

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I'm not one to publish essays explaining a comic strip, but I did want to point out a couple of the things that got me thinking about this one.

 

I was pointed to this study by Paul Krugman, and it's pretty remarkable.

 

Percentage of Program Beneficiaries Who Report They “Have Not Used a Government Social Program”

Program

“No, Have Not Used a Government Social Program”

529 or Coverdell

64.3

Home Mortgage Interest Deduction

60.0

Hope or Lifetime Learning Tax Credit

59.6

Student Loans

53.3

Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

51.7

Earned Income Tax Credit

47.1

Social Security—Retirement & Survivors

44.1

Pell Grants

43.1

Unemployment Insurance

43.0

Veterans Benefits (other than G.I. Bill)

41.7

G.I. Bill

40.3

Medicare

39.8

Head Start

37.2

Social Security Disability

28.7

Supplemental Security Income

28.2

Medicaid

27.8

Welfare/Public Assistance

27.4

Government Subsidized Housing

27.4

Food Stamps

25.4
Source: Suzanne Mettler, “Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenge of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era,” Perspectives on Politics (September 2010): 809.

 

This doesn't say that 44% of Americans forget that Social Security is a social benefit program.  It says that 44% of people who ACTUALLY RECEIVE Social Security were UNAWARE that they had received any social benefits from the government.

 

And I remembered this study that shows which states are net recipients of federal funds (receive more from the federal government than they pay in taxes), and which are net donors of federal funds (pay more in taxes than they receive).  Notice anything about the political philosophy and attitude toward the federal government of the states that generally are net recipients?

 

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