A Tom the Dancing Bug from a few years back, per request of a member of Team Dancing Bug.
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Tag: tomthedancingbug
Come See Me!
Good news for those of you who like the sound of my voice and live in the Waukesha / New York City corridor: I've got two virtually consecutive speaking engagements coming up.
On April 7, I'll be making my first-ever appearance in the Milwaukee area, speaking at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha at 7:00. If you're in the area, please join the fun. I'll be discussing my career, comics and creativity, and I'll be announcing my new religion. Details here.
And then, consistent with the glamorous whirlwind of Important Engagements that is my life, on April 9, I'll be participating in a panel at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in New York City at 4:30, with the dapper Tim "The Pain" Kreider and the cranky Ted "Ted Rall" Rall. Prior to the panel, from 3:30-4:30, I'll be signing/sketching to raise funds for the museum at the MoCCA Sketch Table; please come by to say Hi. Details on the festival here.
At both events, I'll have Tom the Dancing Bug books to sell and sign.
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Battle of the Sexes
I mentioned that Scott Adams, of Dilbert, featured one of my comics on his website. Well, I've gotten a bit of blowback from various people informing me that Scott wrote some anti-female things on his blog recently (he took the post down due to the controversy).
I read the piece (even though he took it down, others have re-posted it on the web), and I didn't think it was particularly heinous. The gist of it seemed to be: Yes, some things are unfair to men, but other things are unfair to women, so suck it up, dudes. The most controversial thing he wrote was an unflattering, inflammatory analogy (intended to be humorous), which he carefully explained in the piece, and he later published a post admitting that "analogies are fighting words."
Personally, I'm a pretty staunch supporter of women's rights, but I know entering into this particular fray can be a minefield. I drew the below comic years ago, and feared a massive controversy. I got nothing (and I was a bit disappointed).
My point was that supporters of equal treatment for women in the world of commerce, like me, should find some level of hypocrisy in the concept of separate men's and women's sports. But I think the comic was way too complicated, and many readers either missed the point or gave up on the comic before they could glean it. I liked the idea, though, and it's a shame I didn't come up with a simpler way to express it.
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THIS WEEK’S COMIC
Featuring:
RECAP MAN;
THREE-ACT SCREENPLAY STRUCTURE FUNNIES;
GHOST OF JAMES CAAN;
FABULOUS GUY, IN A MOMENT OF REFLECTION;
PERCIVAL DUNWOODY;
THE WHOOPEE WHOOPI; AND
MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MORE*
_______________________________________
*Actually, no more.
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Tom the Dancing Bugbert
Hey, my comic on Risk Management (starring "Nate") is featured on Dilbert's homepage. Scott Adams is smiling as though he paused from drawing his comic strip to reflect on mine, and was amused.
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THIS WEEK’S COMIC
SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE PHANTOM BOND VIGILANTE! Man, did I have fun drawing this one; one of my childhood dreams was to work on Scooby-Doo.
Apologies to Hanna-Barbera-Krugman.
As a side note, due to an error on my part, this comic not only was published on Boing Boing a day too early, it also shut down any new posts on Boing Boing for about an hour, until the error could be fixed.
I've got to say: I've had many, diverse jobs in my life, and within those jobs, countless tasks, but I've never been incompetent at any of them until it became my weekly duty a couple of months ago to upload and post my comic to the Boing Boing website. I'm like the janitor whose broom handle knocks into the "off" switch at the power plant. And then the next week spills mop water on the main server.
BUT I WILL PREVAIL!
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THIS WEEK’S COMIC on Boing Boing
The triumphant return of Counter-Earth!
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Scalia’s Dissent
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.
@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!
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Keeping the Spirit Alive
As Google has stylishly noted, today would have been the late cartoonist Will Eisner's 94th birthday.
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.
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.
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.
If you are in or near NYC from now through June 30, I'd highly recommend checking out this exhibit.
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