Today, Tom Tomorrow Reveals "The Thing That Ate America's Brain"

In the e-mail that brought today's TMW 'toon to the blogger's In Box, Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) also wrote:

The Lovecraftian horror that feeds off America’s chaos is one of my weirder recurrent characters, I fully acknowledge. I believe it has made three other appearances since 2014 or so, but this is probably its most appropriate moment. This is the first time it has come out of its cave, or chamber, or wherever the hell it dwells — part of the inspiration for this whole cartoon was the final panel, the idea of the creature getting its own show on Fox, complete with a waving flag backdrop. I wish I’d had room for a chyron and a Fox logo, but the panel was too crowded already. Obviously real Fox hosts do not wear MAGA caps on air but the image made me literally laugh, and I had to do it. I think if I bring the creature back again, it may well be to further explore its adventures as a Fox opinion host, “escalating the chaos and lunacy” it needs to survive, just like real-life Fox hosts.

The final panel was obviously re-written at the last minute to incorporate the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the chaotic SCOTUS fight likely to ensue. This was the original panel:

The font for this one is a reference to the old EC horror comic of the 1950s, which were often lettered using a lettering template. Each letter was inked by following a groove in the template, which gave the lettering a strange mechanical look. You can read more about it here, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Finally, a reminder that I have a new book out! There are some various ordering options here (scroll to bottom of the popup page). It’s very strange to have a book drop in the middle of a pandemic — no book party, no bookstore signings, none of the fun things that generally serve as the reward for slogging through the work necessary to get to this point. I don’t even have any copies of it yet myself! But I finally saw one in the wild, so I know it’s a real thing in the world, and it’s always nice to have a few more years of my work archived like this.

Be safe and be well,

Dan/Tom

And so, the 'toonist ends his commentary about today's 'toon. If this is (fair & balanced) insight into the world of cartooning, so be it.

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[x YouTube]
"The Liar Tweets Tonight" (Parody of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight")
By Roy Zimmerman and The ReZisters, featuring Sandy Riccardi

[x TMW]
The Thing That Ate America's Brain
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in the SF Weekly. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political blog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]

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