In the email that delivered today's "This Modern World" 'toon, the 'toonist — Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) also wrote:
There’s a song I heard on the radio at the neighborhood cafe on Hugo Street that I used to hang out in back in my San Francisco days, and this is going back 20-some years, but I was in a very transitional place in my life and a lyric stuck in my head: this is the end of something, or the start of another life. I’ve tried googling it and I’ve never managed to track that song down, but I still think of that line when I find myself moving through another liminal space. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, or just relieved to no longer have monsters running the government, but “life in the stupidverse” doesn’t quite seem to apply anymore. A cartoonist friend suggested “life in the not-quite-as-stupidverse,” but that didn’t feel quite right either (though if Republicans continue to be Republicans, it may well be where I land). But for this week’s installment of this particular recurrent format, I decided on “liminalverse.” The end of something *and* the start of another life.
A few notes about this one: Joe Biden has an *extremely* bland face. His most defining characteristic to my eye is his smile, but obviously I can’t have him smiling in every panel, or he’ll look like the white-haired guy standing behind Donald Trump. So I figure my caricature of him is going to be a work in progress. I’m happier with my latest attempt at Josh Hawley though. And the woman standing next to him is, of course, Lauren Boebert, member of the House freshman Q caucus. (I realize in retrospect I haven’t done much with Q Anon over the years — to borrow the title of one of my older books, there was Too Much Crazy elsewhere. Now that their prophecies of a mass roundup and execution of Democrats have failed to materialize, it will be interesting to see if they just fade away, or morph into something else.)
The real easter egg in this cartoon, to me, is the drawing of Donald Trump in disguise in the final panel. Initially I was just going to give him a fake moustache and sunglasses, and then it clicked that I could portray him as Andy Kaufman’s obnoxious lounge singer alter ego, Tony Clifton. I’m not sure if anyone will even pick up on that, but I figure the image works either way.
It’s a strange feeling to be filing a cartoon with a little more confidence that the news cycle won’t explode on Saturday night or Sunday morning, forcing a rewrite. I mean, knock on wood. But hopefully I’ll be able to transition back to the sort of work schedule I had pre-Trump, when I could wrap up a cartoon during the workweek and not have to keep one nervous eye on the news for the weekend. It didn’t happen this week, of course, given the midweek inauguration, and attendant uncertainties -- I finished this one just a few minutes ago. But hopefully things will be somewhat less crazy for awhile.
There are still enormous problems in this country — Pandemic, systemic racism, police violence, GOP obstructionism, and on and on. We are not going to be within several football fields of “normal” for a very long time, and normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be anyway. But just for a few days here, I’m going to enjoy the strange sense of quiet, with Trump out of office and banned from Twitter. It feels like someone has been camped outside of my home for years blasting loud music, like when they were trying to drive Noriega out of his compound, and suddenly the plug has been pulled and there’s just this blessed silence. I still find myself scrolling past a tweet from some representative or senator and reading it as if Republicans are still in charge, and then I remember — we’re in a different life now. What that means, remains to be seen.
Until next week,
Dan
Today, the second presidential impeachment in US history commence in the US House of Representatives and the Loser probably will face trial in the US Senate in early February. In Congress, a veritable Greek Chorus of followers/supporters of The Loser are reciting a litany of hypocritical assertions about the Dems' second impeachment that has destroyed "the political harmony" that has existed in the near-quarter-century since the R's impeached William Jefferson Clinton in 1998. In Texas, there is a saying about hypocrisy and untruth — "That dog won't hunt." If this is a (fair & balanced) description of political hypocrisy, so be it.
[TMW]
The Liminalverse
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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