Tom the Dancing Bug is a weekly satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 by cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 and political commentator Ruben Bolling

Ruben Bolling

Ruben Bolling is a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, a cartoonist, the author of Tom the Dancing Bug.- Biography :Bolling, who has no formal art training, read many comics when he was a child, and sometimes features their styles in his work...

 that covers current events from a liberal point of view. The strip appears in mainstream and alternative weekly newspapers, as well as on the Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...

 website. Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards for Best Cartoon. In 2011, the strip was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Award

Sigma Delta Chi Award

The Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism.- History :The Awards, according to the SPJ, did not begin in 1932 when the society chose six individuals for their contributions to journalism. In 1939 the awards program began...

 for editorial cartooning by the Society of Professional Journalists

Society of Professional Journalists

The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...

.

Recurring characters and segments

• Bob is the extremely average male. He sits at home drinking beer and watching scrambled porn on TV on the weekends, and tries to avoid doing chores and other household duties. During the week, he works in the cubicle by the elevator.

• Louis Maltby is an introverted kid with a major guilt complex. He's featured in segments like "Games Louis Plays", which describe how Louis looks at the world, and "The Education of Louis", which show his confusion at the world around him. Louis is used to make social commentary by displaying how school and society treats him, and may be semi-autobiographical. He also sometimes appears in other segments when a kid is needed and has an alter-ego, 'The Passive-Aggressor'.

• Charley is an australopithecine
  Australopithecine
  The term australopithecine refers generally to any species in the related genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus. These species occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene era, and were bipedal and dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than modern apes, lacking the...
  
   — a less-developed hominid
  Hominidae
  The Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
  
   from the pliocene
  Pliocene
  The Pliocene Epoch is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.332 million to 2.588 million years before present. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch...
  
   epoch. He does not have some of the more advanced emotions of humans. He has a taste for grape soft drink
  Soft drink
  A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
  
  s. He appears to be a satire of Curious George
  Curious George
  Curious George is the protagonist of a series of popular children's books by the same name, written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey. The books feature a curious brown monkey named George, who is brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with The Yellow Hat" to live with him in a big city.When...
  
  .

• Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer parodies the clichés used in boy adventurer stories. Billy is very similar in appearance to Tintin
  The Adventures of Tintin
  The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
  
  , the famous cartoon Belgian boy adventurer.

• Sam Roland, the Detective Who Dies is a Sam Spade
  Sam Spade
  Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....
  
  -esque noirish
  Film noir
  Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
  
   private detective, except that he always dies.

• God-Man is the omnipotent, omniscient superhero
  Superhero
  A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
  
  . Placed in normal superhero situations, he fights villains like Nietzsche-lad, Dr. Moral Relativism
  Moral relativism
  Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
  
   and Blasphemy
  Blasphemy
  Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
  
   Boy. God-Man's "mundane identity" (when he does not want to attract suspicion) is Milton Baxter. God-Man occasionally solves problems by re-creating the universe and organizing the atoms so that the problem is prevented in the first place. Bolling, speaking in an interview about readers who take offense to the God-Man strips, said "God-Man isn't actually God. He is a straw man that I'm using to make fun of some people's very simplistic views about religion and philosophy."

• Billy Billings is "God-Man's Pal", a parody of Jimmy Olsen
  Jimmy Olsen
  Jimmy Olsen is a fictional character who appears mainly in DC Comics’ Superman stories. Olsen is a young photojournalist working for the Daily Planet. He is close friends with Lois Lane, Clark Kent/Superman and Perry White...
  
  .

• Judge Scalia is an extremist version of the U.S. Supreme Court
  Supreme Court of the United States
  The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
  
   justice Antonin Scalia
  Antonin Scalia
  Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
  
  , used to criticize Justice Scalia's Supreme Court opinions and overall judicial philosophy.

• Lucky Ducky (purportedly from Wall Street Journal Comix) is a duck who despite being homeless, destitute, and working in a crummy job always manages to enrage his arch-nemesis, the very wealthy Hollingsworth Hound. Hollingsworth usually views any source of joy or happiness in Lucky's life to be too much of an advantage and does his best to eliminate it, claiming that the joy or happiness is at the expense of the rich. Hollingsworth tries to show that taxes especially hurt the poor, and demolish claims that they do not. Lucky Ducky first appeared after The Wall Street Journal
  The Wall Street Journal
  The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
  
  editorialized against progressive tax
  Progressive tax
  A progressive tax is a tax by which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases. "Progressive" describes a distribution effect on income or expenditure, referring to the way the rate progresses from low to high, where the average tax rate is less than the marginal tax rate...
  
   policies, calling poor
  Poverty
  Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
  
   workers "lucky duckies
  Lucky duckies
  Lucky duckies is a term that was used in Wall Street Journal editorials starting on 20 November 2002 to refer to Americans who pay no federal income tax because they are at an income level that is below the tax line...
  
  " because they have a smaller federal income tax burden.

• James K. Poult, a Mallard Fillmore
  Mallard Fillmore
  Mallard Fillmore is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bruce Tinsley that has been syndicated by King Features Syndicate since May 30, 1994. The strip follows the exploits of its title character, an anthropomorphic green-plumaged duck who works as a politically conservative reporter at...
  
   parody, is an "unbiased media chicken" with multiple conservative media outlets.

• Harvey Richards Esq., Lawyer for Children is about a lawyer who works for children by using the standard children's tricks for getting out of things or getting people to do things ("My fingers were crossed!" "I called no crossies!"). The point is that lawyers act an awful lot like young children. The character has been optioned for a feature film by New Line Cinema, to be co-produced by Universal Press Syndicate's AMUSE division.

• Larry Dodson is an "average joe" type character whom the art world has called "the most important artist of the 21st century."

• News of the Times and other unnamed segments parody current events.

• Nate the Neoconservative is a neoconservative who refuses to admit his mistakes.

• Did You Know? points out "Fun Facts" in all sorts of things, poking fun at statistic-and-tidbit-obsessed society. The cult of celebrity is also a frequent target, with subversive trivia such as Nicole Kidman
  Nicole Kidman
  Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
  
   had to work as a waitress before she became famous, and not a single person asked her for her autograph and claiming that the Universe
  Universe
  The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
  
   has never been nominated for an Oscar
  Academy Awards
  An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
  
  .

• The Impossible Squad is a military squad of stereotypical 'tough guys', all sergeants that list 'explosives' as their expertise except for one member (whose specialty is usually extremely different from his squadmates). They consider explosives to be the only way to complete any mission. However, the 'different' member will always suggest another solution based on his skills but his idea is usually shot down by the rest of the team (probably because it doesn't involve the direct use of explosives).

• Hollywood Tales are stories that depict Hollywood celebrities, featuring realistic (but static) likeness of their faces, in humorous situations.

• The Outer Reaches of Plot Twists parodies The Twilight Zone
  The Twilight Zone
  The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
  
   and Outer Limits
  The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
  The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
  
  , showing stories that use multiple plot twists to the point that suspension of disbelief is difficult to achieve.

• The Ghost of James Caan is a character introduced in a Hollywood Tales story concerning actor Zack Efron. He is supposed to be the disembodied spirit of actor James Caan, despite the fact that he is (as of the time of his ghost's introduction) still very much alive. This is also true within the comic, causing confusion to the other characters that appear alongside him.

Super-Fun-Pak Comix

These collections of smaller comic strips poke fun at the typical conventions and clichés of modern comic strips. For example, they commonly make fun of stereotypical New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

cartoon settings, such as two people sitting across a desk or a husband and wife at home reading the paper. The comics can also be based around peculiar or bizarre concepts, like 'Funny Only to Six-year-olds' or 'Comic Designed to Fit Vertical Spaces'. Larger Tom The Dancing Bug comics occasionally make an appearance in shorter forms.

Typical mini-strips include:

• Marital Mirth is about two married people who really hate each other and always have sex with other people, presumably making fun of married-people-hating-each-other jokes. It's supposedly drawn by bitter Rex Feinstein. Apparently it's a parody of The Lockhorns
  The Lockhorns
  The Lockhorns is a United States single-panel cartoon created in 1968 by Bill Hoest and distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. It is continued today by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner.-Characters and story:...
  
  .

• Uncle Cap'n is an old lazy pirate who swears and makes you do his work for him through supposed 'puzzles' and 'fun' (but usually illegal) activities. He is a parody of Cappy Dick.

• Selfish Gene is about a boy named Gene who only acts in ways that are beneficial to him under the framework of sociobiology
  Sociobiology
  Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
  
  . This is a reference to Richard Dawkins'
  Richard Dawkins
  Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
  
   The Selfish Gene.

• Doug is an anthropomorphic cartoon creature who is too generically drawn to be any particular type of animal. He is not of high intelligence and has few real talents. The How to Draw Doug scripts make fun of Doug's rather pathetic life.

• Classix Comix/Comix Playhouse is an extremely shortened comic form of famous plays and novels. This is apparently a reference to Classics Illustrated
  Classics Illustrated
  Classics Illustrated is a comic book series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad. Created by Albert Kanter, the series began publication in 1941 and finished its first run in 1971, producing 169 issues. Following the series' demise, various companies...
  
  , a series that provided classic books in shortened comic form.

• Elevator Ride of the Damned is dreadful elevator conversation in comic form.

• Stock Sitcom Gags Presented in Comic Form is self explanatory.

• Comics for the Elderly (formerly "Hey, Old People! Comics!") shows old people giving ornery advice to young people and the young people quickly accepting it.

• Funny, Funny Celebs shows celebrities saying inane things as a parody of the respect we give to celebrities and actors.

• Chaos Butterfly parodies the butterfly effect
  Butterfly effect
  In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state...
  
  . Each strip features a butterfly in Brazil flapping its wings and indirectly causing something unpleasant to happen to a man in Chicago some time later.

• Dinkle, The UnLovable Loser is a parody of such characters as Ziggy or The Born Loser
  The Born Loser
  The Born Loser is a newspaper comic strip created by Art Sansom in 1965. His son, Chip Sansom, who started assisting on the strip in 1989, is the current artist. The strip is distributed by United Features Syndicate...
  
  , with the catch being that his status as a loser is completely justified because he is truly un-lovable; he is narcisstic
  Narcissistic personality disorder
  Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
  
   and typically exhibits obnoxious attitudes, such as anti-Semitism
  Anti-Semitism
  Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
  
  , and sociopathic
  Psychopathy
  Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are very disproportionately responsible for violent crime...
  
   behaviour, ruthlessly exploiting everyone he encounters.

• Science Facts for the Immature presents a scientific fact which is either a double entendre or is followed by a punchline based on bodily humor.

• Killjoy was Here features Killjoy, a man who ruins any attempt at a funny dialogue by spouting out depressing facts on global issues such as poverty.

• Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveller from 1909 is in awe of the modern age, though he is also amazed by things that exist well before 1909 including dogs and lightbulbs. However, he is aware of his own idiocy. Later strips have revealed him to be unfamiliar with the mechanics of time travel or even causality itself (for example, believing that accidentally interfering with someone in the future could prevent his own birth).

• The Epic/Brutal Report is a two-panel comic based on the good news/bad news gag. The first panel has a teenager relaying the 'good news' to his friends, which then exclaims 'Epic!'. In the second panel, he will tell them the 'bad news', to which his friends exclaim 'Brutal!'. The 'bad news' is always extremely unproportional and/or outlandish relative to the 'good news'.

• Larry is a bespectacled man who converses with sight gags usually found in comic strips such as 'Flying Sweat' or 'Flying Feet'.

• Superhero comics, featuring superheroes with names and traits that parody superheroes in general. Examples include 'Talk-Up-His-Secret-Identity Man' and 'Garish-Skintight-Lycra-Outfit Man'.

• This Is Not A Comic Strip are instead metacritical deconstructions of the typical newspaper comic strip.

• Oh That ! are parodies of the 'mischievous pet' comic strips, but with the pets replaced by stranger characters such as a wolverine
  Wolverine
  The wolverine, pronounced , Gulo gulo , also referred to as glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae . It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids...
  
   or actor Matthew Modine
  Matthew Modine
  Matthew Avery Modine is an award-winning American actor. His film roles include Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, the title character in Alan Parker's Birdy, high school wrestler Louden Swain in Vision Quest, football star turned spy Alec McCall in Funky Monkey and the...
  
  .

• Hillbilly Bill, of The Hills is a parody of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
  Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
  Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Barney Google, is a long-running American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck . Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a huge international readership, appearing in 900 newspapers in 21 countries...
  
  .

• Yuks are one-panel comics that show a character talking to others using very long dialogues.

After September 11, 2001, Bolling used the Super Fun Pak Comix format to acknowledge the events — the punchline to each one of the comics was "Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, killing thousands".

History

As Bolling recounted in an interview:

I started "Tom the Dancing Bug" in 1990 in a small New York newspaper. It was called New York Perspectives, then it was called New York Weekly, then it was called "bankrupt." But before it went bankrupt, I was able to sell the strip to a few other papers. For seven years, I was sending packages out and following up with phone calls, trying to get editors to run the strip. I ended up selling it to about 60 newspapers [under the name Quaternary Features]. I was surprised at the success I had, especially in selling to daily newspapers. I didn't think it would be my market.

In 1997, the Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird...

 approached me and asked if we could work together. That came at just the right time, as I was starting a more serious day job, and I was about to have my first baby. I just didn't have the time and energy to devote to the selling of the strip. I decided that whatever job they did would be better than whatever I could put forth at that time.

The comic ran on Salon.com

Salon.com

Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

from 1995 until March 18, 2010.

Books

Three book-form collections have been published:

• 1992: Tom the Dancing Bug ISBN 0-06-096949-0
• 1997: All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats ISBN 1-56163-183-3
• 2004: Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories (oversized treasury) ISBN 0-7407-4737-1

Awards

Best Cartoon from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies: finalist in 2001 and 2004, First Place in 2002, 2003, and 2006.

External links

• Tom the Dancing Bug comic strips at gocomics.com
  • Tom the Dancing Bug blog
  • News and commentary on the strip from the author
• The God-Man Fan Page collects all the strips featuring God-Man.