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WORK TITLE: Crazy Is the New Normal
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Perkins, Dan
BIRTHDATE: 4/5/1961
WEBSITE: http://thismodernworld.com/
CITY: New Haven
STATE: CT
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Tomorrow http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100200228.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1961; married; children: one.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, artist, animator, public speaker, and political cartoonist.
AWARDS:Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award, 1993; Society of Professional Journalists James Madison Freedom of Information Award, 1995; Association for Education in Journalism and Education, Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award, 2000; James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, 2001; Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism, First Place, 1998, 2003.
WRITINGS
Syndicated cartoonist whose political cartoon strip “This Modern World” appears in nearly eighty newspapers across the United States. Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, New Yorker, Spin, Esquire, Mother Jones, Esquire, Nation, U.S. News and World Report, Salon, Daily Kos, and the American Prospect.
SIDELIGHTS
With one of the more recognizable styles in modern editorial cartooning, Tom Tomorrow is a popular commentator on the cultural and political events of the day. His political cartoon strip. “This Modern World,” appears in some eighty newspapers across the United States and can be read in ten collections, from 1992’s Greetings from This Modern World to 2016’s Crazy is the New Normal. In addition to his regular strip, Tomorrow’s work has appeared in many prominent newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, New Yorker, Esquire, Economist, Nation, Salon, American Prospect, Mother Jones, and U.S. News and World Report. He has received multiple awards and honors for his work, including first place Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1998 and 2003, the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award in 1993, and the Society of Professional Journalists James Madison Freedom of Information Award in 1995.
Tomorrow is the pseudonym of writer and cartoonist Dan Perkins. His commentary is mostly on the liberal political spectrum, although he is more than willing to skewer Democratic politicians and liberal subjects when they deserve a lampooning or, in some cases, a wake-up call or scolding. “I’m just doing what I’ve always done—sending out these little smoke signals to let people know that they re not crazy and they re not alone, that there are other people out there who feel the way they do,” Tomorrow told interviewer Robert Elias in the Progressive. With more than twenty years of writing and drawing his political strip behind him, Tomorrow has seen the best and worst of American politics, technology, social media, and cultural evolution during two active decades.
In the interview with Elias, Tomorrow remarked on the “This Modern World” strip. “I try to keep a balance between the wordiness and the humor. I may go off in one direction or the other from week to week, but they’re both important,” he told Elias. “The commentary is what keeps it fresh and interesting to me, and allows me to keep doing this week after week without going insane, as I surely would if I were drawing a comic strip poking gentle fun at the foibles that make us all human, maybe with some adorable children and a talking animal of some sort. But if I’m only ranting and raving, if it’s not funny, then no one’s going to waste their time reading it. And why should they?,” Tomorrow further remarked.
Tune in Tomorrow and The Great Big Book of Tomorrow
The multiple collected editions of “This Modern World” have received generally positive response from reviewers. Tune in Tomorrow collects strips that criticize “mainstream U.S. politics and society” from a left-leaning perspective, with the addition of some progressive sensibility, commented Gordon Flagg in a Booklist review. Some of his targets include then-President Bill Clinton, the religious right, the media, and baby boomers and Gen-Xers. In this book, “Perkins stands out for his scathing wit and insight,” remarked Whole Earth Review writer Phil Frank. Flagg concluded that the “novelty of Tomorrow’s approach keeps his work surprisingly fresh.”
The Great Big Book of Tomorrow: A Treasury of Cartoons presents a career retrospective of Tomorrow’s work. It includes early cartoons from a variety of zines and small publications, samples of color work that appeared in the New Yorker, and early strips that show how Tomorrow’s style developed. “As distinctive as the strip looks, it is the content that separates Tomorrow from the pack,” Flagg stated in another Booklist review.
Too Much Crazy and Crazy Is The New Normal
Other collections, including Too Much Crazy and Crazy Is The New Normal, showcase some of Tomorrow’s more recent political cartoons and cultural criticisms. In Crazy Is the New Normal, “Perkins finds plenty of targets for his well-honed wit,” remarked a Publishers Weekly contributor. Since the collection features work based on the political world of 2016, it is, “despite its delightful hilarity, terrifying to read,” the Publishers Weekly writer concluded.
The Very Silly Mayor
In a departure from his more overt political cartooning, Tomorrow has produced a children’s picture book titled The Very Silly Mayor. While aimed at young readers, the book also does double-duty with some social commentary that will be clear, and humorous, to adults. The book retains the artist’s signature style, and even features one of Tomorrow’s most recognizable characters, Sparky the Penguin. the visor-wearing creature that frequently appears in “This Modern World” and other of the artist’s work.
The Very Silly Mayor tells the story of a city mayor who issues some unusual orders and seems oblivious to the possible problems they could cause. Sparky the Penguin and Blinky the very nice dog are residents of this city. They see firsthand how the mayor’s silliness affects the city. For example, the mayor directs the city’s police officers to wear clown suits. The fire department must use peanut butter instead of water to put out fires. Houses must be decorated with garish green and purple stripes. The more rational Sparky believes the media and the citizenry will be outraged by these silly orders, but they support them wholeheartedly. Soon, the drawbacks become apparent as the police are unable to catch criminals and houses burn despite the coating of peanut butter. Those who supported the mayor’s ill-advised ideas admit that they went along because they didn’t want to stand out and be rebellious or get laughed at by others. A Kirkus Reviews writer called the book a “lesson in the dangers of groupthink and necessity of questioning authority,” though one that may be aimed at the wrong age group. “While children can appreciate the absurdities, adults are most likely to chuckle at the satire,” commented a Publishers Weekly writer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Prospect, January, 2004, “Bookshelf: The World of Tomorrow,” Mark Greif, review of The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, p. 68.
Booklist, September 15, 1994, Gordon Flagg, review of Tune in Tomorrow, p. 98; August, 2003, Gordon Flagg, review of The Great Big Book of Tom Tomorrow, p. 1942.
Bookwatch, March, 2011, review of Too Much Crazy.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2009, review of The Very Silly Mayor.
Progressive, March, 2003. Robert Elias, “Tom Tomorrow. (The Progressive Interview),” p. 30.
Publishers Weekly, October. 5, 2009, review of The Very Silly Mayor, p. 46; October 31, 2016, review of Crazy Is the New Normal, p. 60.
Washington Post, October 4, 2009, Michael Cavna, “Michael Cavna Talks with Tom Tomorrow About Alt-Cartoons,” interview with Tom Tomorrow.
Whole Earth Review, winter, 1993, Howard L. Rheingold, review of Greetings from This Modern World, p. 113; winter, 1994, Phil Frank, review of Tune in Tomorrow, p. 99.
ONLINE
This Modern World Website, http://www.thismodernworld.com (October 22, 2017).
About
Tom Tomorrow is the creator of the weekly political cartoon, This Modern World, which appears in approximately 80 newspapers across the U.S., and on websites such as Daily Kos, Truthout and Credo. His work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Spin, Mother Jones, Esquire, The Economist, The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, and The American Prospect, and has been featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
From 1999-2001, he worked on a series of animated web cartoons which can be viewed here.
In 2009, he created the cover art for the Pearl Jam album Backspacer.
In 2011 he ended a 16 year run at Salon to create and edit a new comics section at Daily Kos.
He has published nine anthologies of his work:
–Greetings From This Modern World (1992)
–Tune in Tomorrow (1994)
–The Wrath of Sparky (1996)
–Penguin Soup for the Soul (1998)
–When Penguins Attack (2000) (introduction by Dave Eggers)
–The Great Big Book of Tomorrow (2003)
—Hell in a Handbasket (2006)
—The Future’s So Bright I Can’t Bear to Look (2008)
Too Much Crazy (2010)
He is also the author of a book for children, The Very Silly Mayor (2009).
He received the first place Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1998 and in 2003. Other honors include:
1993: Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award
1995: Society of Professional Journalists James Madison Freedom of Information Award
2000: Association for Education in Journalism and Education, Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award
2001: James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism
2004: Altweekly Award, 2nd Place
2006: Altweekly Award, 3rd Place
Tom Tomorrow is available for speaking engagements. For further information, contact tomtomorrow (at) gmail (dot) com. He is also currently in the market for a new publisher, if anyone’s interested.
* * *
“All hail Tom Tomorrow!” — Michael Moore.
“One of the most clever and incisive political cartoons in the country.”– The Los Angeles Times.
“The sharpest strip currently going.”– The New York Review of Books.
“The current political scene creates two impulses, to jump off a bridge or to laugh. Luckily, Tom Tomorrow gives us a chance to laugh.”– Ben Bagdikian.
“Like all good satirists, Tomorrow is an indiscriminately subversive individualist … (who) does a seriously funny job of taking on the derangements of consumer culture and the high pretensions of political lowlifes.”– Entertainment Weekly.
“Tom Tomorrow is the wry voice of American common sense, humor and decency.”– Kurt Vonnegut.
“The look of Roy Lichtenstein, the brutality of Lenny Bruce.”– Des Moines Register.
Michael Cavna Talks With Tom Tomorrow About Alt-Cartoons
PHOTOS Previous Next
Tom Tomorrow, left, with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.
Tom Tomorrow, left, with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. (Copyright Beverly Gage)
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By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Tom Tomorrow calls it his "up and down" year, and was it ever: At the beginning of '09, his political cartoon feature "This Modern World" was bleeding newspaper clients; by summer, though, he was toasting his good fortune with a rock-star client.
Tom Tomorrow is the nom-de-toon of 48-year-old bicoastal artist Dan Perkins, whose oft-controversial liberal comic has been a fixture in nearly 100 alt-weeklies for nearly two decades. But when Village Voice Media suspended all syndicated cartoons early this year, Perkins lost 12 newspaper clients.
Fortunately, that's when Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder -- whom Perkins befriended at a Ralph Nader rally in 2000 -- came a-callin', asking the artist whether he'd work on album-cover ideas for the Seattle band's fall release. "Backspacer" was released last month, adorned by his art; the Village Voice restored his comic; and he published his passion project of a children's book, "The Very Silly Mayor." We recently caught up with Perkins by phone.
Were you a longtime Pearl Jam fan when you met Eddie?
No, I just totally missed it, the whole Seattle scene.
How'd the Pearl Jam album cover come about?
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I heard from Eddie after I lost the Village Voice Media papers. This very unmistakable baritone calls. . . . He says: "Try your hand at a cover." By the way, a New York Times article said I called Eddie asking him for work. People said to me: "Big, brass [ones], you've got -- calling Eddie for work." But to set the record straight: The only thing I ever asked him for is a couple of concert tickets.
Were there any sticking points, creatively?
Never a moment of conflict. . . . And when I went out to Seattle for a week, I got a private Pearl Jam concert every day. . . . Then, on the last night, Eddie invited me over to his house, we listened to the album and got [hammered].
How's the alt-cartoon landscape look these days?
There's way more competition for eyeballs. Now we're not just competing with other cartoonists -- we're competing with every single person who has one clever idea to put up in a YouTube video of a singing cat. Cartoonists are now competing with water-skiing squirrels.
The Internet: friend or foe?
The rise of the left-wing blogosphere has basically rendered a lot of what I used to do completely irrelevant -- that whole facet of: "Look at this! Why isn't anyone in the media paying attention to this?!"
As a liberal cartoonist, do you miss Bush?
No. Everyone was sick of Bush -- for the last year and a half, they just wanted to be done with it. . . . I'm finding the current administration much more revitalizing, frankly, because . . . we have this crazy conservative wing growing in prominence.
So how do you feel at this point in your career?
In terms of verbose political cartoons, I've taken that ride about as far as I could [have planned].
And how's it look for the generation of cartoonists following you?
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I feel like, for the third generation -- for people like Jen Sorensen and Matt Bors -- I feel like they were born into a dying dystopian world of a science-fiction novel. I feel horrible for them. They're all incredibly talented. I worry that there may not be an outlet for their talent -- that they will have to sublimate it into other things.
Tom Tomorrow. (The Progressive Interview)
Robert Elias
The Progressive. 67.3 (Mar. 2003): p30.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 The Progressive, Inc.
http://www.progressive.org/
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Cartoonist Dan Perkins, better known as Tom Tomorrow, has been drawing his weekly "This Modern World" cartoon strip for nearly twenty years. The strip first appeared in the groundbreaking zinc Processed World after Perkins moved to San Francisco in 1984. The cartoon began as a tour through consumer culture and the drudgeries of work. Perkins's outrage at the Gulf War coverage in 1991 provoked a shift in focus to politics and the media. "This Modern World" is syndicated and appears in more than 130 U.S. newspapers. Perkins's cartoons have also appeared in Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, The American Prospect, Z Magazine, Peace Review, Sojourners, and TV Guide, as well as in numerous books. He produced three short animations (never aired) for Saturday Night Live and has run a blog (a web diary of commentaries) on his site, www.thismodernworld. com, for the past year. He's the author of several books: Greetings From This Modern Worm (1992), Tune In Tomorrow (1994), The Wrath of Sparky (1996), Penguin Soup for the Soul (1998), and When Penguins Attack/(2000)--all published by St. Martins Press. His forthcoming book, The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, will be out later this year. Perkins has become a potent satirist and political critic. He moved to Brooklyn a few years ago, and when I interviewed him his car had just been stolen. Even so, he seemed to be in a reasonably good mood.
Q: Your cartoons are distinguished by their humor and their wordiness.
Tom Tomorrow: I try to keep a balance between the wordiness and the humor. I may go off in one direction or the other from week to week, but they're both important. The commentary is what keeps it fresh and interesting to me, and allows me to keep doing this week after week without going insane, as I surely would if I were drawing a comic strip poking gentle fun at the foibles that make us all human, maybe with some adorable children and a talking animal of some sort. But if I'm only ranting and raving, if it's not funny, then no one's going to waste their time reading it. And why should they?
But humor is very subjective. The most frequent response I get from conservatives is, "That's not even funny." As if there is some objective standard of humor, something you could program into a computer and quantify. In reality, whether you think a political cartoon is funny or not mostly depends on whether you agree with the underlying assumptions of the cartoonist.
Q: The characters in your strip often seem drawn from 1950s advertisements. Your strip has an old-fashioned feel, yet it's called "This Modern World," and your pen name is "Tom Tomorrow."
Tomorrow: The strip began by satirizing the ways in which our society worships and fetishizes consumerism and technology. In appropriating these images of cheerful consumers from the fifties, I was deliberately setting up a sort of dissonance--the future never quite seems to happen the way the public relations people tell us it will, whether you're talking about flying cars or the dot-com economy. As the focus of the cartoon shifted to present-day politics, the images still seemed appropriate. Like consumerism, politics is mostly about people trying to sell you things you don't really need or want.
Q: What role does Sparky, your cartoon penguin, play?
Tomorrow: He's sort of the Greek chorus. I needed to introduce an element into the strip through which I could speak more in my own voice--something obviously not part of the same reality. Sparky is the only character who's aware that he's a cartoon character. He breaks down the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly. Someone once described him as looking like he wandered in from another comic strip entirely, which sounds about right to me.
Q: A lot of your humor highlights absurdities. Do you think people just laugh, or does it provoke them toward a response?
Tomorrow: I would like to imagine that it pushes them to think about things in a slightly different way. I'm constantly seeking out the telling fact, the odd little story which speaks volumes. I did a recent strip about Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who were quick to blame 9/11 on secular humanists--people like you and me. Meanwhile, Robertson was involved in a gold mining investment with Liberia's president, Charles Taylor, who was providing sanctuary to Al Qaeda operatives in return for a million-dollar payoff. I think that's an extraordinary thing to know--that at the same time Robertson was denouncing you and me for our moral laxity, his business partner was literally harboring terrorists! It underlines the sheer hypocrisy of these people. Let's face it, I only have a little weekly cartoon. It's not going to change the world. But I think it's useful to point out absurdities like this.
Q: You've written a lot about religious fanaticism. Why do you examine it in your cartoons?
Tomorrow: I grew up around a lot of Christian fundamentalism so I'm pretty intimately familiar with it. Right after 9/11, when Falwell said it was all the fault of people who don't believe in God, I thought, no, actually it's the fault of people who believe too much in God. Religion is what got us into this megs. More religious zealotry is not going to get us out. But that's not a very popular view in America. People never seem to get these connections. They just say, in all earnestness, but our religion is good and theirs is bad!
Q: Do you consider yourself part of a political movement to try to change things in the U.S.?
Tomorrow: I'm just doing what I've always done--sending out these little smoke signals to let people know that they re not crazy and they re not alone, that there are other people out there who feel the way they do. Right now, I think the focus is less about changing things and more about hanging on by our fingernails. We're in one of those times politically where progressives will be doing a good job just to hold their ground.
Q: The first Gulf War turned your cartoon more political. Now we're on the brink of attacking Iraq again.
Tomorrow: It's been clear since 9/11 that this is where we're headed. I did a cartoon about the painfully thin justifications that have been offered, and how each time one of these justifications is questioned, we immediately jump to the next one. A lot of the country has been sucked into this: "Yes, yes, we must attack because Saddam is a bad man." But that's not enough, given what's at stake here. It couldn't be more obvious that this is about gaining some sort of control over the second largest proven oil reserve in the world. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. And of course, the hypocrisy becomes utterly transparent when we compare Iraq to North Korea.
We have an incredibly arrogant Administration. They just don't care. Bush comes out against affirmative action on Martin Luther King's birthday. He announces a National Sanctity of Life Day a week before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This morning, I heard him blaming the health care crisis on trial lawyers. And don't even get me started on his tax plan. This Administration thinks it's untouchable, that nobody's going to call them on anything.
Q: And they keep getting away with it.
Tomorrow: A recent Knight Ridder poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans cannot correctly answer the question, "How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi nationals?" Of course, the correct answer is none. The White House keeps getting away with it because most people don't pay enough attention. The Republicans have always been very good at taking advantage of that. Reagan's people knew it didn't matter what he said so long as the pictures on the news conveyed the image they wanted to portray. It's a lesson the Bushies have taken to heart.
Q: Do you think the media complicity in this has gotten worse?
Tomorrow: They weren't exactly starting out on the high ground, and since 9/11, they've been completely cowed by the sort of morons who think that if you don't wear an American flag pin on your lapel, you must be pro-terrorist.
Q: What did you make of the Trent Lott case?
Tomorrow: What's interesting to me about that is the role of the blogs. If you read about it as it was happening, you'd think the whole thing was the result of some rightwing bloggers who took a principled stance against Trent Lott because there's no room for a Neanderthal like him in their version of conservatism. In reality, however, the story was mostly kept alive by a left-liberal blogger who calls himself Atrios (atrios.blogspot.com), and by the liberal writer Josh Marshall (talkingpointsmemo.com). They kept pounding away at it, and were eventually joined by a few rightwingers like Andrew Sullivan, who, for obvious reasons, would like to pretend that the modern-day Republican Party has no room for racism or homophobia. But it's not as if these guys have subsequently gone after John Ashcroft, or Don Nickles, or any number of other Republicans whose views on race are probably in line with Trent Lott's. The right wing will take a strong public stance against racism, as long as it's in your face and unavoidable. But if they can keep it swept neatly under the rug, then they're just as happy to go on pretending it's not there.
I actually had a small role in that story myself, when one of my readers wrote me because he had a tape with a third instance of Lott saying that Thurmond should have been President. I posted this on my web site and also contacted someone I know at MSNBC, and they broadcast the story a few days later, and one could plausibly argue that this is when the tide shifted against Trent Lott.
Q: Your strip has generated some controversies over the years. For what recent strip have you received a lot of flak?
Tomorrow: Last summer, I did a strip called "Are You a Real American?" that appeared in The New York Times Sunday Week in Review section. It was set up as a quiz, asking questions like, "Do you agree that the President should have the unchecked authority to do whatever he wants until he decides the war on terror is over?" and "Do you draw strength from your unwavering faith in an omniscient deity who favors those born in the middle of the North American land mass above all others?" The final panel concluded, "If you answered no to any of these questions, then you are NOT a real American!" It showed one guy kicking another in the seat of his pants, telling him to go back to his cave in Afghanistan, but the second guy protests that he's from Kansas. Pretty straightforward, I thought--the point being that there are plenty of people in this country who disagree with the Administration and yet these people are still good American citizens. I thought I was playing defense, not offense.
Deliberately or not, Ann Coulter missed the point entirely, and used the cartoon as an example in another of her anti-liberal screeds, claiming, "This is how liberals conceive of America: an undifferentiated land mass in the middle of North America. Like all cartoons specially featured in the Times, there was nothing remotely funny about the cartoon." (As I said earlier, humor is subjective.) "Its point was simply to convey all the proper prejudices of elitist liberals against ordinary Americans." You've got to love the passion with which the Belle of New Canaan--a woman who, by her own account, spends her time in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Aspen--speaks for ordinary Americans. I grew up in places like Iowa, Georgia, and Arkansas, and in my experience, Americans are much more ideologically diverse than East Coast conservative elitists like Ann Coulter give them credit for.
Q: When people write to disagree with you, do they try to change your views or is it just hate mail?
Tomorrow: Usually, it's some combination of "you stupid liberal, here are the facts." Then they give me a screed that you'd think a fifth grader would be embarrassed to write. E-mail has made it too easy for people to express every fleeting thought. And the e-mails have gotten a lot uglier since 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of that day, I had no idea how to proceed as a cartoonist, so I simply used a photo I had taken from my rooftop, of the first tower collapsing, with a caption indicating that words were simply inadequate on this day. As soon as it appeared in Salon, I got a message from some jackass who wrote, "I'm a little surprised by your response--am I to surmise that you actually have some affection for the country you constantly berate?" Now, I've just witnessed the unimaginable, I've just watched 3,000 people die. I'm completely, stunned, as any rational human being would be--and this moron is out there thinking, "Ha ha! Here's my chance to score a debating point against that leftie cartoonist whose views on social policy differ from my own!" The wingnuts, the hard right, the Christian conservatives, and the like all seemed to believe that 9/11 was their chance to show that their opponents were not only wrong but actually traitors--people who hate this country and rejoiced to see it attacked. That's beneath contempt, as far as I'm concerned.
Q: What motivates you to keep plugging away? What keeps you from despairing at the state of affairs in the U.S. and the world?
Tomorrow: My wife and I have a baby on the way, which is, I think, a fundamental act of faith in the future. When faced with this imminent tiny miracle, one has no choice but to embrace optimism. I have to admit that the events of the past few years have left me with a feeling of incredible hopelessness at times--and yet, counterintuitively, I remain at heart optimistic about the future. We will get through this time. We'll look back on how the Administration used the war on terror as a justification for its own petty, shortsighted agenda. We'll see it as a dark and shameful period of our history, through which we somehow stumbled and survived. But it probably won't be easy going for a while.
Robert Elias is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. His latest book is "Baseball and the American Dream: Race, Class, Gender and the National Pastime" (M.E. Sharpe).
Elias, Robert
Bookshelf: the World of Tomorrow
The American Prospect. 15.1 (Jan. 2004): p68.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 The American Prospect, Inc.
http://www.prospect.org/
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THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF TOMORROW: A TREASURY OF CARTOONS BY TOM TOMORROW BY TOM TOMORROW * ST MARTINS PRESS * 236 PAGES * $17.95
Tom Tomorrow, who appears in these pages every month (see p. 9), has published a collection of cartoons showcasing his greatest hits and lesser-seen gems. The book includes a 32-page color insert, running commentary from the author, and the story behind the strip. From deficit spending to Dubya, the treasury surveys the last two decades' political and cultural landscape.--H.P.
MARK GREIF is a Prospect senior correspondent.
Greetings from This Modern World
Howard L. Rheingold
Whole Earth Review. .81 (Winter 1993): p113.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1993 New Whole Earth LLC
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Tom Tomorrow clips, photocopies, mutates, satirizes, and transforms old media icons into contemporary political commentary. He's managed to capture that cartoon took of simpering surreal TV-age propaganda and turn it back on itself. --HLR
Greetings From This Modern World Tom Tomorrow. St Martin's Press, 1992; 103 pp. ISBN 0-312-08203-7 $7.95 ($10.95 postpaid) from Publishers Book & Audio, P.O. Box 070059, Staten Island, NY 10307; 800/288-2131
Tune in Tomorrow
Phil Frank
Whole Earth Review. .84 (Winter 1994): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1994 New Whole Earth LLC
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Under the pen name (and X-Acto knife) of "Tom Tomorrow," Dan Perkins treats us to another collection of his penetrating musings on the state of American social and political cultures.
Perkins seems to take a special pleasure in pricking the inflated egos of TV newscasters, radio talk show hosts and pompous politicians. While no subject or political viewpoint escapes his bombsight, his favorite targets seem to be all things ultra-conservative. He diabolically uses their own artwork (a pastiche of 1950s advertising art) to form the basis of his commentary. In the world of generic cartoon art where a chuckle and a paycheck are the cartoonist's only goal, Perkins stands out for his scathing wit and insight.
Crazy Is the New Normal
Publishers Weekly.
263.44 (Oct. 31, 2016): p60.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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* Crazy Is the New Normal
Tom Tomorrow, IDW, $19.99 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-63140-700-0
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Cartoonist Dan Perkins, aka Tom Tomorrow, brings together three years' worth of strips from his syndicated This
Modern World. Inspired by partisan politics, and the machinery of fanatical supporters, angry detractors, talking heads,
and media personalities who are hell-bent on shaping the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Perkins finds plenty of targets
for his well-honed wit. Inhabiting a brightly colored landscape that reinforces the idea that crazy is the new normal, the
characters--President Obama, the Incredible Trump, and an assortment of anthropomorphized animals--show how
fractured America has become over a variety of issues, including gun control, racial violence, drones, torture, and, of
course, the full-blown craziness of the election itself. Perkins is as much at home in his classic six-panel strips as he is
in his text-rich 20-panel "Year in Review" segments, the common thread being his keen ability to show America's
difficulty changing the narratives that dominate its headlines. It is, despite its delightful hilarity, terrifying to read.
(Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Crazy Is the New Normal." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. 60. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470462539&it=r&asid=5f4fffc2586b2ff10505c234c17cf360.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470462539
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506886232470 2/6
Too Much Crazy
The Bookwatch.
(Mar. 2011):
COPYRIGHT 2011 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
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Too Much Crazy
Tom Tomorrow
Soft Skull Press
9781593764104 $14.95 www.softskull.com
Too Much Crazy provides the fine political cartoons of Tom Tomorrow, whose This Modern World has produced some
of the funniest commentary on politics in the country. This anthology gathers his work from 2008 to present, adds
previously unseen works, and covers the drama of the presidential election and Obama's first year in office.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Too Much Crazy." The Bookwatch, Mar. 2011. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA251378651&it=r&asid=b6ae7de132e31fe43a7a02bb9d39a3b8.
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The Very Silly Mayor
Publishers Weekly.
256.40 (Oct. 5, 2009): p46.
COPYRIGHT 2009 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Very Silly Mayor
Tom Tomorrow. Ig (Consortium, dist.), $16.99
(36p) ISBN 978-1-935439-01-1
Tom Tomorrow (a penname for cartoonist Dan Perkins), whose This Modern World comic strip skewers government
follies, brings his gee-whiz irony and clip art--style panels to this parable of sorts, his picture book debut. The wildeyed
title character presides over "a medium-sized city." Smiling a leprechaun's overeager grin, he instructs police
officers to dress as clowns, firefighters to substitute peanut butter for water and citizens to paint their homes green and
purple. Sparky the penguin and Blinky the terrier, two sensible smart-alecks from Tomorrow's strip, expect public
outrage. Instead, clean-cut, dimwitted TV talking heads praise their leader: "Peanut butter sounds like a delicious way
to fight fires!" When Sparky asks his neighbors why they would conform to ridiculous, even dangerous policies, they
admit, "I didn't want anyone to laugh at me." They suggest that Sparky replace the mayor, but the pro-election, anticoup
penguin chooses instead to be the mayor's adviser. While children can appreciate the absurdities, adults are most
likely to chuckle at the satire. Followers of Gan Golan and Erich Origen's parody Goodnight Bush will snap this up.
Ages 4-7. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Very Silly Mayor." Publishers Weekly, 5 Oct. 2009, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA209405794&it=r&asid=4faf478a2198e78839b512480caf0929.
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Tomorrow, Tom: THE VERY SILLY MAYOR
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tomorrow, Tom THE VERY SILLY MAYOR Ig Publishing (Children's) $$16.99 Oct. 1, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-935439-
01-1
Sparky the penguin lives in a medium-sized city with his best friend, the very nice dog, Blinky. Problem is, this
medium-sized city has a very silly mayor. He decides the police need to wear clown suits to fight crime. He thinks
firefighters should put out fires with delicious peanut butter, and he thinks everyone should paint green-and-purple
stripes on their houses. Sparky's sure everyone will be incensed, but the media laud the ideas. When robbers get away
with money and houses catch fire, Sparky confronts the mayor. Everyone admits they never thought the mayor's ideas
were good; they just didn't want to get laughed at. Importing the retro look and cast of his adult syndicated comic This
Modern World, Tomorrow, aka Dan Perkins, an award-winning liberal political cartoonist, aims this lesson in the
dangers of groupthink and necessity of questioning authority at an audience too young for it. Older preschoolers and
early-elementary children might enjoy the silliness and the bright, flat cartoon art, but they sure won't understand it.
This didactic effort will work best with adult fans of Tomorrow's work. (Picture book. 20 & up)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Tomorrow, Tom: THE VERY SILLY MAYOR." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2009. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA208123039&it=r&asid=7942183891ff5e05552840a1423d1298.
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Tomorrow, Tom. The Great Big Book of Tom
Tomorrow
Gordon Flagg
Booklist.
99.22 (Aug. 2003): p1942.
COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Aug. 2003. 208p. illus. St. Martin's/Griffin, paper, $17.95 (0-312-30177-4). 741.5.
Tomorrow's "This Modern World" has been a reliable source of vitriolic political satire in alternative weeklies for 15
years, and, more recently, on Salon.com. Tomorrow's distinctive style involves photocopying images in sources ranging
from 1950s advertising art to recent photos and setting them in text-heavy, multipanel strips. As distinctive as the strip
looks, it is the content that separates Tomorrow from the pack. An unabashed Leftie, Tomorrow offers searing
indictments of rapacious corporations, overbearing conservatives, and weak-kneed liberals (just to cite his most
frequent targets) that stand in sharp relief to the anemic commentary that passes for most editorial cartooning. Besides a
generous assortment of cartoons lambasting three presidential administrations, this career retrospective includes early
zine pieces in which Tomorrow developed his style as well as his skepticism about the corporate world and
consumerism, and a section of color work for the New Yorker and other national publications. Tomorrow's retro look
draws readers in, his acerbic humor keeps them coming back, and his wry intelligence just might make them think.
YA/L: Outrageous humor and anti-establishment content for political teens. GF.
YA/L, for books with a limited teenage audience
Flagg, Gordon
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Flagg, Gordon. "Tomorrow, Tom. The Great Big Book of Tom Tomorrow." Booklist, Aug. 2003, p. 1942. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA106763975&it=r&asid=3b7d89ccd9bc826f89a160b5c9b335bc.
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Tune in Tomorrow
Gordon Flagg
Booklist.
91.2 (Sept. 15, 1994): p98.
COPYRIGHT 1994 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
In his feature "This Modern World," which appears mostly in weekly alternative papers, Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan
Perkins) uses images traced from photographic references (running from 1950s advertising art to recent shots of
politicians) and a multipaneled comic strip format to create a distinctive kind of postmodern editorial cartoon.
Tomorrow lambastes mainstream U.S. politics and society from a left-progressive perspective that makes his
counterparts in the mainstream press look like wimps (or paragons, depending on your perspective). Tomorrow
ridicules Bill Clinton as savagely as he mocked George Bush in Greetings from the Modern World (1992), and he has
plenty of venom to spare for the religious right, self-indulgent baby boomers, generation-Xers, the media (a target he
attacks with special relish), and just about every other segment of the culture. Like any collection of editorial cartoons,
the material has lost some of its immediacy (ridicule of Bush and Quayle that would have inspired outrage at the time
now evokes nostalgia), but the novelty of Tomorrow's approach keeps his work surprisingly fresh.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Flagg, Gordon. "Tune in Tomorrow." Booklist, 15 Sept. 1994, p. 98. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA15758039&it=r&asid=26fa37f37d75d8693c157b8c3552a831.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
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