Tom Tomorrow interviewed!

[Hogan's Alley]

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Dear fellow comics fan:

As work proceeds apace on Hogan's Alley #18, we wanted to present an
interview with Tom Tomorrow, cartoonist behind "This Modern World."
We've been fans of his for many years, and since Tom has a new book
collection out--Too Much Crazy--we thought it would be an appropriate
time to catch up with him.

HA: The Tea Party is practically writing your strip for you these
days, no?
TT: No question that the outbreak of craziness and xenophobia known
collectively as "The Tea Party" provides much material, but at a
certain cost--I think the work grows somewhat less interesting if you
spend too much time shooting fish in a barrel. But for someone who
largely focuses on the craziness of American politics to begin with,
they do provide a constant source of either temptation or inspiration;
I'm not entirely sure which.

HA: When Barack Obama got elected, did you have a secret fear that
your material would dry up and the foolishness would end? Little did
you know we were entering a Golden Age of foolishness.
TT: I didn't expect that things would get as strange as they did, as
quickly as they did, but I wasn't worried about material. A lot of
people had unrealistically high expectations for Barack Obama--this is
something I touch on in the strip with the "Idea of Obama" character,
an ethereal version of Obama who tells you exactly what you want to
hear. So for those on the left, the Idea of Obama was an
uncompromising idealist who would fight for single payer, etc. (For
those on the right, the Idea of Obama is a Secret Muslim Communist, or
whatever the current paranoid meme may be.) It was clear to me from
the start that there was going to be a dissonance between what Obama's
supporters were hoping for and what they would get--and that alone is
plenty to at least get started with as a satirist. The Tea Party stuff
has just been like frosting on the cake--although at this point, it's
so much frosting, the cake is entirely overwhelmed.

HA: Speaking of which, do you ever miss an opportunity to watch Glenn
Beck? I follow your Twitter feed (@tomtomorrow), and you seem to have
a fascination with his worldview.
TT: Beck is something unique in the world of talk radio and Fox. It's
easy to call him crazy, as I admit I frequently do, but I suspect we
will learn some day that he is quite literally mentally ill--at the
very least he's a candidate for years and years of therapy. But it's
always fascinating, and a little bit unsettling, to watch someone
impose self-evident delusions on the world at large. Beck is
essentially living proof of the old adage that a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing.

HA: Your new book, "Too Much Crazy," is a great snapshot of the
presidential campaign and its aftermath. You do a great job of
capturing John McCain's toothy, emotionless smile that borders on him
baring his teeth. How hard was it for you capture him in so few lines?
TT: I don't remember specifically--I just remember noticing that weird
death rictus grin he kept using, and knowing immediately that I had to
incorporate that as often as possible. And parenthetically I should
note that while I can be critical of Obama, because there are many
things to be critical of, and, you know, that's my job--but that
aside, I am STILL awash in happy endorphins every time I pause to
remember that the insane clown posse of McCain and Palin are not in
the White House. That's the one good thing that came out of the
financial meltdown of September 2008, which is arguably what propelled
Obama over the finish line.

HA: In your cartoons, you clearly indict the media for not focusing
people's attention on matters of significance. How complicit are the
mainstream media in the rise of the Tea Party, the Wall Street fiasco,
etc.?
TT: Media have always given more attention to protesters who brand
themselves as "real Americans," as opposed to the DFH’s who, for
instance, protested the start of the Iraq war in the hundreds of
thousands. And the Tea Party made good copy--a spontaneous uprising of
regular folks who were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any
more! Of course we know now the whole thing was being orchestrated
behind the scenes by exactly the moneyed interests they pretend to
oppose--and to be fair, the rank and file are probably sincere in that
opposition. But that doesn't mean they’re not tools. And then there's
the blatant racism and violent undertones which are there for anyone
to see, but were often politely overlooked by the media--so yes, I'd
say they have some complicity there. And certainly in the Wall Street
fiasco--not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but how is it
that a cartoonist with no economics background was warning of the
housing bubble well before most of the mainstream media noticed there
was a problem looming? If someone like me could see it coming, then it
must have been pretty obvious, even if it didn't fit into the media
narrative of the moment. Along with the cheerleading and fearmongering
in the buildup to the Iraq war, this is to their collective shame.

HA: For readers who are new to the universe of "This Modern World,"
what is the genesis of your voice of reason, the goggle-wearing
penguin Sparky? Is it something as pragmatic as a penguin would
reproduce well in black and white?
TT: Sparky's twenty years old at this point--if he were my actual
offspring, he'd be off in the world attending college by now. To your
question--at the outset, the strip was mostly populated by the Biffs
and Bettys, the happy-talking conservatives. Sparky was introduced as
a way of stepping completely outside of that reality--at that point,
he looked like he had wandered in from some entirely different comic
strip. Of course since then I've introduced Wilbur the Talking Stomach
(RIP), the Glox aliens, the Invisible Hand, Ugg the Neanderthal, and
so on--so these days there are various creatures from the id wandering
through this ostensibly rational landscape.

HA: Your new book describes a changing environment for strips like
yours, which carved out a livable niche in alternative weekly
newspapers. How has the way you make a living changed since the
weeklies' consolidation and marginalization?
TT: At my peak of syndication--as distinct from my peak of creativity,
which I hope to still be striving to achieve on the day I die--the
strip was running in well over 100 papers. There's been a lot of
attrition, but I'm still in something like 70 or 75--there are always
a few in flux, where the status is somewhat unclear, so it's hard to
be exact. But that's still a healthy number in the alt-weekly world.
The biggest hit I took, of course, was when the Village Voice (née New
Times) chain decided at corporate HQ to unilaterally cut all
syndicated cartoons across their chain. That was a rough one--I lost a
dozen major cities with a single phone call. I'm back in the Village
Voice, and grateful for that, but two years later the rest of it
remains a sore subject for me--I spent years building up that client
list. But I regret the lost audience much more than the money--I'm
still making a comfortable living, so it's not as if I was driven to
destitution. And for all the talk of print being dead, there are still
a lot of alt-weeklies out there. I'm still plugging away. What else
can you do?

HA: Will the day come when you draw your characters facing each other,
rather than casting sidelong furtive glances?
TT: Don't knock the sidelong furtive glance! You can convey volumes
with an uncomfortable glance to the side.
____________________________________

We've put this interview on our website, complete with illustrations
and cartoons that depict aspects of the strip discussed above. See it
at http://www.cagle.com/hogan/newsletter_extras/tomtomorrow/main.asp

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