DECEMBER 2018 INNER HIVE DRIVE

If my print and web clients are the body of Tom the Dancing Bug, and my readers are its soul, the INNER HIVE is its lifeblood.

 

While that metaphor may be both mixed and utter nonsense, it is true that with the collapse of the print newspaper market, the INNER HIVE, the comic strip's subscriptions club, has been essential to its viability.  Members get the weekly comic strip at least a day before it's published anywhere online, plus commentary, puns, preliminary art, extra exclusive comments, palindromes, giveaways, additional comics, "content", craft projects, diatribes about my various blood feuds with other cartoonists, weather forecasts, "other stuff," cautionary tales, extraneous info, etc.

 

And if you've been thinking of joining the INNER HIVE (or even if you haven't), this would be the month to do it.

 

First, if you join one of the upper tiers of the Patreon version of membership, you are required to be a member throughout 2019 in order to be eligible for the year-end rewards. 

 

But far more importantly, if you sign up for the INNER HIVE during December*, I will donate $25 to USA for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, to help protect and care for refugees in crisis.

 

So at base INNER HIVE membership levels, MORE than the amount of your sign-up/initial membership dues will be donated to help those in need.

 

 

In choosing to donate to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, I was inspired by INNER HIVE charter member Neil Gaiman, who is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, and has done much work to help help and publicize the work they do.

 

 

 

There are two ways to join the INNER HIVE.  Both get you the weekly emails containing the comics, and both will trigger the donation to UNHCR.

 

1. You can join through MailChimp/CampaignZee, for which the cost of INNER HIVE membership is $11.95 per six months.  HERE.

 

2. Or you can join through Patreon, for which the cost of INNER HIVE membership is a minimum of $3.00 per month, with higher tiers which can get you extra rewards.  HERE.

 

More info on membership can be found here.

 

So not only do you get early access to stupid comics, exclusive access to stupid commentary on those stupid comics, and other stupid stuff, you help make the world a slightly better place for those who are in crisis.

 

Join me in making Tom the Dancing Bug.

THANK YOU,

Ruben Bolling

 

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Not applicable to Gift Memberships.

*Because Patreon membership dues are monthly, for members who sign up through Patreon, membership must be maintained for six months to be eligible for this pledge.

 

GIVE THE GIFT OF TOM THE DANCING BUG

 

This year, you can give that special someone a Gift Membership to Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE.

 

That's right, you can give a loved one / friend / frenemy a yearlong membership to the INNER HIVE, and from the moment you sign them up and throughout 2019 they will receive the weekly INNER HIVE emails containing:

- that week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic, at least a day before it's published online; and

- exclusive commentary, extra comics, contests, giveaways, word-find puzzles, and advice for the lovelorn

and all other benefits and privileges of membership will be conferred up on them.

 

Simply sign up here, including the recipient's name and the email address the INNER HIVE mailings should be sent to:

 

Name of RECIPIENT

Email address of RECIPIENT

 

It is for you to inform the recipient of the gift.  The recipient will simply receive the next INNER HIVE email after you sign them up.

More info on the INNER HIVE is here.

 

IT'S THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING, EVERY DING-DONG WEEK, UNTIL IT STOPS.

Thank you, and have a Merry Everything.

Rb

 

 

Terms and Conditions apply.  They always do.

The Gift Membership will end 12/31/19.

Payment is for starting the membership.  Recipient may cancel at any time (there's no accounting for taste).

Any questions, please contact teamdancingbug@gmail.com

 

 

GOCOMICS INTERVIEW

An interview I did with GoComics is now up on their blog.  Here.

I have a lot less control over what I write about than people would guess. I’m not talented enough to pick a subject or a target and then be sure I’ll come up with a great comic. Nor do I think of lots of comics ideas and then choose the best one. My process is that I stare at a blank piece of paper for a long time, or write very stupid things on it, and then, eventually, suddenly, one idea comes to me. One. And that’s the Tom the Dancing Bug for that week.

 

JEFF "DIARY OF A WIMPY KID" KINNEY ON THE EMU CLUB ADVENTURES! AND AN OFFER!

HEY, I'm floored by what Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, has said about The EMU Club Adventures books, my chapter book series for ages 0-100 (but especially 6-12):

 

 

THE SIGNED/SKETCHED OFFER:

In celebration of Jeff Kinney's incredible endorsement, and in preparation for the upcoming holiday gift-giving season, for a limited time, I'm again offering copies of The EMU Club Adventures, Books 1 and 2, with a personalized signature and drawing in each.

 

SHARE THE JOY OF EMUS WITH YOUR LOVED ONES.

"There are tons of little mysteries all around us.  Sometimes if you look really, really closely at them, you find out some amazing, incredible things.  And you might just save the world."

-Stuart Tennemeier, President of The EMU Club

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You can buy both books, signed and sketched, shipping included, for $59.95.

 

Continental U.S. only for now, please.

 

If you would like the books signed "to" a particular name (your name, the name of a gift recipient, etc.), type that name in the field below.  If not, you can leave that field blank.

 

If you're a member of Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE, enter the email address you use to subscribe in the field below.  If you're not, no problem!  Just leave that field blank.

(btw, you can click here to join the INNER HIVE.)

 

OFFER RUNS ONLY THROUGH FRIDAY 12/7, BUT MAY END EARLIER DEPENDING ON SUPPLIES.

 

UPDATE: OFFER HAS EXPIRED.  THANKS TO ALL WHO ORDERED!

 

 

 

Of course, you can also buy both or either book in the regular way on Amazon...

BOOK ONE:  ALIEN INVASION IN MY BACKYARD

BOOK TWO: GHOSTLY THIEF OF TIME

… or you can purchase them elsewhere by clicking here, or even by going to a bookstore!

 

THANK YOU!

 

 

AGAIN AND AGAIN

For some reason, I feel moved to put this back up on the blog.

I helped produce this back in 2013, after Sandy Hook.

Absolutely nothing has changed since then.

Nothing.

 

RICHARD SCARRY'S 21ST CENTURY BUSY TOWN JOBS

This week's comic, More Richard Scarry's 21st Century Busy Town Jobs, is making the rounds across the web and social media, so I thought I'd post the first comic I did in the format, from 2014.

 

These two comics have been among my most popular, which makes me happy because I really loved drawing them in Scarry's style.

 

 

By the way, please do join the INNER HIVE for much more Tom the Dancing Bug, including each weekly comic strip emailed to you at least a day before it is published online, extra comics, commentary, prizes, and whatever else I can throw in there.  JOIN HERE.

 

 

"YOUNG BRETT KAVANAUGH: THE YALE YEARS"

 

Normally, what is said to the INNER HIVE stays in the INNER HIVE.

But I thought I'd share some of the commentary about this week's comic, "Young Brett Kavanaugh: The Yale Years," that was included in yesterday's email to the group.

I'd always revered the movie Animal House, but it is now my theory that the movie played a tremendous role in creating the massive wave of toxic masculinity that started just after the movie came out.

 

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I think the idea of using Trump as the Devil and the Angel, both urging Kavanaugh to go ahead with his assault, really spoke to me.  This aspect didn't make it explicitly into the comic, and it will have to remain in the subtext, but it specifically came from this scene in National Lampoon's Animal House, in which Pinto's date has passed out from over-intoxication, and he's deciding whether to "go ahead." He later learns she's 13 years old.



I'm just a couple of years older than Kavanaugh, and I can't even begin to tell you the impact that Animal House had on our generation of boys.  It was so wildly successful, it invented an entire genre of movies: "teen comedies."  

But it was deeply misogynistic (and pretty racist too).  It created the role model archetype for young men across the country: the roguish, wisecracking, devil-may-care (literally), girl-chasing sociopath.

It reflected, and maybe even helped create, exactly the Ivy League sense of entitlement that boys like Kavanaugh and his buddies aspired to. (The movie is based on the experiences of one of the three screenwriters, who went to Dartmouth, and another screenwriter was a Harvard Lampoon writer who went on to co-found National Lampoon.)

The 1978 movie was set in 1962, and I think it was one of the first bellweathers for a national yearning to go back to the muscular, conservative era before the tumultuous, revolutionary late-sixties, early-seventies.  A yearning that would culminate with election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Boys and young men seemed to suddenly reject the sixties/seventies concern about war and the ecology and equal rights and racial justice, and wanted to just pursue their own individual, hedonistic impulses.  Frat culture boomed: Fraternities were on the death's door in the seventies, and there was an explosion in membership in the eighties.  

By the way, can you imagine a teen movie today set sixteen years ago, in 2002?  What would be the point?  When Animal House came out, "sixteen years ago" was another historical era, an entirely different culture, hair styles, clothes, attitudes.  Is there any discernible difference between today and 2002?

Anyway, I loved the movie.  LOVED IT.  The fact that it was "mean" made it all the more transgressively funny to me.  Despite the fact that I now know it is morally abhorrent, and was a disastrous influence on a generation of young men, I still stand by much of its comedy genius.

But it did much to contribute to the culture of "toxic masculinity" that Kavanaugh and his buddies were clearly not only wallowing in, they happily bragged about it in their very public yearbooks.

 

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By the way, you can click here to subscribe to the INNER HIVE.

 

 

 

EXQUISITE CORPSES (It's a creative game)

I was happy to contribute an illustration to this fun book edited by Gavin Edwards, and I'll be at the NYC book release party tonight:  at the Armory in Brooklyn (67 Fourth Ave), 7 to 9 pm.  Come say hi if you can -- I'll be the guy in the yellow hat.

The Beautiful Book of Exquisite Corpses.

TRUMP'S MEETING WITH PUTIN

bit.ly/innerhiveinfo   -   patreon.com/rubenbolling

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Tom the Dancing Bug wins the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism

 

Hey, Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism Award.  It's a special honor for me both because of the accomplishments and legacy of Robert F. Kennedy, and also because the award recognizes work in the area of human rights and social justice.

 

I'll be attending the Award Ceremony on May 22 at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

 

I'm especially looking forward to receiving the handsome bust of Robert F. Kennedy, whose stern countenance in my office will no doubt provide a constant reminder for me not to engage in organized crime.

 

As always, I thank my teammates in creating the comic strip, who share this award with me: 

- Andrews McMeel Syndication, my partner for 21 years, and the many indispensable print clients to whom they distribute Tom the Dancing Bug; 

- Boing Boing, the fantastic website that made the comic part of its creative, intelligent, and enthusiastic community;

- Daily Kos, the great political website who I'm so fortunate shares with me their sharp, engaged audience; and

- GoComics, the best and largest comics website on the internet.

 

And of course, I thank THE INNER HIVE, that superhero team of crime-fighters and evil-defiers who make the comic strip possible month after month, year after year.  In fact, if you've ever thought of joining (or even if you haven't), isn't this the perfect day to climb aboard Tom the Dancing Bug's mission of social justice, truth-telling, giant wombats, and idiotic time-travel?

 

Please join me in THE INNER HIVE here.

 

Thanks to the RFK Center and the judges for this honor.

- R. Bolling

 

 

One of the 2017 comics from the package that won the award: 

 

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