Tom The Dancing Bug Blog

Enter: The Passive Aggressor

This week's comic

Wacky Packs!

If there's a person who wouldn't want a new book containing all the Wacky Packages trading cards (from the 1973 and 1974 series), I don't want to know who that is.

I hope they somehow made the book smell like that piece of bubble gum that came with the stickers.  It wouldn't be right reading those cards without that sweet-stale odor wafting around.

Coming, in this week's thrilling installment...

The secret of the Passive Aggressor's power!

Stay tuned!

Berkeley Breathed Ailing

I don't know anything more about Berkeley Breathed than any other reader, but apparently he is suffering from something called spasmodic torticollis.  Even though he's reporting it in his comic strip, it's obviously not a joke, and it sounds horrific.  I wish Berkeley a speedy recovery.

Congrats

Sharp-eyed readers of Tom the Dancing Bug will glean that I'm not particularly keen on awards in the arts, and among the gazillions of such awards, I think the National Cartoonists Society's annual cartooning awards are particularly egregious.  But I'm glad to see that one of my favorite comic strips won an NCS award this year, the underrated Monty, by Jim Meddick.  And I'm delighted that the Cartoonist of the Year award, which despite its name is really a lifetime achievement award, went to the wholly deserving Al Jaffee.

Attention Fans of Good Things:

The comedy genii behind Mr. Show, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, have shot a new pilot for HBO!  Let's all hope this gets "picked up" (as we say in show-biz).

Two Leagues Under the (c)

This week's comic, The League of Public Domain Properties, is not only a comment on copyright extensions, but also a reference to Alan Moore and Kevin O'Niell's excellent book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Their tinkering with various literary properties would not have been possible without those properties at some point lapsing into the public domain.  Constitutional and Property arguments aside, don't Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde at some point, decades after their author's death, become part of our common ethereal culture?  At this point, aren't we all better off with artists like Moore and O'Neill being able to engage in a literary exploration of these characters?

On Videos

I was just directed to Rule Forty Two, a very entertaining blog, by a friend and great writer Gavin Edwards.  Something to check out.

Reading his observations on that dead-or-dying artform, the music video, I'm reminded of the most mind-blowingly, brain-explodingly bad music video I've ever seen:  Sting's "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying."

I've always like the song.  It's a nice little song about dealing with divorce, set to a country sound, and I think it achieves some measure of poignancy.

But I recently had the misfortune, somehow, of seeing this monstrosity of a video.  How can they go from a song with a small scale, with lyrics about babysitting, joint custody and melted ice cream, to an outlandishly mega-mohawked, leather-clad Sting emerging from blinding white light on a white horse, to cavort with liquid metal terminator-style cows, flying cowboys and aliens (funny!) in a Western town?

And while it is meant to be humorous at times, no, it's not ironic.  Can Sting even BE ironic?

More on the Orphan Works Act

When I began looking into that Orphan Works Act, I searched the web to see if the copyright expert Lawrence Lessig had weighed in.  He's something of an activist for getting more works into the public domain, particularly older and unused works (he actually favors a form of registration of copyright), so one might think he'd favor this legislation.  But if this bill is as poorly conceived and drafted as I believe it is, someone with good legal judgment like Lessig, even though very sympathetic to its stated goals, would oppose it.

But I could find nothing by him about it on the web, so I couldn't piggyback off his judgment, and had to decide it was bad legislation on my own, writing about it here.

Today's New York Times has an Op-Ed piece by Lessig on the Orphan Works Act, and he comes out squarely against it:

Congress is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.

Whew.  Now I'm sure.  Once again, if you oppose this, please contact your congressperson.

But this opens up a new problem:  How do I sue a copyright expert when he STEALS MY HEADLINE?!!
Ruben Bolling 5/13/08:  "Little Orphan Act"
Lawrence Lessig 5/20/08:  "Little Orphan Artworks"

By the way, all this thinking about copyright inspired my next comic, to be published this week.

Elder

Just after I noted the upcoming Humbug book, one of the authors passed away; Will Elder died on Thursday.

When I first started cartooning, it was Elder's style from those early Mad comic books that I imagined when I drew.  What emerged from my pencil was entirely different, and pretty disappointing.  But I've learned to live with it.

I guess you could say that my style evolved from trying to copy Elder's, and failing.

(This image is from my 1992 comic "Tales of Market Driven Crimes" -- one of my more explicit attempts to be Will Elder.)