People of Earth:
Salon.com has informed me that they have canceled Tom the Dancing Bug. I have no idea where they're going to get their australopithecine comics now.
Of course I'm grateful to them for the run the comic has had with Salon -- founder David Talbot brought it on board at the site's inception, way back in 1995 when the world was shiny and new. Just for fun, below is the first Tom the Dancing Bug that appeared in Salon -- you can see precursors to my "News of the Times" format, and to God-Man. For some reason, I always liked drawing God characters. Just trying to get on His good side, I guess.
I was told that the cancellation was made because of "severe budget constraints," and that traffic for the comic continued to be good. I know that must be the case; it was consistently on Salon's "most read" list. In fact, on the day they informed me, Thursday, out of the dozens of features to be published on that day, Tom the Dancing Bug was one of the leaders in popularity.
And when I checked in yesterday to see what Salon's "Comic Page" looked like, I saw that Tom the Dancing Bug was still there, and doing fine in comparison to what is now Salon's last surviving comic strip, Tom Tomorrow's great This Modern World.
But that's life in the fast lane of the information superhighway. Of course you can still read Tom the Dancing Bug every week in newspapers across the country, and from the link here at www.tomthedancingbug.com and at gocomics. But Tom the Dancing Bug is now a full free agent on the web, looking for a partner with a strong web presence that would be enhanced by frequent particle collider jokes, ducks making fun of presidents, and ghosts of living celebrities. And frankly, what web publication wouldn't?
-Ruben Bolling
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