Interview by Tom Heintjes
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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.
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