Book Description
Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World has been hailed as “one of the most clever and incisive political cartoons in the country” (Los Angeles Times). For twenty years, Tomorrow’s sharply funny and fiercely intelligent commentary has been a beacon of much-needed satire in the often-bleak world of media news. Recently, as a regular feature in weekly papers nationwide as well as online, This Modern World has continued to lend the voices of its irreverent regulars–Sparky, Blinky, and Conservative Jones, among others–to the issues of what has been a remarkable, turbulent time in this nation’s history.
This latest anthology collects Tomorrow’s work from 2008 to the present along with never before seen pieces. It covers the drama and spectacle of the presidential campaign, the historic election and first year in office of Barack Obama, the financial meltdown and Great Recession, and the rise of the teabaggers and the battle over healthcare reform, among other madcap topics. The result is more than simply the sum of its parts–at once a cultural artifact and an absolutely brilliant survey of political cartooning at its acme.Praise For This Book
Praise for Too Much Crazy "Editorial cartoons rarely make you actually laugh out loud, but this has been a signature of This Modern World since the beginning. That Tom Tomorrow breathes fire goes without saying. But he's also one of the funniest political cartoonists alive." --Dave Eggers Praise for Tom Tomorrow "Editorial cartoons rarely make you actually laugh out loud, but this has been a signature of This Modern World since the beginning. That Tom Tomorrow breathes fire goes without saying. But he's also one of the funniest political cartoonists alive." --Dave Eggers "Next time I see Tom Tomorrow, I will thank him for helping America laugh while the world laughed at us." --Michael Moore "Tom Tomorrow will both fuel your rage and make you laugh at the sneaky bastards in power--my highest compliment." --Matt Groening "Tom Tomorrow is more than a cartoonist. He's a multi-media columnist, saying infinitely more with a combination of words and images than with words alone. And unlike even the best traditional political cartoonists, he does more than come up with clever images or wordplay to make a humorous political point. His strip informs." --New Haven Advocate "Tom Tomorrow is the wry voice of American common sense, humor and decency." --Kurt Vonnegut "The sharpest strip currently going." --The New York Review of Books "The current political scene creates two impulses, to jump off a bridge or to laugh. Luckily, Tom Tomorrow gives us a chance to laugh." --Ben Bagdikian "Like all good satirists, Tomorrow is an indiscriminately subversive individualist . . . (who) does a seriously funny job of taking on the derangements of consumer culture and the high pretensions of political lowlifes." --Entertainment Weekly "The look of Roy Lichtenstein, the brutality of Lenny Bruce." --Des Moines Register "Tomorrow's This Modern World has been a reliable source of vitriolic political satire in alternative weeklies for 15 years, and, more recently, on Salon.com. Tomorrow's distinctive style involves photocopying images in sources ranging from 1950s advertising art to recent photos and setting them in text-heavy, multipanel strips. As distinctive as the strip looks, it is the content that separates Tomorrow from the pack. An unabashed Leftie, Tomorrow offers searing indictments of rapacious corporations, overbearing conservatives, and weak-kneed liberals (just to cite his most frequent targets) that stand in sharp relief to the anemic commentary that passes for most editorial cartooning . . . Tomorrow's retro look draws readers in, his acerbic humor keeps them coming back, and his wry intelligence just might make them think." --Gordon Flagg, Booklist "Tomorrow takes wide, powerful swipes at our conspicuous consumerism, at the way mainstream media distort events, and how we all, whether we admit it or not, let the media interpret reality for us. Pretty heady stuff for cartoons. And awfully entertaining to boot." --Creative Loafing "Sparky the Penguin is among the best of the new generation." --San Francisco Examiner "There may be no political cartoonist working today who is more intellectually challenging, visually innovative, or consistently provocative." --MediaFile "Tom Tomorrow rounds up the usual suspects: the hypocrisy of the mass media, the calculated idiocy of corporate culture, the duplicity of politicians, and the lunkheadedness of the average American. The flogging is made fresh by a venomous wit, genuine scorn, and a heaping dose of good old-fashioned contempt." --The Comics Journal "Don't stop thinkin' about Tomorrow." --Bill Clinton
