Ruben Bolling’s long-running and award-winning comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug, comes to Kickstarter via Clover Press with two new volumes in an eight-volume collection, originally published from 1990 to 1998.
In addition to the two 200+ page 8″ x 9″ books, the Kickstarter campaign will also feature a collectible 11″ x 13″ lithograph print, a slipcase that will hold all 8 volumes of Clover Press’s Tom The Dancing Bug, t-shirts, and more to celebrate Bolling’s dancing bug.
We spoke to Bolling about his first Kickstarter campaign and the history of the Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip in this exclusive interview.
Thoughts on the upcoming release of your 8 volume collection of Tom the Dancing Bug strips?
Ruben Bolling: It will be amazing to have 8 volumes, comprising my entire life’s work, 35 years of comics, in print and on bookshelves. I’m very grateful to Tom the Dancing Bug’s readers for so enthusiastically supporting this project, and to Clover Press for publishing these book so beautifully. It’s overwhelming.
Where did the idea originally come from for Tom?
Bolling: I wanted to do a comic strip that would be like a MAD Magazine where I was the entire roster of cartoonists. Or like a Saturday Night Live where I was the entire writing staff, and could draw the entire cast. It’s a premised-based sketch comedy comic strip.
Many people in the creative community love Tom the Dancing Bug. Why do you think it appeals to so many?
Bolling: I suspect that most of the praise Tom the Dancing Bug has attracted from my comedy and entertainment heroes is sarcastic.
Do you have a favorite strip or two in the collection?
Bolling: The two volumes that are being released this month are from my first nine years of doing Tom the Dancing Bug, so it was a very exciting time. There’s a comic called “Human Morality Made Simple” that I’m proud of, and many people have told me is their favorite. And I had a lot of fun with the multi-week adventures of Charley the Australopithecine, like the one in which he becomes a rock star.
Did you ever have clashes with editorial over the content of one of your strips?
Bolling: The comic is syndicated, which means that each week’s comic goes out to many outlets, each with its own editorial standards. So if any outlet objects to a Tom the Dancing Bug comic, they’ll just not run that week’s comic (at best), or cancel the comic altogether (at worst). But no one outlet can really ask me to change it. At its peak of print distribution, it went out to hundreds of newspapers, and one paper in Virginia would never run a comic featuring one of my recurring characters, God-Man. I’d always supply them with a replacement rerun.
Thoughts on Kickstarter campaign?
Bolling: This is my first Kickstarter, so I’m really nervous about how it will turn out. I’m hoping that people who enjoy the comic strip will support it and get these two books. They are from my earliest cartooning days in the 1990s, so most people who started following me in this century (!) will have never seen these comics.
Upcoming work?
Bolling: I keep doing a Tom the Dancing Bug every week, and continue to expand the things I do for the Inner Hive, the subscription service/newsletter that gets the comic every week before it’s published (bit.ly/theInnerHive). I also want to get back into writing and drawing kids’ books, if I ever get the time.
The Kickstarter campaign for the new Tom the Dancing Bug volumes is now live.
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