(heroic music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is cartoonist Ruben Bolling.

Ruben, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Thank you so much, Terence.

It's great to be on Comics Culture.

- Ruben, you are a syndicated editorial cartoonist.

So I'm wondering, you know, as somebody who has to read the news for a living and then find a way to make a statement about it, but also in a way that will be either satirical or humorous, how do you kind of find that thread without feeling like it's just more bad news?

- That has been my real challenge over the last few years, especially in this last year, is that I find the news and what's going on to be not funny at all.

I find it to be alarming.

I'll admit that I don't like to read the newspaper, or certainly I don't watch cable television.

I find it too upsetting.

So I sort of let the news come to me through osmosis, through social media, through talking to people.

You know, I will see headlines, but I really have stopped, really delving into it.

And I'm taking a much more impressionistic look at what's going on.

I think I get enough.

I certainly never want to know too much more, unless I really want to educate, which I really don't want to do.

I don't want to know too much more than my readers, because then, you know, I'm bringing something up that they don't know, and then it's hard to make a joke about it.

But yeah, it's really hard.

I try to be... I try to be... to take, you know, different angles into terrible situations, and I really try to sort of shock and express my own feelings about what's going on.

But I always am, especially in the last year, I'm very aware that I don't want to make corny jokes.

I don't ever want to be corny, but, you know, be jokey about what's going on.

I always want to express, you know, the level of alarm that I feel.

- It's not easy being in the news media.

It's not easy being a journalist.

Certainly not easy being an editorial cartoonist, because in many ways, you're required to make some sort of statement, especially editorial cartoonists.

So, you know, with so much negative energy towards those who have differing opinions on whatever the topic may be, how do you kind of make sure that you're... You know, you're not getting yourself from what might be some really negative stuff that you hear back on social media?

- You called me an editorial cartoonist, which is fine, because that is what I do.

I've been doing 95% political-oriented comics for the last few years, but that hasn't always been the case.

And I don't work for a newspaper that requires a political comic every, you know, three times a week or once a week.

I have a weekly comic strip, and in that weekly comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug, I do whatever I want.

So if I have to do a comic that's political, that's on me.

I've felt some urgency to do a lot of political stuff, because that's what I've been thinking about.

But I don't always do it.

And in fact, the week that we're currently in, that we're taping this, the comic that went out is one that's called Super Fun Pack Comics.

It's about a high school that uses artificial intelligence and a Dennis the Menace type of kid, and a couple negotiating good cop, bad cop at a used car dealership and all these other little things.

And it's very absurdist and silly.

No one's making me do what I hate doing, which is commenting on the news.

I'm making myself do it, which is what I do most of the time.

I do get blowback on my comics on what I write about, because America is so polarized.

But at the same time, we're also very sort of siloed.

So the only thing I can say is that the only time I get blowback is when one of my comics really blows up and then sort of penetrates outside of the people who agree with me, who are getting the comic because they're looking on a website that buys the comic or they're looking at, or they're subscribers, certainly, to my subscription service.

But very often, it'll go outside the social media and then I get blowback from the other side.

That's for the really very viral ones.

A lot of the times, I'm sort of insulated from that, just because people who want to see a certain point of view can now only see that point of view.

And that's true for me too.

I don't see comedy from the right, because I've made choices in what I watch.

And so, you know, I don't see that.

So I guess they're not, the right isn't seeing me unless something big happens.

I did a comic recently about ICE that really blew up.

And then I got the comments back.

Thankfully, a small enough fish that it's all safe so far.

It's nothing is, nothing has gotten, you know, dangerous or threatening.

- You mentioned the media landscape, and my background is mass communication.

And it's fascinating for me to see how we have sort of created these islands of information for whichever particular opinion you're looking for.

So as a cartoonist who's distributing your stuff, not necessarily in a newspaper, but in a way that you have to, you know, people have to look for it, how do you sort of, you know, find that audience?

- My career has changed so much.

I started out as a newspaper cartoonist.

I started in 1990.

So there was no alternative to be a comic strip artist.

And so I was in newspapers.

And in some ways, that was great because it went out to everybody.

I mean, that's where I wouldn't, there were no social media, so I couldn't get any blowback.

And you'd have to actually write a letter to me if you disagreed with what I said.

But, you know, a cartoonist at that time would be in a city's newspaper, and everybody read it.

And there'd be maybe a cartoonist on the left, maybe one on the right.

I was mostly in alternative newspapers.

So I was, I was, had, maybe that was sort of a leftist audience.

But newspapers were supposed to go out to everybody and to appeal to everybody.

Now they're, you know, now there's no gatekeepers.

You know, they don't have to, you don't have to convince an editor to take on your comic strip.

It's a much more merit, much more of a meritocracy.

You put it out online, and then, you know, the numbers will be there if what you're doing is good.

But it does tend to put you into that silo.

So you don't, you know, now everybody is choosing exactly the little niche things that they want to see.

The, you know, I want to see this columnist, I want to see this cartoonist, I want to see this guy on Instagram.

And so you don't see the other side.

And I think it's, it's one of the biggest media problems that, that we have is that because we have these silos, these silos sort of diverge.

And people who watch one side have no idea of, of even the reality that the people who are living on the other side are living in.

- I'm thinking about the, the title of your comic, "Tom the Dancing Bug."

And I'm just wondering, you know, as you are developing your, your pitch, I guess, to a syndicate, if we're going to speak to that, that paper, that indie paper, you know, are you, are you coming to them with like a literal character of Tom the Dancing Bug?

And please forgive my ignorance, you know, but I, I'm just trying to figure out how you, you frame your idea in, in, in that pitch and then allow it to sort of blossom into Dennis the Menace versus AI.

- When I started the comic strip, professionally in 1990, I would, I would, I did everything myself.

There was no one, no one else.

I didn't have a syndicate.

I did in, in 1997, I got syndicated.

But in the beginning, I just did a comic for one newspaper.

And then I began, you know, saying, you know, began selling it to other newspapers and other geographical areas.

And the editors would always ask at that time, why, where's Tom the Dancing Bug?

There's no Tom the Dancing Bug.

Why isn't there a Tom the Dancing Bug?

And I would explain it's silly.

It's absurdist.

I made it up.

I'll tell you the origin of the name.

When I was in school, I submitted the comic strip to the school newspaper.

And I wanted it to be totally free form, like nothing else.

Every week is different.

And that's, that's still true.

Different styles, different formats.

I wanted it to be totally free format and free.

And they said, well, what's the name of it?

And I said, there'll be no name.

It'll just have this, here's a comic strip.

And they said, well, we're going to run it.

But it's got to have a name.

So I thought of the stupidest name I could think of.

And earlier that day, my friend had gotten a, in class had gotten a bug on his pen and was twisting the pen back and forth like that.

And so the bug was sort of doing a dance.

So I just said, the name of the comic should be Tom the Dancing Bug.

And I remember riding my bike back to my apartment saying, actually, I like that.

That's, that actually fits.

So in the 90s, it got a lot of questions and, and, and blowback from editors.

But over time, I think it's, it's stopped.

And I think it's because people have gotten used to like nonsense names.

I don't think they really existed in 1990, but a lot of like band names got, got sillier and more, you know, really it's Monty Python's Flying Circus as you know, that's, it's sort of comes from, from that kind of thing.

I think people have gotten used to it.

I almost, I'm almost never asked about it now.

Certainly.

I'm almost never selling the comic strip to editors anymore.

Now it's all online.

So it's all social media.

Here's Tom the Dancing Bug.

Make of it what you will.

Join my subscription service.

It's the strip is called Tom the Dancing Bug.

Come along for the ride or don't, but you're not going to have an opportunity to ask me why it's called that.

So if the name is sort of emblematic of the fact that I really wanted to, and I still want the comic strip to be totally free and fresh every week.

And, and really as silly and absurdist as, as I can.

- You mentioned Monty Python's Flying Circus.

And I was actually going to mention that because that's one of those names that the BBC was, you know, trying to come up with a name for the show.

And they thought that would be hysterical.

It also is that absurdist humor that people of a certain age, my age, I remember watching Monty Python on PBS and we come on Sunday nights at 11 o'clock and I'd stay up late on and tune in and watch it.

And it informed my humor growing up in the eighties.

I mean, I was in the eighties and it seems like it's informed your humor.

So, you know, as somebody who is, is looking at the world, not necessarily with the, you know, the, the setup, the punchline and the, the drum fill, you know, how are you sort of crafting a story you're talking about?

Again, I'm going to go back to Dennis the Menace and AI, you know, how are you sort of coming up with this, this view that AI I'm assuming is, is going to be a menace?

- My influence, first of all, I loved comics growing up and I do a newspaper comic or what - I mean, I used to do a weekly comic strip.

It's no longer a newspaper comic.

And it's often now it's often political.

But, you know, I loved superhero comics.

I loved every kind of comic growing up.

And so superheroes, comic strips, I loved Scooby Doo, whatever it was, if it was a drawing that talked, I was, I was, I was into it.

So that was definitely an influence.

But when I started the comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug.

I think that my, my sort of guiding principle were, I think, two things, maybe three.

Mad Magazine.

You must be familiar with Mad Magazine.

I probably couldn't have articulated this, but if I looking back on it, if I could have, I would have said, I want to do a Mad Magazine where I'm all the artists and all the writers.

So I would do a Spy Versus Spy and a Lighter Side of, I'd have different formats and different characters, all with different styles.

And every week would be a different feature from a Mad Magazine.

And, and that's very related to my other influence, which was sketch comedy and SNL and Monty Python.

Certainly later in my career, Mr.

Show, you know, blew my mind, Kids in the Hall.

I love all that stuff.

And so my, my, but they're, they're, they like Mad Magazine are sort of sketch oriented, premise oriented.

You set up a premise and then you play with it.

Those were my influences in terms of doing my comic.

That's, that's what I wanted to do.

I think you were totally right when you juxtapose that to, you know, the setup and the, and the gag, which, which I did not want to do.

And that's sort of the older style of, you know, you know, Broomhilda and, and, and Beetle Bailey where it, and which, which actually, you know, is the analogy on TV to the older style of TV comedy.

The Johnny Carson sort of one liner, you know, a very quick joke.

So I was more influenced by sketch comedy, Mad Magazine.

I wanted to develop a premise and then have fun with it.

You know, veer in, in, in unexpected directions.

That's what, that's what I loved.

And yeah, I've been doing it for, for 35 years now.

The, the comic has gotten more political aside from, you know, my occasional excursion.

Occasional excursions has gotten less absurdist than it was when I first started.

And I was really trying hard to be, you know, Monty Python-esque and, and, and really be totally unpredictable.

I remember thinking when I, when I started someone asked me, you know, the people would ask me like, how did you think of that?

And I, my, what I always thought of was I want to people to, when they read my comic to think not how did he think of that, but why did he think of that?

Well, why, why would you?

Come on.

Why would you think of that comic?

Why would you come up with a giant alien who lands on earth only to take a nap and leave?

You know, you know, all the weird, you know, giant wombats wandering the streets.

I wanted it to be very strange.

And it was when it started and it still veers into that.

But now a lot of it is sort of, you know, satire and parody based on current events.

- You know, there is an evolution that we have as people.

As we, we start out with a, with an idea and I tell my students this, you know, we have an idea of where we want to end up in life.

And then as we're walking, we start to veer off from that path.

We're not even aware of it because we're looking in a different direction somehow.

And we end up where we are.

And a lot of times it's better than where we thought we would be.

And as an artist, you are constantly evolving to the point where you are, you've, you've developed your voice.

You've, you've found that style that is more than just kind of, I want something unpredictable.

Now it's, this is, this is the voice that I discovered along the way.

And, you know, in the years that you've been working on the strip, I'm, I'm noticing that, you know, technology has really influenced a lot of what cartoonists do.

And I see behind you, there's a drawing board.

And I'm wondering if you are still working in the traditional tools of ignorance, the, the board, the pen, the ink, or if you've moved on to, you know, a tablet and maybe some, some stylus.

- That's it.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, I still, I still draw the comic by hand on this, this big wooden thing behind me.

But then I, you know, when I started, I would draw everything and, and what I held up in my hand would be the comic and I would photocopy that and send it out to clients and eventually photocopy it and send it off to my syndicate.

Or actually I would send the originals to my syndicate, but that was it.

Now, I, I draw it.

I draw it.

It went blue pencil.

I ink over that.

Then I put it into the computer.

Scan it, put it into the computer.

And then I erase the blue line.

And then I manipulate it.

Sometimes I add lettering.

I add effects.

I never blacken, you know, shaded areas.

I just leave it and know that I'm going to point and click and it'll be done in a second.

If I make a mistake, I just write in the margin, fix thumb.

And so when I go on, you know, then on the, so, and then I go on the computer and I, I fix everything up.

And so a lot of the stuff is done on the computer.

And now the original comic usually can look very different from, from what ends up going out.

I do, now I color the comic.

When I first started, it was in black and white.

Now it's all done.

I do the colors on the, on the computer.

So it looks, it does look very different.

It's kind of a hybrid.

- It's interesting.

Growing up, and I'm sure your experience is similar, you know, the, the daily paper was always black and white comic strips.

And Sunday would be in glorious color and a lot more panels on the page.

And then sometime in the, I guess it was mid-90s, they switched over to color every day.

And I'm still not used to it.

I still prefer my comics to be in glorious black and white.

So as you make that move into, to full color and, and certainly, you know, making it easier with those digital tools, you know, are you finding that it's found that other voice for you because you can do something with a color?

That you couldn't do when it was just a simple black and white strip?

- Oh, sure.

I mean, I went into the world of color kicking and screaming because I wanted to only work in black and white.

But then eventually, you know, the, the, the print and at that time, the newspapers were all in black and white.

But then the importance of newspaper distribution began to get less and less and the importance of web, the web presence began to get more and more.

And the, and the web, you had to be in, in color.

So I sort of missed the color aspect of newspapers.

They're in, it's in newspapers still today.

And people do run it in black and white or color, depending on what the newspaper wants.

It's, it's much less now.

I really am only thinking about online.

And yeah, now, now I'm used to color.

I think about it when I'm drawing it.

I think about, I don't know if this will be clear, you know, what this is here.

But I rely on, but once it's colored in, it'll be clearer.

So I sort of draw with the color in mind.

I just did one where a couple go into a house and it's sort of like a horror story.

And as I wrote it, I decided I'm going to make the colors darker and darker as they realize that it's, that they're in a horror story.

And so, you know, that was, it was a lot of fun.

And, you know, I worked with the lighting and by the end there were, you know, big shadows and a lot of color shading on faces as though that's the, that light's coming from below.

I'm not that good at it, but good enough as, as you know, with every, with my comic strip a lot.

This is sort of my guiding principle of my art.

Good enough to get the idea across and to get the reader to know what I was, what I was trying for and to have some fun with it.

- And because you switched styles up and because you are essentially you're, you're, you're allowing yourself to continue to evolve and grow and learn as an artist.

Are you finding that, you know, you've, you've crossed boundaries that you never thought you'd be able to cross in terms of the way you can put something on a page to, you know, maybe capture a style that wasn't in your, your toolbox when you first started?

- Oh, yeah.

One of the, one of the things that I've really started to do and I didn't do when I started, and it's been a revelation for me and, and so much fun, especially when I'm dealing with such dark topics now, is that I use, I satirize and parody existing styles very often.

And I have recurring formats where I will, you know, use the style of something.

And very often what I do is I use a style from, that I knew in my childhood that was innocent and wholesome and really, to me, beautiful and almost holy.

And then put it into today's terms.

And sort of desecrate it and show how dark it is.

And I guess an example of that is I was really happy with the way that turned out when I did my first Richard Scarry parody.

Have you heard, you know, the children's illustrator Richard Scarry?

He'd draw, it's not, it's not comics, but he's a children's author and he would draw these like little busy towns with a cute little pig who was a grocer.

And a worm who has a broom and a raccoon who's a doctor.

And there's just, they're just adorable figures.

And there's, you know, it would always be like a big full page of all these busy little characters that kids could like just stare at and see all the busy little animals.

I do them now, but I set it in the current world.

And instead of, you know, a grocer and a, I'm going to try to think of examples of what I've done.

But, you know, it's all dark stuff.

And they'd be like an ICE agent, you know, just as cute.

I make them as cute as I possibly can.

But an ICE agent, you know, grabbing a migrant and putting it into a, putting him into a van.

So I've done Calvin and Hobbes parodies where I draw like Bill Watterson.

But instead of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin and his imaginary tiger friend, I have little Donald.

I have little Donald as a little seven-year-old and his imaginary publicist, which looks like a grown-up Donald Trump.

And I've done so many of those.

I've done Peanuts, you know, I call them Q-nuts.

So I'll have, you know, Linus, you know, waiting in the pumpkin patch for, like a follower of Q, waiting for Trump to, you know, start his purge of the pedophiles.

And, you know, in Hollywood and, you know, he's waiting in it because he has so much faith that Trump will do this.

So, you know, I love Linus.

Linus is one of my favorite characters, concepts in the universe.

And it pains me to, you know, to paint stuff this way.

But that's what I sort of was talking about before.

You know, I do that to sort of convey, you know, to myself and to the audience that comes along with me.

How alarmed I am at the changes that are going on in our society.

But to go back to your question about, yeah, I mean, I'm glad that people think that I do an accurate job of drawing in those other styles.

I think I'm like 80 percent.

I see myself through it.

And maybe that kind of works because you see Calvin and Hobbes, but it's not just like Watterson.

You also see a little bit of Reuben Bowling.

You know, that 20 percent.

And the same with Peanuts and Richard Scarry and lots of superheroes.

I do tons of -- I draw like -- I try to draw -- I fail much harder when I try to draw like Jack Kirby.

But I try a lot.

And John Romita.

So, you know, I am happy with -- again, I do the best I can.

And I think I convey it.

I wish I could get to 100 percent.

Like there's a cartoonist named Robert Sikoryak who does these parodies that are just -- you can't believe that the original artist didn't do them.

But as a weekly cartoonist and also, frankly, with limited talent, I just can't get to 100 percent.

I can get to 80 or 90 percent.

And that's what I got to live with.

- Reuben, they are telling me that we are just about out of time.

If the folks watching at home wanted to find you on the web, where can they find you?

- They can find me on the website, TomTheDancingBug.com, where I have all the information.

Clover Press is putting out a multi-volume set of the complete Tom the Dancing Bug.

As of later this year, it will be complete.

There will be eight complete volumes.

Volumes one and two are coming out -- are going to be the Kickstarter launches in October.

So once those books come out, it will be an eight-volume set of the complete Tom the Dancing Bug.

They are at CloverPress.us, but also information is at TomTheDancingBug.com.

- Well, Reuben, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a great conversation.

- Thank you very much, Terence.

I really enjoyed it.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

(heroic music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, giving broadcasting majors professional experience and on-screen credit before they graduate.

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