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Clover Press completes their ‘Tom the Dancing Bug’ collection with two new volumes

Check out the slipcase artwork created to hold all 8 volumes.

Great news for fans of political satire comics: Clover Press has launched a Kickstarter campaign this week to publish the final two volumes in their eight-volume collection of Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip.

The two new books will collect the earliest strips from the 1990s: Secret Origins (1990-1994) and Sex, Tom the Dancing Bug, & Rock ‘N’ Roll (1994-1998). Each volume will be over 200 pages in the 8″ x 9″ format.

“With the announcement of these two volumes, The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program will soon stand as a full eight-volume chronicle of 35 years of comics – my life’s work,” said Bolling. “I’m grateful to Clover Press for its commitment to the project. The quality of the books has been extraordinary, and I’m honored to have this complete set in print. These two volumes will document this strip’s earliest years, and in some ways, my most audacious and ambitious work.”

Stan Lee and John Romita’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ newspaper strips return from Clover Press

The campaign is now live on Kickstarter.

Clover Press and The Library of American Comics are teaming up to bring The Amazing Spider-Man Classic Newspaper Comics back into print—this time in an affordable softcover format—and they’re turning to Kickstarter to make it happen.

“The Library of American Comics remastered and collected the strip in a series of hardcover collections—but so many of them are out of print, making the collection highly sought after and almost impossible for your average comics lover to get their hands on,” said Clover Publisher Hank Kanalz. ”Now, Clover Press and The Library of American Comics are bringing the collections back to print in an affordable softcover format! We’re collecting the strip strictly by year, reprinting each installment from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. We can’t wait to help get these iconic comic strips into the hands of Spidey lovers everywhere!”

The campaign’s first offering will collect the strip from 1977–1980 across four softcover volumes, each measuring 11″ x 8.5″ in a horizontal format, housed in a protective slipcase designed for easy shelving. Backers can pick up all four volumes as a bundle, along with campaign-exclusive extras including a puzzle, stickers, lithographs and more. And today we have your first look at the sticker sheets:

Caroline Cash will take over the ‘Nancy’ comic strip in 2026

Olivia Jaimes retires from the strip she rejuvenated in 2018.

Caroline Cash, the Eisner and Ignatz Award winning creator of PeePee PooPoo, will take over the comic strip Nancy from Olivia Jaimes next year.

Andrews McMeel Syndication and GoComics announced today that Olivia James, who turned heads when she took over Nancy in 2018, is retiring from the strip. Cash, who filled in for Jaimes on several guest strips last year, will take over in January.

“As a lifelong ‘Nancy’ fan, I’m honored to be given the opportunity to draw my favorite comic strip,” Cash said. “This is a real dream come true, and I look forward to sharing what I’ve been working on with everyone.”

The Reuben: The National Cartoonist Society announces nominees for the 2024 Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year

The winner will be announced in August.

The National Cartoonist Society has announced six nominees for this year’s Reuben Award, their annual recognition of the cartoonist of the year for the previous calendar year.

The NCS typically nominates five cartoonists for the award, but due to a tie in voting this year, we have six.

The Reuben Award has been presented annually since 1954 and was named for Rube Goldberg. Past winners include Lynda Barry, Stephen Pastis, Al Jaffee, Matt Groening, Sergio Aragones, Roz Chast and Charles Schulz, to name a few who have taken home this prestigious award.

This year’s nominees include:

Three Count | MODOK, Gaza, David Lynch’s Superboy

Here are three things to celebrate, read and savor this week.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. One hell of a drug.

To Celebrate: March’s Most Magnificent Mental Organism Makes a Return

The calendars have turned, and with them comes the triumphant return of Marvel’s most cerebral celebration: March MODOK Madness! Thanks to the tireless efforts of dynamic duo Pedro Delgado and Brendan Tobin, this beloved showcase of oversized-cranium creativity is back for another year of artistic homage to everyone’s favorite Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.

They are, of course, more than 20 days into this year’s effort, which means you have that much more MODOK art to click over to and enjoy. Here’s a sample of what to expect, by each of them:

Patrick McDonnell’s niece ‘gifted’ him the title of his newest book

The sequel to the ‘Mutts’ creator’s 2005 children’s book will arrive in October, but you can follow his creative process in his newsletter until it arrives.

Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell has revealed plans to release another children’s book, The Gift of Everything, this October. And in a message he shared with us, he revealed the title was inspired by his niece.

Like its predecessor, 2005’s The Gift of Nothing, the new book features the beloved characters from his comic strip. In this holiday story, Mooch the cat is searching for the perfect gift for his best friend, Earl the dog, and questions what is perfect — with the answer being “Everything.”

“My new Mutts picture book, coming out this fall, was born from an offhand comment my niece made at Thanksgiving in 2023,” McDonnell shared. “She told me how much she loved my first children’s book, The Gift of Nothing, and suggested that maybe there was more to say about gifts from the heart.”

McDonnell told us that he plans to share process pieces and behind-the-scenes moments from The Gift of Everything in his newsletter, which you can sign up for on his website. Read his complete message below.

Abrams ComicsArts will collect the story of Guard Dog from ‘Mutts’ next month

Check out a preview of Patrick McDonnell’s long-running story of a dog chained up in his yard who is ultimately abandoned by his owners.

One of the most endearing characters in the comic strip Mutts by Patrick McDonnell will take the spotlight in a new collection this September. Breaking the Chain: The Guard Dog Story tells the heartbreaking and uplifting story of Guard Dog, the dog that spent more than 20 years chained up in his yard before ultimately being freed.

Abrams ComicsArts will publish the collection of strips that detail how Guard Dog’s owners abandoned him as they moved away, and his subsequent rescue by his friends Mooch and Earl, and a little girl named Doozy who frequently visited him over the years.

“This wasn’t a villain; this was a tragic character,” McDonnell writes in his introduction to the book. “I thought of all the real dogs in this country and around the world who suffer the same unbearable fate. Maybe my dog could be their voice. He could represent the cruelty that animals endure at the hands of humans, and the cruelty we inflict upon ourselves by staying chained to our own unconscious ways of thinking.”

Sunday Comics | ‘Wayne Family Adventures’ returns for a third season

Check out new webcomics by Derek Laufman, Leigh Luna and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best and most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Wayne Family Adventures, the Webtoon comic that features Batman and all his kids, has returned for a third season. The comic first debuted back in 2021 and has also been collected in print.

Writer CRC Payne and lead artist StarBite are back with more of tales that fall into my favorite Tumblr sub-genre — “BatFam eats dinner together”:

Quick Hits | Idaho graduate offers her superintendent a banned graphic novel while accepting her diploma

Plus: Tom Luth, Bram Stoker Awards, Broom Hilda and the Ernie Bushmiller Society.

One of this year’s high school graduates from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy tried to hand her superintendent a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, a book that was removed from her school’s library earlier in the year.

The ABC affiliate KVUE reports that Annabelle Jenkins, one of 44 seniors to walk at the graduation, brought the book with her and tried to give it to Superintendent Derek Bub as she went on stage to accept her diploma. Bub would not accept the copy of the book, so Jenkins then dropped it at his feet.

Jenkins, a volunteer at her local library and a lifelong reader, said an argument between a teacher and the school librarian brought the book to her attention. “It was over the graphic novel The Handmaid’s Tale and I was just so shocked because I had never seen school staff behave that way in a school setting,” she said.

The book ended up being contested and removed from West Ada school shelves.

Sunday Comics | Guard Dog from ‘Mutts’ is finally free

Check out recent webcomics by Grover, Chris Eliopoulos, Joshua Barkman and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best and most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Followers of the comic strip Mutts by Patrick McDonnell will recognize Guard Dog, one of the strips most enduring and popular characters. Introduced about a year after the strip debuted, Guard Dog has been tethered to a stake in his owner’s yard ever since, a symbol of the cruelty of dog chaining.

After being abandoned by his owner and left to fate, Guard Dog is finally free and has a new home — not to mention his own web page.

“I started in my sketchbooks drawing a tough dog,” McDonnell told AP News about the dog’s origins. “I drew a big gruff dog and I put a studded collar on him. And then I drew a chain. And when I did that, it changed everything. I realized that it wasn’t a villain. It was a tragic character.”

McDonnell said fans of the strip have asked for the dog to be freed in the past, while animal welfare groups would ask him to keep the dog tethered as a way to bring attention to the dangers of animal neglect.

Comic strip news: Flash Gordon returns, Spider-Man canceled

Dan Schkade takes over Flash Gordon, bringing us new strips for the first time in 20 years.

This Sunday the Flash Gordon comic strip returned with new strips for the first time since 2003, both online and in print.

King Features has enlisted Dan Schkade, creator of Lavender Jack, to write and draw the strip. For the last 20 years King Features has offered reruns of the strip, as drawn by Jim Keefe (which can still be found online).

“The initial version of Flash I pitched was a little more purposefully a himbo,” Schkade told the Washington Post. Schkade won a competitive tryout earlier this year to take over the strip, and he agreed to make Flash less of a himbo and “a more classic, straightforward hero.”

Jeff Smith will collect his college paper comic strip ‘Thorn’

A Kickstarter campaign for the strips that serve as the precursor to ‘Bone’ will launch in October.

Prior to the release of Bone as a comic book — and it eventually becoming a worldwide phenomenon — Jeff Smith had a college comic strip called Thorn. It introduced several of the characters who would eventually evolve into the ones we know and love in the Bone series, including Thorn and Phone Bone. In fact, Smith would reference many of those early strips directly in the early issues of Bone.

Thorn has never been collected in its entirety, but that will change when Cartoon Books launches a Kickstarter later this year for Thorn: The Complete College Strips.

“Talking Jeff into this book wasn’t easy, but fans have been asking us for years,” said Cartoon Books Publisher Vijaya Iyer, Smith’s partner.

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