Tune In Tomorrow
In his feature "This Modern World," which appears mostly in weekly alternative papers, Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins) uses images traced from photographic references (running from 1950s advertising art to recent shots of politicians) and a multipaneled comic strip format to create a distinctive kind of postmodern editorial cartoon. Tomorrow lambastes mainstream U.S. politics and society from a left-progressive perspective that makes his counterparts in the mainstream press look like wimps (or paragons, depending on your perspective). Tomorrow ridicules Bill Clinton as savagely as he mocked George Bush inGreetings from the Modern World(1992), and he has plenty of venom to spare for the religious right, self-indulgent baby boomers, generation-Xers, the media (a target he attacks with special relish), and just about every other segment of the culture. Like any collection of editorial cartoons, the material has lost some of its immediacy (ridicule of Bush and Quayle that would have inspired outrage at the time now evokes nostalgia), but the novelty of Tomorrow's approach keeps his work surprisingly fresh.Gordon Flagg