Comics That Don’t Suck by Adam Stepinski
“This Modern World” is a liberal political cartoon by Tom Tomorrow, aka Dan Perkins. The strip frequently goes after the president and other politicians, big business, the media, and brain-washed American families, all in the context of current events.
Stylistically, the comic draws heavily from retro pop culture of the 1950s. The flat bright colors and thin line drawings mimic magazine illustrations and detective comics, depicting conservative all-American families and shady noir characters. The strip sometimes make use of scare tactics highlighting moral degradation that bring to mind the marketing of old exploitation films, while story devices like temporal distortions and reality-changing objects seem to be borrowed straight from the “Twilight Zone”. For instance, compare the comic below to the pilot episode:
The style of “This Modern World” evokes strong feelings of nostalgia that serves an important purpose: placing the cartoon in a vintage context gives the political messages timelessness and universality. The archives of “This Modern World” date back to 1990, but the comic’s style flattens the time between 1990 and 2006 to a period of idealized Americana in the 1950s. As present day readers with the benefit of retrospect, we can’t help but laugh at the naïve beliefs held by people at that time. By applying this aura of naivete to current events, the political messages in “This Modern World” become difficult to ignore and refute.
Another striking element of this comic’s style is the variety between panels, or more precisely the lack thereof. More often that not, one panel is repeated throughout an entire strip, with only the dialogue changing. While some cartoonists do this out of laziness, “This Modern World” uses the technique to great effect:
The strip above would be ruined by the man showing any sort of reaction to Sparky’s plead for rationality. The humor in the strip below also perfectly uses the repetition of blank, angry expressions of conviction to capture the absurdity of Republican arguments:
These last two examples also highlight the skill and humor with which “This Modern World” distills political events to their absurd, ironic core. “This Modern World” provides the same sort of reality-check as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, and will definitely be enjoyed by fans of those two shows.
This Modern World blog (with comments on the news mentioned in the strip)
You can also read the latest strip on Mondays on Salon.