Subject: Hello
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 00:20:21 -0500 (EST)
Hello,
I am pretty sure you get lots of mail congratulating you on your work and me saying that your work is fantastic (I have not seen seen any better) won't affect you in any way, I just wanted to say, your comic is the only thing on Monday worth waking up to.
I mention your comics to most of my friends, who are making so much money in this Bull market, however they almost always agree with your point of view, especially with regards to opinions on Dilbert. The thing is when the 'gettings' good, like it is now, you should try to make as much money as you can, so rid out the rough times.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
***
Subject: you
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 11:52:55 -0800
go away.
***
Subject: THANK YOU
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 03:54:27 -0800 (PST)
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
I just wanted to write to tell you how much I love your strip "This Modern World" and how utterly refreshing it is to see someone telling it like I think it really is.
I think you are a genius - your ability to root out so much of the stupidity and selfishness rampant in this culture is truly amazing. Not only that, but your wit is such an excellent vehicle for the ideas you explore.
So please keep up the good work-we need more people like you.
***
Subject: Blinky
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 08:58:56 -0500 (EST)
Blinky is awfully cute (not like that mean old Sparky)!
How about they wrestle?
***
Subject: USELESS FAN EMAIL-MINE
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 13:01:55 -0500
DEAR TOM,
(If that's your real name)
Love your strip but I gotta tell you, if your mother hasn't already, that you better mind your posture while milking your Muse at the computer. Your strip on 1-5 shows you slouching , sitting on your spine you poor, ergonomically challenged boy. Just try creating with Carpal Tunnel or herniated discs!
But to the real point of my correspondence. I love you and want you to father my love child- one that would have your intelligence, humor with a sense of satire, irony and political interest and my perfect teeth.
Take care mon cher!
***
Subject: this modern kakistocracy
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 13:22:43 -0800 (PST)
hi dan!
we're anxiously awaiting the next tmw compilation book... when's it due?
in my humble opinion, your work is one of the few things worth the tree pulp it's printed on. thanks for the incredibly insightful indictments of the insanity out there.
***
Subject: fanmail
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 21:07:03 +0000
3/1/00
Hi! just a note to say how much I enjoy your work- I live in Scotland and came across TMW on holiday in New York, and I've been looking for it over here ever since.
I recently ordered a copy of Penguin Soup For the Soul and when it arrived at the bookstore they placed it on display by mistake. When I went to pick it up, the assistant obviously confused by the title, went to search for it in the self-help section! (So I said, try over next to Dilbert..
Anyway, keep busy- your wit and satire are much appreciated.
***
Subject: The Echelon Project
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 00:36:49 -0500 (EST)
As probably a lot of people have told you, there's a definite brilliantness about your work, in that you possess that gift (that I most certainly don't have): clarity, or the golden rule of Elements of Style.
In the comic where Sparky considers the repealing of the ban of CFC's with Biff (11.1.95), I've never seen the answer (which should been so obvious) to environmental cost-benefit analysis put down so clearly. Although sometimes the detail is necessary, the American public doesn't seem likely to be able to handle things in anything more than 15 second sound-bites (and as Hobbes notes, that probably overstates the average attention span by a good 14 seconds), and so therefore, the arguments need to be simple to have any chance of rescuing the country from the encroachment of dittoheads. But in any case...
1) Although I haven't read all the back comics to know if you've covered this, this is definitely extremely disturbing to know that the war for privacy online is virtually over:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,27293,00.html
2) Have you read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky? There's a good case study of worthy versus unworthy victims (people who live in enemy-controlled states versus US client states), and how the latter are unreported to a very large extent, because of the business and government-controlled media. It has a very interesting propaganda model of the state.
***
Subject: TT
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 15:17:15 EST
Dr. Dean Edell on KGO radio just mentioned your strip re: Michael Milken.
Liked it.
I might go 12/1 to hear MM speak at the Commonwealth Club. If I do, should I give him your regards?
***
Subject: This modern world
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 08:07:05 -0800 (PST)
Dear Tom,
Regarding your strip concerning Chris Ofili's art work:
Just for a moment imagine me as your close personal friend. Even more so, consider me as a person you love in your heart. It would grieve you to hurt me if I were so.
I am a devout Catholic. You would respect that, if not understand it, if I were your close personal friend. The Virgin Mary is my Mother. I think of her as my Mother, as much as my biological Mother. It hurts me when someone insults her, it hurts me very deeply. Please consider the pain it causes me, your deep personal friend, when you support someone who has unjustly insulted my Mother.
***
Subject: (no subject)
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 22:30:14 EST
I was wondering if you can just clarify what this cartoon means. Thank you.
***
Subject: Lies my teacher told me?
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 13:37:26 -0600
Here is something that may interest you. In the weekly newspaper "City Pages" (which thankfully carries Tom Tomorrow) the following notice was put in the Weeks Advents/Readings column:
"The Matrix. A discussion group about religion, politics, sex etc. for people who believe they've been lied to about the way the world really works. Call (612) 862-2346 for more information. 3:00 Sa through Nov 20."
wow. I'm supprised they aren't charging $10 a head. Have you heard of similar things elsewhere?
Subject: Modern World Comic
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:57:59 PDT
Dear Tom,
I was handed a printing of your strip that ran This past Saturday, August 21, 1999. I was outraged and offended by the subject matter that made Christians like me look like idiots, fools and fanatics. I noticed several areas where you erred. About where Heaven and Hell is. Your comment about Jews should have offend every one of my Jewish neighbors, also you view of where Heaven and Hell is located is way off track. As a matter of fact, real Christians are not the way or believe in the way you have them satired in your comic. I see no humor in your comic, neither does it make a valid point or any reasoning. In other words it is tasteless. Therefore you should refrain from this issue.
Subject: This Modern World for July 21, 1999 [which currently isn't online]
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 22:27:09 EST
Dear Mr. Tomorrow and Sparky:
A colleague and I were having a conversation concerning the primary results in Virginia and Washington, noting how the major parties were, as usual, forcing their anointed candidates on to the electorate (which isn't too bad -- McCain scares the piss out of me, given his air of self--righteousness). A thought occurred to me to go back to one of your cartoons -- which I swipe from the local alternative weekly until your next collection comes out -- and I found the above-referenced piece.
Does it scare you or sadden you that you can be so deadly accurate?
***
Subject: Fan Mail
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 10:08:56 -0600
Dear TT,
I have been meaning to write for months if not years. Maybe you get all kinds of fan mail everyday and are secure in your role as one of the most viable and meaningful political and social cartoonists alive.
Then again maybe you are prone to self doubt and insecurities about what the effect of your work is on others and why you do what you do.
Either way I want to tell you that I think you are doing great and I look forward to your comics eagarly. I have been reading them faithfully since they first appeared in the Santa Cruz Comic News. Previous to your cartoons I would NEVER read a comic with so many words. But from the very beginning I found myself reading all of your words because they were so profound, right-on and insightful. (I also like your visual style.)
I was so impressed by the Happy New Millennium 12/22/99 comic (LOTS of words) that I finally made the effort to send this. That's all I wanted to say.
**
Subject: Fawning Sycophantic flattery
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 22:08:04 -0500
Dear Tom,
Kinda gives you a sick rolling feeling in the stomache to think that one commercially non-viable cartoonist has more ethical sense and solid insight than most political, pundits and priests, doesn't it?
I fear it has been that way for a long time.
Keep at their heels.
**
Subject: Thanks 4 TMW
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 17:03:44 -0500
Mr Tomorrow/Perkins,
thanks for all the great work. I visited the web site for the first time today. The main reason I've been picking up The City Paper (Philadelphia) in the last 8 or more years (?) is to see the new TMW.
I don't think you write the most "wordy" strip. I think the guy who does The Boondocks is much more dense with the ink....cramming a lot into the space. Sadly for him, he's not as interesting or funny as you are and I feel tired halfway through the first panel. (Just my personal opinion)
It's incredibly sad to read of the benighted attacks on TMW from Connecticut legislators to (J)Oklahoma City and other outposts of dim-wittedness. I wish they'd all run huge retrospectives of your favorite 2 dozen TMWs (and pay you for it) as well as sign binding contracts to run TMW for 3 years.
I have a lot more positive feedback, but I'll save it for another time Thanks again for the undiluted excellence,
**
I read This Modern World every week in the Philadelphia City Paper and I
love it. Thanks for getting your thoughts out to us.
***
Please do me a favor: I don't know how to get a letter to the guy who
writes "This Modern World," and I'm going to assume he's not reachable at
ttomorrow@citypaper.com.
The man is a genius. I cut out the cartoon and tape it to the wall every
time it makes me belly-laugh, and I'm running out of space (and I have a big
wall). This is the kind of art that changes the way people think. Or maybe
I'm just congratulating him for thinking exactly as I do? I don't know. In
any case, if you wouldn't mind, let him know he's got fan mail. This week's
cartoon prompted me to break down and write.
***
thank you tom -- you make the world a better place (or at least you make it
funnier)
***
You are the most talented person in the business since Jules Feiffer, and the only cartoon
I've read in the last ten years. Thank you for the funniest, most honest journalism around in
this strange age.
***
Hi There!
Fan letters have been know to, at times, begin with anecdotes of where a
particular person was when they first encountered something of importance to
them. I rarely mark it in terms of when I have met people, but usually
remember where I was when I first held a book by an author who would make an
impact on me, or heard a musical piece that affected me in a previously
unknowable way. Unfortunately, this letter cannot start this way because I
have no real idea how I first encountered you. I have a general idea, and
pretty much can pinpoint the year, but your wonderful takes on modern life
did not so much hit me on the head, as they seemed to be part of a
Tommyknocker-like invasion. It was either 1991 or 1992 when it happened, and
I know that much for a fact because one of your postcards was adorning my
residence hall doorway my senior year of college in the Fall of 1992. The
year leading up to that one was a year of huge changes in my consciousness.
I came out in the Fall of 1991 at UMASS/Amherst, which is a notably liberal
area anyhow. With my coming out, my entire views on life began to change,
and I started to see things in a different light. Therefore, I started
reading books and magazine and journals that I had previously dismissed as
being not for me. I also started frequenting bookstores in downtown Amherst
and nearby Northampton that had lots of "liberation literature." At the time,
my mind was so open to all the new things that I never really cast a critical
eye on any of this stuff. (That came years later.) One of the things that a
lot of these stores carried were postcards of your work, and the free local
liberal paper started carrying your strip not too long afterwards. And that,
my friend, is the nearest approximation I can some to having first
encountered you ... as a young guy whose eyes and ears were open to the new
world he suddenly stumbled upon. (Hell, it even SMELLED differently, what a
change from all the sanitized stores at a shopping mall, these stories all
had the faint aroma of incense and had windchimes for sale, and usually a cat
or two lounging around.)
I can't even remember the postcard that I had on my door. I know that the
last panel had a woman saying, "We love America!" but that's all my mind can
muster. But I do know that at the time I bought it, it summed up all of my
feelings about society and the like at that time.
You have provided me with countless hours of humor and laughs over the years,
especially when things were darkest (most notably the dull post-college years
when I was doing a 3.5 year stint as a bank teller, and the world had
reverted to the pre-college days of dullness.) Thank you for showing us how
ridiculous people can be on both sides of the issues nowadays, but also,
thanks so much for slamming the narrow minded thinking of those in power. I
especially love the sly subversive pictures of 50's type people ... the full
irony of that is so beautiful, I am not sure many people get it. Maybe I
don't even get it, but just think I do, who knows?
Anyhow, I love your work. You make me double over in laughter every time,
and the only other cartoonist who can make me do that nowadays (who has not
retired) is Roz Chast.
I am a bit more well rounded now than I was back when I was young and
idealistic in college, but we still live in interesting times, and I am glad
that your satire casts a much needed different light on the times.
Hopefully, those will be preserved just as well with everything else, so that
we can see that not everybody saw the same way on the issues (as the 50's
have been made to seem, ignoring segregation, raids on gay bars, and
McCarthyism).
***
Editor
The Independent
These are tough times for mean-spirited bigots like your cartoonist
Tom Tomorrow. He can't denigrate Jews, because the Anti-Defamation
League would hang him by his thumbs.
Nor can he insult Blacks or homosexuals, because the Thought
Police would promptly jail him for hate crimes.
That leaves Tom only one group which the Media Elite has deemed
politically permissable to mock and disparage: Christians, which he
trashed on August 26.
An apology is warranted. However, if apologizing to
Christian readers sticks in your gorge, you could always try
insulting Jews, Blacks and homosexuals as well. This would demonstrate to all
that your paper is at least even-handed in its bigotry, not biased.
***
Seen your comic, bashing the christian right. I'm not arguing the other
point, but....lets say you had a calculator. IF you added something in like
56 +73+89+44 and the answer it gave you was 263. What does that do to the
creditability of your calculator?
Darwin believed in something so much, that he altered where the bones of
"PITH PITHTHON MAN" (please forgive the miss pronunciation) were found! The
creation FACT has never been proven wrong. Darwin went to his death trying,
but failed.
Why believe a lie??
Look..... What's the driving force behind your comic strip????I don't think
you realize it, but it's a lame attempt to debunk creationism.... I would ask
where's your proof? When someone says that a human being crawled out from the
sea, he actually is saying he doesn't believe in the bible, let alone a GOD!
GOD has given us a bunch or things to calculate, and when we die, it's like
HE hits the equal key. Tom you are in a world of " s*"# " at that time.
Picture your self dead and there's no god? ........ Now picture your self
dead before GOD all mighty... oops
I'll pray for you
***