Ruben Bolling

Ruben Bolling is the author of Tom the Dancing Bug, the weekly comic strip seen by millions across the world in print and on the web.

In 2020, Clover Press launched its Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program, starting with the seventh volume, Into the Trumpverse, covering the years 2016-2019 (Bolling releases compilation books the way George Lucas released Star Wars movies).

To date, the volumes in the Complete Tom the Dancing Bug program:

- Volume the Eighth: "It's the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug!," covering the years 2020-2023 (published 2024)

- Volume the Seventh: Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse, covering the years 2016-2019 (published 2020)

- Volume the Sixth: Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens, covering the years 2012-2015 (published 2021)

- Volume the Fifth: Tom the Dancing Bug: Eat the Poor, covering the years 2007-2011 (published 2022)

- Volume the Fourth: Tom the Dancing Bug: All-Mighty Comics, covering the years 2003-2006 (published 2022)

- Volume the Third: On the Trail of Tom the Dancing Bug, covering the years 1999-2002 (published 2023)

All volumes include not only every Tom the Dancing Bug published during that time period, but also other work Ruben Bolling did, such as extra comic strips and freelance work done for magazines and books.

Clover Press has also published:

- The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader (2020), the complete (1997-2019) Super-Fun-Pak Comix, one of the comic strip's most popular features; and

- Tom the Dancing Bug, Without the Bad Ones (2021), the very, very best of the 31-year history of the comic strip.

Tom the Dancing Bug has appeared in hundreds of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and The New Yorker. It appears on some of the biggest websites, such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and GoComics.

Ruben Bolling is also the author of the series of kids' books, The EMU Club Adventures. He lives in New York City.

Tom the Dancing Bug awards and almost-awards:

2022 National Cartoonists Society Silver Reuben Award

-> 2021 and 2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist

2021 The National Press Foundation's Berryman Award

2018 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award

2017 Herblock Prize

2017 National Cartoonists Society Silver Reuben Award

2014 Society of Illustrators Gold Medal

2011 Society of Professional Journalists Award

2002-2009 Five-time winner of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Cartoon Award

1990-2021 Orange Julius Loyalty Club applicant

The list of endorsements for Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse -

"God bless Tom the Dancing Bug! Funny, succinct, and highly original, Ruben Bolling is able to make sense from the chaos and tragedy of America's political nightmares and make you laugh while doing it. An increasingly rare and more difficult feat these extra bleak days. This is worth your time and money. Do it!"

-DAVID CROSS

"Behold the wondrous, whimsical, witty world that is Tom the Dancing Bug! If you're someone who's not a fan of potent political humor with an incisive absurdist twist that's not only consistently funny, but downright therapeutic for an ailing world, I suggest you avoid this book like the plague. For everyone else, it's a MUST-READ!"

-MARK HAMILL

"Delve into the dementia, the dread, and the delightfulness of this collection of Tom the Dancing Bug's strips -- it's history through the lens of a self-loathing insomniac. In a way, it's all of us."

-PATTON OSWALT

"Ruben Bolling has been sending me his secret messages for years, in the form of comics printed first on paper, and then, once paper became extinct, on the internet. I don't know exactly what he's trying to tell me, except he seems to know about everything I find funny, delightful, strange and inexplicable to get my attention, from obscure literary references to negging deep dish pizza. I don't understand exactly what exactly he's trying to say to me, but I still obsessively keep reading, not just because he's hilarious, but because someday I hope to find out who this Tom the bug is, and why he is dancing."

-PETER SAGAL

"This fine collection of work by Mr. Bolling provides ample evidence as to why he is unanimously considered one of the greatest cartoonists in the known universe. How he would rank in that other part of the universe is, of course, a matter that’s still being hotly debated within the scientific community.”

-"WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC

"I am a HUGE fan of Tom the Dancing Bug! It makes me laugh and think of course but it makes me feel better. No kidding, I read it and I think, someone else thinks like me, only funnier and better informed and I feel good. Thank you Ruben Bolling for giving us Tom The Dancing Bug. (Can't decide whether to capitalize ‘the’)."

-GARY GULMAN

"That fact that Tom the bug can keep dancing in this day and age is a testament to Ruben Bolling’s skills as a cartoonist!"

-SETH MEYERS

"Each week Ruben Bolling takes an unassuming little blank white rectangle and fills it up with clever cartoonery, sneaky commentary, and more political laughs than you can shake a stick at. All hail Tom the Dancing Bug!"

-MATT GROENING

"Ruben Bolling's craft and commentary are as powerful and as pointed, as capable of making you laugh while breaking your heart, as they were when we were all so very young."

from the foreword by NEIL GAIMAN