Life in the Stupidverse by Tom Tomorrow

This is a compilation of This Modern World cartoons, published in the years 2017 through 2020, and a worthy follow-up to the colossal 25 Years of Tomorrow I wrote about previously.

I am as devoted a fan of Tom Tomorrow (pseudonym for Dan Perkins) now as I was then, and have previously commended him for keeping the dying art of satire alive on the Internet and in a shrinking number of progressive weekly newspapers. 

Here’s what Perkins himself, in the introduction to Life in the Stupidverse, says about that endeavor:

Over these past years, cartoonists and comedians have grown used to hearing the same comment over and over again: you must have so much *material*! Unfortunately that’s not really how it works. Satire is the art of taking something to an absurd extreme in order to highlight the problems of the current moment. The thing is, we are living in the absurd extreme. I try my best, but it’s impossible to come up with something so ludicrous that Trump won’t actually end up doing it in reality, often before anyone even reads the cartoon.

Satire in the age of Trump is exhausting.

Indeed. Here are two of my favorite examples from this absurd extreme:

Yes, I can see Perkins’s dilemma. Good thing he’s a master at walking the line between the absurd real and the real absurd.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.