As "This Modern World" Head to Animation, Tom Tomorrow Talks His New Collection, Crazy is the New Normal

Earlier this week, Film Roman announced that they had optioned This Modern World, the long-running [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Earlier this week, Film Roman announced that they had optioned This Modern World, the long-running comic strip from cartoonist and political commentator Tom Tomorrow (real name Dan Perkins), as an animated series.

Today, Perkins' new collection Crazy is the New Normal hits the stands, giving the veteran writer/artist an opportunity to take a long look at the bizarre 2016 Presidential election and its over-the-top Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

He got off to a good start at New York Comic Con, distributing hundreds of cardboard masks depicting the This Modern World/Crazy is the New Normal take on Trump.

"They're going like hotcakes," Perkins joked when ComicBook.com asked about the masks. "Very frightening hotcakes!"

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(Photo: IDW Publishing)

"I've been doing this essentially since 1990, and this is the strangest episode I've ever been through," Perkins told us. He said that the release of the "Trump tapes" during New York Comic Con necessitated him rewriting strips that he had already completed because "I've never seen so many outrageous things pile up in so short order."

And, yes, he knows that some of those reading this article won't be happy with his characterizations of Trump (or Clinton, or anybody else he lampoons regularly). "That's an occupational hazard," Perkins joked.

Perkins says that the look of his strip evolved from when he first started using collages of advertising imagery, which he compared to communist propaganda, where people are ridiculously happy not about the government, "but about mouthwash."

He also joked that his own art developed, as he started to draw more, out of a sense of reusing the handful of skills he feels he has.

IDW Publishing will also release two new This Modern Worldby Tom Tomorrow compilations this month – Crazy is the New Normal, featuring Tom Tomorrow strips from the last three years, as well as a massive two-volume This Modern World hardcover career retrospective covering the last quarter century.

Executive producing the forthcoming This Modern World series will be legendary animator Phil Roman, who founded Film Roman and is known for such hits as How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Garfield, Bobby's World, and his work on The Simpsons, King of The Hill, and Peanuts specials.

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