THIS COLLECTION (VOLUME 6) gathers Tom the Dancing Bug comics from 2012-15. Ruben Bolling made his big pivot to political topics in the Trump years, but there was already a lot of politics in these strips--wealth inequality in the "Lucky Ducky" installments, middle class precarity in the "Chagrin Falls" installments, various hypocritical compromises of the second Obama administration, like the drone program, in several comics. Odd to be reminded how disappointing that second Obama administration often was, given what we have to deal with since.
Bolling knows his comics history and, as always, astonishes with his ability to conjure up the look of several distinct styles: Hanna-Barbera, Carl Barks, EC comics, Sunday School pamphlets, the ads that blossomed in the back pages of comic books back in the pre-Maus days before started taking themselves seriously. He's a master.
I wonder--will we ever see Louis Maltby navigating the perils of middle school again, or Billy Dare again take crafty advantage of the conventions of narration? Bolling has bigger fish to fry these days, true, but I look forward to seeing Louis and Billy again when things calm down...if they ever do.
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