Tom Tomorrow is the pseudonym of Dan Perkins, who began his career as a faux clip-art cartoonist with the earliest incarnation of This Modern World, a strip which poked fun at technology and consumerism in the San Francisco-based magazine Processed World. In the Foreword to his 1992 comics collection Greetings From This Modern World Tomorrow writes that pen names were common among PW's contributors, most of whom were "radical and disenfranchised office workers and other proletariat of the information age" who nonetheless preferred to keep their activities a secret lest they lose their jobs or good standings at their temp agencies. As This Modern World expanded to include political satire and media commentary, and eventually went on to bigger and better things, the author's name stayed true to its original roots. "Bigger and better things" include appearances in the New York Times, Spin, Mother Jones, The Nation, US News & World Report, Esquire, The Economist, The New Yorker, and more importantly regular syndicated publication in at least 50 newspapers and magazines across the United States. Tom Tomorrow has won numerous awards for his social and political satire, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Cartooning in 1998, the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists' James Madison Freedom of Information award, the Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award from the national Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Aaronsen Award for Social Justice Commentary. Cartoon anthologies by Tom Tomorrow (besides Greetings include Tune in Tomorrow and The Wrath of Sparky, Penguin Soup for the Soul, and When Penguins Attack). His sixth collection, a career retrospective called The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, came out in July 2003.
According to the About The Author on the back pages of Greetings, "Tom Tomorrow occasionally travels under the name 'Dan Perkins', an obvious pseudonym. He lives in San Francisco with his significant POSSLQ, his Toshiba copier, and cats so plentiful a stick could not be shaken at them."
This Modern World can be found weekly (new strips appear on Mondays) along with several other fun comics at Salon.com or in the pages of the OC Weekly every Thursday. Tom Tomorrow's website, http://www.thismodernworld.com is another source for his comic. It also features an entertaining weblog and
Sources:
www.salon.com/comics
OC Weekly
Tomorrow, Tom. Greetings From This Modern World, 1992. St. Martin's Press.
www.thismodernworld.com