Star Wars: The Essential Atlas appears in this week's Tom the Dancing Bug, in the aptly-named "Product Placement Comics."

I've been a fan of Ruben Bolling's Tom the Dancing Bug for over ten years. Appearing on Salon.com and a number of alternative newspapers, it's a grab bag of comic styles ranging from pointed commentary on current events to political barbs (don't miss the sequel) to painful dissections of adolescence to the recurring Super Fun-Pak Comix, which neatly deconstructs most of the comics-page archetypes alongside smart/dumb humor.

A couple of years ago I blogged about Bolling's brilliant take on "everything was great when you were 12 years old," which got picked up by starwars.com's own blog.

So when I heard that Tom the Dancing Bug was running a product placement auction, and that the Atlas would be coming out at the same time, I wanted to get a piece of that action. Product placement is a mercenary enterprise, sure (what would Van Gogh have done?), but I knew TTDB would have a funny take on it. And lo, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas won the auction! Both it and the runner-up (Keeping Faith With the Constitution) are featured in this week's installment, which is another outing of Super Fun-Pak Comix.

Here's the comic!

You can also browse the strip's archives at this link, which will bring you across such gems as The Adventures of the Passive-Aggressor or Lucky Ducky or God Man. Happy reading!

Dan
(writing projects and current releases)