A Tom Tomorrow action figure -- armed with a fountain pen -- brings cartoonist Dan Perkins' tongue-in-cheek approach to three-dimensional life.

Two decades ago, Dan Perkins entered the cartoon world under the name Tom Tomorrow. Though the start of his career was at a time much less dangerous, for Perkins, who was penning cartoon critiques of mundane office life for the San Francisco magazine, Office World, the nom de plume kept the boss from discovering his after-work activities.

The name stuck, and so did the style: smiling housewives and men in suits photocopied from 1950s ads. They were the perfect vehicle to comically critique America's consumerism with their sunny optimism, melodramatic gasps and bright smiles.

As Perkins marks the release of The Big Book of Tomorrow, a compendium of 20 years of work, a lot has changed in the cartoon and in the world. Although his strip is now printed in more than 150 papers weekly (including CityBeat), he isn't smiling. In fact, he's cursing -- a lot -- about the government he chronicles each week in This Modern World.

Perkins' focus shifted from consumerism to politics and media during the first President Bush's term, 1988-92. As a participant in anti-war rallies then, Perkins was baffled at the mainstream media's coverage.

"It was essentially misrepresentation of the world as it exists," he says, calling coverage of more recent anti-war rallies "history repeating itself."

"Honestly, things have just gotten so much dramatically worse than I ever could have imagined," Perkins says from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. "In response to this demonstrable canard of the liberal media, you now have this actively conservative media in terms of Fox News and the dominance of talk radio. You have media which may or may not be run by moderate Democrats. But they bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias."

War protesters are just the first of many similarities between the two Bush presidencies covered in This Modern World. Last year Perkins re-ran, verbatim, one strip he'd done originally with Bush Sr., changing only the face. But he's quick to point out differences between the two presidencies.

"Bush Jr. is a really, really hard-line conservative, and the people around him are really hard-line conservative in a way that Senior wasn't," he says. "The thing that changed there was Sept. 11."

One of the biggest changes for Perkins in doing the strip has been the Internet, which makes his job both much easier and much harder. On one hand, the reference possibilities are endless. Perkins takes pride in the accuracy of the little details in the strip.

"Someone somewhere is going to catch the little details, and that's part of the fun for me, that's part of what keeps me amused and interested," he says before describing what used to be his typical day of research. He'd start with a trip to the library and then hunt around for a book that might carry a particular image. If that failed, it was on to the used bookstore. Thanks to modern technology, that's all changed.

"I just drew a paramedic, and I wasn't really sure what a paramedic wore, and after five seconds of research I've got it," Perkins says.

The downside is that sometimes the Internet makes things too easy, like personal communication.

"In the old days, if people had some thought to share they had to go to some trouble: look up an address, write it down on paper, put a stamp on an envelope and mail you the letter," he says. "And by the old days I'm talking about 10 years ago. E-mail allows people to share their most fleeting thoughts."

Perkins has found ways to weed out the e-mail he doesn't need to read, but he's not willing to talk about them. He did offer one piece of advice: "If the subject line is, 'You are an asshole,' I'll just delete it."

He's made his share of enemies, and critics of his strip are quick to point out his left leanings, which for Perkins isn't something he's going to dispute or repute.

"Even if it were true that I do actually go easier on people I tend to agree with, well, so fucking what?" he says. "What the hell does everyone on the right do?"

Yet reading through the Clinton chapters of The Big Book, it's clear that the Democratic president doesn't get off easy in This Modern World.

"The fact was that Clinton was a goddamn corporate sell-out," Perkins says. "The Clinton administration was really just a case study in squandered opportunity, and I was pretty disgusted with it at the time. Bush Jr. came into office with absolutely no mandate. He's crammed through more of his agenda in three years than Clinton even dared do after he was re-elected."

In one strip in the book, Perkins even calls Mother Teresa on a few things. Still, he claims not to be the ultimate cynic.

"The thing is with cynicism, it's rarely unjustified," he says. "I was watching the build-up to the Gulf War, people running around screaming about Saddam Hussein and the imminent threat he posed, and it was all clearly bullshit. Now does that make me cynical? No, because I was right. It's not cynicism to be aware that these lying sons of bitches are in fact lying sons of bitches. It's just realism."

For Perkins, the media's kid-glove handling of Bush and his policies only makes the cartoon easier to do.

"My job is about occupying the space between what people say is happening and what's really happening," he says, "and there's quite a wide gulf right now between these two places."

The Great Big Book of Tomorrow

And when asked who he'd like to draw for the next four years, he responds, "I can't think only in terms of the cartoon. I'm a citizen of this country as well, and I'm genuinely scared if we have another four years of the Bush administration. That could be bad for the cartoon and bad for free speech in general."

Broaden the question to his personal choice, and the answer still isn't easy.

"Dennis Kucinich probably most represents the things I believe more than any of the rest of them," he says. "I realistically don't think he's going to get the nomination."

In a less than half-hearted endorsement, Perkins mentions that he could support Howard Dean without having to choke down too many of his principles, plus he thinks Dean's chances are pretty good.

"You've got this public discourse in which half the country is being written off," he says. "I think the people are disturbed by this. I think the people understand that this is a year they need to get out and vote. It's the anger of literally half the country being disenfranchised that will sweep Bush out of the White House."

As Perkins talks about his work over the last 20 years, his mind is more firmly planted on the year ahead. Ultimately the big picture is more important to him than how he'll squeeze it into his four panels. ©