Hey! Tom Tomorrow's newest compilation is hot off the presses -- and available exclusively at TopatoCo (where you'll also find a variety of fine t-shirts and other merchandise)! Featuring the last two years of TMW cartoons in full, glorious color, an introduction by Eddie Vedder, and extensive annotation! Makes a great War on Christmas gift!

ALSO: please consider joining SPARKY'S LIST!

with another fun-filled excursion into the zany world of topical political satire. This week: debating the coin.

Always crashing in the same car.

This is the cartoon I had originally planned for this week, before news of the Newtown atrocities broke. With the Times reporting the possibility of a deal in the works that includes Social Security, I thought I’d go ahead and get this one out there.

Click here for larger.

Please be sure to visit the fabulous online emporium for your last-minute War on Christmas shopping!

Here.

Every time one of these atrocities has occurred, since the cartoon below first ran in January of 2011, readers have written to suggest that I rerun it with a blank line replacing the name of the town. And in fact, I seriously considered it this time, as a way of driving home the sheer numbing repetition of these massacres. But then I realized I wanted to take the idea a little further than that, so this is where I ended up, with a sort of sequel to the last one.

Somebody on Twitter asked for a link to this one, easier to just repost.

A couple of people have asked me to make gift subscriptions to the List available, so here you go. Because it will involve an extra layer of administrative oversight, I’m setting them up as year-long subscriptions at $20. Because you need something to put under the tree, I’ve created a gift certificate you can download here and print out.

NOTE: be SURE to fill out the box below with the recipient’s email. If I don’t have that info when processing the order, I will issue a refund.

ALSO PLEASE NOTE: this box is ONLY for the email address! I put this together on short notice and am not set up to pass along any messages to your gift’s recipient. They will be added to the list after Christmas, but the rest is entirely up to you.

Gift sub recipient email:

In the store.

Further complicating my comical attempts to administrate Sparky’s List is the discovery that the email account I use there has not been properly forwarding to my primary account. Hilarity ensues. If you’ve written me and not received a response, my abject apologies. I’m sorting through the inbox now and trying to take care of subscription problems, etc.