Membership has its privileges. (A glimpse into the making of This Modern World.)

As a member of Sparky's List, I'm one of the elite few (OK, paid subscribers) who get to see Tom Tomorrow's toons a couple days before they're published. Which is cool. Because Tom is timely and relevant, occasionally he has to hustle to update comic based on current events. As such, those of us on the list now have an alternate version of the Romney VP pick 'toon that ended up getting revised due to the Ryan announcement.

What you all saw was:

Detail from the full comic here.

But what we saw a few days earlier was:

Via Sparky's List

A neat little behind-the-scenes glimpse into how a pro works and proof that Paul Ryan is, if nothing else, comedy gold.

Oh, and next week's cartoon, it features of the ghost of a very important figure in Paul Ryan's life. Good stuff. I predict you're going to want to print it out and hang it up near your computer monitor or, better still, on the monitor of that right-wing nutter in the office. You know, the one who's still got a McCain/Palin bumper sticker prominently displayed on the wall of his cubicle because, yeah, that would've been awesome you guys! *koff*

In case you can't tell by the links to Sparky's List dotting this post, I'm a huge fan of Dan's (AKA Tom) work and would like to encourage everyone to support great political cartooning by signing up.