Tommy Siegel started drawing a comic every day for 500 days straight back in 2018, and somehow that snowballed into hundreds of thousands of followers who can't get enough of his dead-on takes about our digital hellscape1. The Brooklyn cartoonist nails the weird anxieties of modern life – from our phone addiction to dating app disasters – in single-panel comics that make you laugh and then say "damn, that's actually kind of true."
His "Candy Hearts" comics are probably what you've seen shared most – those little conversation hearts that say what people are actually thinking instead of what they're saying2. They perfectly capture that moment when your date says "we should hang out again sometime" while their inner monologue is screaming "I will literally fake my own death to avoid seeing you again." This stuff has gotten attention from everyone from Ringo Starr to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now his work shows up regularly in The New Yorker3.
Then there's his "Extremely Accurate Birds" series, which is exactly the opposite of what the name suggests – they're these hilariously crude, butt-focused bird drawings that somehow became so popular he releases a calendar of them every year4. The calendars sell like crazy, probably because there's something weirdly satisfying about seeing a "photorealistic" Cardinal that looks like it was drawn by a talented fifth-grader with an obsession with bird buttholes.
Before all the drawing took off, Siegel was already doing his thing as guitarist and vocalist for the band Jukebox the Ghost. He's played over 1,000 shows with them, including spots on Letterman and Conan5. The music and drawing feed each other – his comics have a rhythm to them, and both connect with audiences in a direct, no-bullshit way.
Through books like "I Hope This Helps" and "The Secret Lives of Candy Hearts," Siegel keeps building a collection of work that nails what's weird and wonderful about being alive right now6. His stuff resonates because he's basically pointing at the absurdities we all deal with daily but maybe haven't put into words yet. It's that "oh good, it's not just me" feeling that makes his work stick.
