Whether you're for Captain Insano or The Antichrist, please remember to vote. You'd want to real bad if you couldn't. Or look at it this way: even though we're the ones in charge, the intercom on the desk only works once every couple of years. You don't want to miss your turn pressing the call button. Until that hallowed trip to the polling place or to the pub or to the living room where the big TV is, please enjoy a few politically-oriented comics links.
I haven't said so yet, but I enjoyed the IDW presidential candidates comics. They're not exactly going to knock my Edmond Baudoin books from their place on the shelves, and they're not going to replace any of the best prose writing out there on those men and what's at stake today, but the comics struck me as first-class political keepsakes. I can't imagine if you're a comics fan you wouldn't want to at least consider snagging a copy of each just to have them as mementos.
The covers shown above are probably the worst thing about them from a creative standpoint. I'm not sure what's going on with those slightly thrusting pelvises, but I'm pretty sure it ain't presidential. The insides are much more modestly presented. It reminded me a bit of reading one of those Jack Chick Crusaders comics, only without the possessed people, demons, bleeding, insinuations about the Catholic church or confrontations with Satan. I'm saying that to be funny, of course, but there is something similar in feel where a mostly mainstream American comics approach is being cross-employed for a more standard dramatic narrative.
An interesting contrast between the two books is that I left the Obama book feeling as if the thrust of it was a narrative about the current election, and I put down the McCain book feeling that I had heard a lot more about his life before entering this year's campaign. This of course underlines how each campaign has approached presenting its candidates to the American people, and I think will be something future historians may latch onto when writing about the political contest. The books also reveal if you haven't thought about it in a while just how tightly each campaign controls its respective narrative; simply speaking in matter-of-fact ways on the rudimentary facts of either gentleman's life feels like some sort of transgressive event.
I feel bad that these sober, well-intended and relatively distinguished efforts have to be lumped in features-wise with things like Savage Dragon's endorsement, that goofy EC-classic title update's use of Sarah Palin as I think some sort of undead or those horrible, shoddy-looking rip-off biographies featuring Palin and Hillary Clinton. These are different. I don't have a ton of comics in my library that reflect this kind of event as opposed to being there for artistic or flatly historical reasons. I'm happy to add these.
*****
Not Comics: comics industry veteran Ted Rall has made a short animated cartoon that has a tie-in to today's election. I'm sure it's gentle and restrained, but if you pay close attention, Rall's point of view on the matter may eventually make itself known.
*****
You knew I wasn't going to let you get away from here without giving you a link to a pair of Richard Thompson cartoons. As always, they're quite amusing.
