Comic Book Candidates
So if you’re heading to the newsstand to grab that Special Emmons Edition of Dwell, there’s something else to add to your list.
We’ve dedicated a lot of posts to the Graphic Phenomenon that is the Barack Obama Campaign for the Presidency. We’ve covered posters and posters and posters and pins and posters… many of the hand-made variety though some commercially produced. This post definitely falls into the latter category… introducing Presidential Comics.
I’m pretty sure this is an industry first- two comic books, one dedicated to Barack Obama and the other dedicated to John McCain. Both comics aspire to be non-partisan biographies of the men who would be president. Neither campaign had any input on the books though I don’t think they would object to the candidates’ portrayal. In classic comic book tradition, there is a certain glossiness to the stories and idealization of the candidates. Though to be fair, how easy is it to pack any biography into 28 pages? You can argue some of the specifics (like why Obama looks so young or why McCain looks so healthy), but you can’t really argue with getting more fact-based (and seemingly fact-checked) information into hands that might not be getting it otherwise.
UPDATE (10/17): This just keeps getting better. Here are Obama/McCain paper dolls. they’re designed by Tom Tierney and are available through Dover.
