As I write this on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008, it has been one day since the second of three scheduled debates between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain took place. It is appropriate that today marks the release of comic books that feature both candidates. The cover of Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon #137 featuring the titular character standing next to and heartily endorsing Barack Obama released a third printing due to overwhelming demand. More importantly, IDW just released biographical comic books of both Obama & McCain. These books could prove to be the most accessible way to find out what forces shaped the way both candidates look at the country they have aspirations of running. As partial as I am to Obama, I am going to read both biographies in order to give the readers kind enough to check out this blog an unbiased review of each.
To start with, neither comic makes any pretensions of giving the readers any new revelations about either candidate. It does, however, frame the history of each of these extraordinary men in a way that is informative and engaging at the same time. Readers are given the option of purchasing the stories in two separate comic books or in a single, flip-book format with McCain's book on one side and Obama on the other. If you're the type of person that bags & boards all their comics you would probably do well to purchase the separate comics. Personally, I'm more a fan of trade paperbacks (I have an entire large bookcase full of them), so I opted for the larger flip-book. The price is pretty much the same for both, so the choice is entirely yours.
Presidential Material: John McCain
Writer: Andy Helfer
Artist: Stephen Thompson
Cover Art by J. Scott Campbell
The story of John Sidney McCain III begins in a setting that his campaigners have ensured that all but the most uninformed of people will be familiar with: In the middle of his stint as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Artist Stephen Thompson does a wonderful job with the artwork of the opening page, creating a haunting image of a dejected McCain on the floor of his solitary cell, leaning against the wall and wondering if he will ever leave the cell alive. Helfer's narrative details the events that led to his incarceration in a manner that manages to be both factual and inspiring. The narrative and the picture together are very powerful, and set a high tone that this biography manages to, for the most part, maintain. Helfer also opted against spoken dialogue in the book for the most part, only using it with actual quoted statements taken from news coverage. This gave the story a tone similar to a "History Channel" documentary (which I am definitely partial to, by the way). Thompson's artwork throughout could almost be mistaken for actual photographs if you squint enough, which just adds to the documentary feel of the comic.
This story paints a very impartial picture of the Republican candidate, highlighting both the good deeds and the misdeeds of McCain throughout his long life. His grandfather was a vice-admiral in the U.S. Navy that was present at the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, and his father was also a naval admiral. His joining the U.S. Navy seemed a foregone conclusion, but as his military career began, so did his reputation as a headstrong iconoclast. His early lack of discipline led to multiple near-fatal mishaps that threatened to end his aviation career and his life well before his fateful crash and capture in Hanoi.
After his well-known stint at the "Hanoi Hotel", during which he refused the early release offered him because of his status as the son of a Navy Admiral, he served as a flight trainer then as Naval Liaison to the U.S. Senate. It was here where he served as a lobbyist that he gained the two most important things in his life: contacts in Washington D.C. and his future wife Cindy. His upward mobility in the Navy hampered by his disability due to his injuries from Vietnam, he retired from the military and after serving as P.R. President of his father-in-law's beer distributor he joined the U.S. Congress. While there he forged a relationship with President Ronald Reagan, who he broke ranks with on the matter of sending troops to Lebanon, and infamous financier Charles Keating, who would later be indicted for mismanaging customer funds at Lincoln Savings & Loan.
Also highlighted are his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, his infidelity in his marriage to first wife Carol and his current wife's struggle with addiction to painkillers. As I said earlier, the book takes the admirable and not-so-admirable aspects of McCain's history and paints a picture of a committed but ultimately all-too-human public servant.
Presidential Material: Barack Obama
Writer: Jeff Mariotte
Artist: Tom Morgan
Cover art by J. Scott Campbell
Barack Obama's life story was already pretty well-covered by Obama himself in his novels Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope, so it's no surprise that most of the anecdotes from his history were taken directly from them. The beginning of the story seemed a little forced, with Obama sitting alone at his campaign office in February 2008 mulling over the events of the Democratic presidential primaries, when he and Hilary Clinton were still neck-and-neck in the race for their party's presidential nomination. That is to say, it seems a poor choice of place to begin considering that the narrative never returned to that moment anywhere in the story. Maybe that's just me nitpicking, but this article is a review and I felt that it was a distraction to what was otherwise a well-done story.
Despite that little hiccup at the beginning, Mariotte does a solid job of telling Obama's history in a manner that gives a linear chronology, but is more informal and personal than the documentary approach that the McCain comic took. Given the age difference of both candidates, it's rather fitting that McCain's story plays like a historical documentary while Obama's is more of a combination of VH1's "Behind The Music" and a re-enactment from "America's Most Wanted". Morgan's clean art style lends itself very well to Mariotte's writing style, and contrasts nicely with Stephen Thompson's photorealistic style in McCain's comic.
Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. His father, also named Barack (which means "Blessed" in the African Luo language), left them when he was two years old. In 1967 his mother married an Indonesian man and moved to Jakarta. After a few years Barack (who went by the name Barry as a child) moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.
Throughout his life, Obama's biracial status branded him as different from his peers no matter where he was. This led to a period where he desperately sought a place to belong, and he dabbled with alcohol and drugs like marijuana and cocaine for a brief time. A short time after his mother warned him of the dangers of that path, he focused his energies on obtaining an education. His journey would take him to Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he bonded with other interracial students that went through similar life experiences. Later he would transfer to Columbia University in New York and obtain his Bachelor's Degree and working in the corporate world, he decided to seek out a career as a community organizer. This led him to Chicago, where he first found his passion for public service. He also found his sense of spirituality at the Trinity United Church of Christ, which was ran by Reverend Jeremiah Wright (who later made inflammatory racial statements would eventually cause Obama to distance himself from Wright).
After a trip to Africa to visit his father's relatives, he graduated from Harvard Law School and met his wife Michelle while working at a Chicago law office. Eventually he would run for public office, first serving as a state senator in Illinois. It was during his time there that he came out against the idea of going to war with Iraq. After a failed run for the U.S. House of Representatives and a less-than-auspicious experience attending the 2000 Democratic Convention, he considered giving up on politics altogether. He put off that decision just long enough to run for the U.S. Senate in 2004. The keynote address he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention gave him enough recognition and support to take the senate seat with no difficulty. The story doesn't take long to get to current events after that, quickly recalling the details of the bitterly fought Democratic primaries and ending with him accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
The theme of this story about Barack Obama is about a man that struggled to find his identity as a person of dual ethnicity that found both identity and purpose through public service. But the story does little to express the hope that his presence on the political scene engenders in those that are tired of the shenanigans in Washington, and I feel that this aspect of Obama is unjustly neglected in the story.
The Final Verdict?
Okay, so I showed a little bias toward Obama when all was said and done, but I truly feel that both comics were well done. These are the perfect tools to humanize these two candidates that have become larger than life through the course of this election year. While it's not a comic that will tell us their plans for the country if they win, it does help readers to identify more with them as human beings. That's something that can easily get lost amidst the hype of an election.
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