The Distinguished Candidates

I told myself I’d save my money and ignore these two, but in the end, my love of politics had me dropping a little extra coin to check these out.

Presidential Material: Barack Obama

What’s it about? It’s a biography of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama!

Presidential Material: John McCain

What’s it about? It’s a biography of Republican presidential candidate John McCain!

Verdicts: To my surprise, thumbs up. I’d really expected a couple of drawn-out biographies, with a little slapdash art, to sell for some quick speculator cash. But I was pleasantly surprised by both of these. The art isn’t perfect, but it’s just fine here — a bit of the traditional comic-book look ends up serving this material well. The biographies are far more complete than I was anticipating. These aren’t just ripped off of Wikipedia — they’re as complete as you’re going to find in a coupla 22-page comics, and they actually list their research sources in the back — magazines, newspapers, the candidates’ official Senate biographies, the books they’ve written, even a few less-than-friendly sources. These are pretty warts-and-all bios, too — Obama’s drug use, connections to Jeremiah Wright, and campaign missteps are included, as are McCain’s party-animal days in the Navy, his controversial divorce and re-marriage, and the Keating Five scandal.

They’re definitely not complete biographies, but the creators do as good a job as they can in a very limited amount of space. These are both extremely text-heavy comics — it’s gonna take you a while to read ’em cover-to-cover. But I’m pleased that IDW took these comics seriously enough to do a good job on them.

And on a related note, yesterday, Samuel said in comments: “I’ll bake you some cookies if you can find a comic with Sarah Palin on it. You betcha!” Well, people, I’ll do anything for cookies!

Probably not exactly what Samuel was looking for, as I suspect he’s a Palin fan, but that’s the cover of Tales from the Crypt #8, a revival of the classic EC Comics franchise published by a company called Papercutz. Palin is saying “Didn’t we get rid of you guys in the ’50s?” as she menaces the Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper, and the Old Witch with a hockey stick. That’s a reference (A) to Palin’s reported interests in banning library books in Wasilla, Alaska during her tenure as mayor (No books were actually banned, but a librarian briefly lost her job until local supporters pressured the local government to re-hire her), and (B) to the anti-comics Senate hearings in the ’50s that ran EC out of business. Inside the comic is an anti-censorship editorial by Cathy Gaines Mifsud, daughter of legendary EC publisher William Gaines, that stops just barely short of endorsing Anybody-But-Sarah-Palin.

This is an issue I haven’t read yet — I don’t even know if it’s been released yet, or if I’ll be able to find it. I reviewed the first issue of this series last year and was not at all impressed, so I may not pick it up at all.

So there ya go, Samuel — like I said, it’s probably not the pro-Palin cover you were hoping for, but I’ll be happy to take those cookies now. Mmm-mmmm, delicious chocolate chunk cookies, so yummy and — hey! What’s this? These are full of black widow spiders, blowfish spines, and cyanide capsules, not chocolate chunks! Samuel, I oughtta…

(KLUNK)