Political Power: Bill Clinton
Written and illustrated by: Schnakenberg, McNeil, Wright, Ramos Jr., Davis
Released by: Bluewater
Obviously this is a comic about Bill Clinton and it’s an intriguing concept to introducing readers to a short biography of the man, the myth, and the legend. The comic begins in North Korea in 2009, where Clinton helped negotiate the release of two imprisoned American Journalists, just as a way of introducing the current Bill Clinton. And then we go backwards in time back to Clinton’s beginnings as a young boy, to his college years, to his political career, and to his career after the presidency. The comic also doesn’t hide the fact that Clinton has affairs and some of the scandals of his career (although it does miss a few.)
If this is a comic to introduce young readers to Bill Clinton…it fails, miserably for a variety of different reasons. First off are the opening pages where the writer draws himself participating in a Mayan ceremony, called Apotheosis. And then at the end he rises up into the sky on manmade wings. Why? I would guess it would have to with transformation or according to Wikipedia it was a ceremony to exalt someone to the divine level, but honestly? To me it’s offensive. If they wanted to illustrate either of those two concepts they could have found a better metaphor that using an ancient ceremony, seemingly making light of it. Or using a metaphor that you don’t have to Google to figure out what it means.
My other big issue with this comic is that while they take an unflinching look at Clinton and his relationships with women, they make Clinton seem more like a cartoon character than an actual human being in some places. For example, they depict him with his pants around his ankles saying “Hello to my little friend” and upon meeting Lewinsky saying “Ga-ga-ga-going!!” Then the writers are also rather insulting to some people, for example they refer to Janet Reno as “shambling, sasquatch-like.” I mean really? For something that’s supposed to be a biographical comic they’ve taken a number of liberties, not only with illustrations, but also in the choice of wording of either describing characters or depicting how they speak. Overall it’s really disappointing that they’ve chosen to describe people in this manner, especially since this could have been a comic to introduce people to who Bill Clinton is.
As far as the artwork goes its rather poor in some places. They don’t capture the human form well and faces alternate between looking human to looking like squares or triangles with facial features. For example, when we first meet Hillary she looks like a triangle with eyes and doesn’t look remotely human. For a comic that’s built around depicting human figures they need a better artist.
Basically the comic could have been a good biographical feature as it does a good job of putting Clinton’s story in simple terms, but its faults outweigh its benefits and I just can’t recommend this one. Regardless of whether you like someone or not, if you’re going to do a feature that’s biographical in nature then it shouldn’t insult people arbitrarily or describe them as mythical hairy creatures.
