First Family: The Clintons

This comic book combines Bluewater’s “Political Power: Bill Clinton” and “Female Force: Hillary Clinton” comics with a brand new cover and under the title “First Family: The Clintons,” which is honestly a bit of a misname.  The comic doesn’t add any new information and says nothing at all of Chelsea Clinton.  So right off the bat I’m a bit disappointed since it’s just seemingly a way for Bluewater to squeeze a bit of extra money out of these two issues.  Since both halves of the comic were done by two different teams it’s a bit difficult to talk about the issue as a whole, but I’ll provide a summary of both halves and talk about the writing and artwork together.

The Bill Clinton half of the comic begins in North Korea in 2009, where he helped negotiate the release of two imprisoned American Journalists.  And then goes back in time to discuss his boyhood, 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.)  The Hillary Clinton half of the comic begins with her recent run for president, before jumping into her past–particularly focusing on her college career where she became the first student at Wellesley to give a commencement speech.  From there the author pays particular attention to Hillary’s training as a lawyer and how it will influence her future career in the political world, including her historic run for the presidency.  The issue ends with the author musing on how he portrayed Hillary and what we can learn from her.

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 do with transformation, but honestly? To me it’s offensive to use another’s cultures ceremony in this way that seemingly makes light of it.  My other big issue with the Bill half of the comic is that while they take an unflinching look at Clinton and his relationships with women, they make him 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.”  Overall it’s really disappointing that they’ve chosen to describe people in this manner.  The Hillary half of the comic on the other hand is extremely well written.  The writer openly admits that he had issues with Hillary Clinton and even stated that he really didn’t want to write the comic, but had second thoughts upon looking closer at Hillary’s record.  He does an excellent job of picking out the highlights of Hillary’s career that will most interest readers, particularly ones that might never have heard much about her before.  Even more importantly he portrays Hillary as a human being, even while pointing out her faults.  He doesn’t resort to cheap characterizations like the Bill Clinton writer did.  Overall, it’s a stark contrast to the other half of the issue.

The artwork in the Bill Clinton half of the comic is rather poor.  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.  The Hillary Clinton half however is like night and day.  The figures are a bit more cartoony looking, but have a much firmer grasp on the human figure where you can actually recognize the characters as human beings.  The colors are brighter and the whole issue is more solidly drawn.

My final thoughts, skip buying this combined issue and instead just buy the Hillary Clinton comic.  It’s much better written and illustrated and a far better biographical comic.