BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA (GN) pg 21 by Steven Weissman

This is page 21 from Harvey Award-winning artist, Steven Weissman‘s dada-esque, surrealistic, satirical graphic novel, BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, published by Fantagraphics back in 2012. It features a funny interaction between Obama and his then Vice President, Joe Biden, who would later become the 46th President of the United States.

Weissman found inspiration not just in the lives of the leaders of the free world, but also his friends, family, and detractors -blending them into a tale of post-modern American existence that is both withering and oblique, devastating and contemplative, chaotic and pellucid.

What started as a series of four-panel strips evolved into an insanely improbable narrative that would be mundane if not for all the zombies, talking vegetation, and metamorphosis. The title is riff on how the right intends the president’s full name as a kind of pejorative and how the left harbors great sensitivity about that.

The work itself measures 7×9 in. and is composed with Stabilo point 88 pens, pencils, different screentones, and ultimately, cut-paper techniques. This particular page was reproduced in H. Caleb Mozzocco’s in-depth interview with Steven Weissman for Comics Alliance, and the graphic novel has gone through multiple printings and editions.

As historically important in its own way as Doonsbury, it is surprising that I’ve never come across any other original art from BHO until now.