We missed last week's update, through nobody's fault but my own. Sorry about that!
This week we are changing our approach somewhat. Steven Weissman's Barack Hussein Obama continues as usual but instead of a one-panel teaser we're bringing you the full strip — you'll still need to click through to see it at its original size, though. Plus, starting this week we're bringing you a variety of previously unpublished, unseen or out-of-print strips and stories from some of your favorite Fantagraphics artists! On with the show:
Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):
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"How Much Do You Know About Your Mutual Fund Manager?" (with introduction) by Michael Kupperman (view larger)
"I'm including the rough as well as the finish because the rough has more charm… This was originally a page I pitched to a business magazine — rhymes with diplingers — on their request. The art director seemed quite shaken by it. "This is just, I don't know, really disturbing," he informed me, his voice shaky with emotion. "We're all a little freaked out." They rejected both it and the more benign, fluffy substitute I proposed — too frightened.
"At that time The New Yorker was regularly shaking me down for comics, and I passed this along to them and, to my amazement, they accepted it for the back page. (This was 2003, before the cartoon caption contest took over). The following thirty or so revisions went smoothly, it was going in, and then — we invaded Iraq. The New Yorker featured an elegaic poem written for the occasion instead, something about how lusty Mars doth trumpet forth, etc. They quickly forgot this page, and it was never printed."
