Poor Mojo's Newswire

Political candidates looking for an edge have employed all types of cutthroat tactics to sully their opponents, from TV ads depicting nuclear war and paroled murderer-rapists to flyers alleging interracial relationships and criminal fraud. A politician in Oklahoma uses a 16-page comic book to lampoon his opponents. And then there was the 16-page homophobic comic book featuring Satan, angels, toga-wearing gay people and crude depictions of public officials discussing "anal sodomy" and "Pedifiles." Read the whole comic book here. Brent Rinehart, an Oklahoma County Commissioner locked in a tough reelection race, spent two months creating the comic book and is preparing to send it out to registered Republicans in his district. In one panel, Satan is depicted holding a pitchfork, saying "If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal!" A nearby angel replies, "Hey Satan, not with Brent around you won't."

ASTONISHING X-MEN 25 has sold out at the distributor. This means that the entire print run (these books are usually overprinted by some additional percentage of orders, and I don’t know what the margin was on this book) has now been ordered by comics stores. There may well still be copies on shop shelves somewhere. But the reorder velocity has apparently been such that a second printing has been ordered, due sometime in August — I would imagine it’s being timed to coincide with #26, though obviously I couldn’t swear to that. Anyway. If you are having trouble finding a copy of the book, that’s why.

“The irony is — and it is choice, believe me — that this was intended as an attack on the right. But now, because the artist tried to attack the right in a way he thought clever and ironic, he is being attacked by the left for launching an attack on the right that those on the right, the left fears, could use against the Obamas. “This, of course, presumes that those on the right are so stupid or unworldly that they aren’t able to suss out satire directed their way — and this is, deliciously, the fear of the left. They, of course, ‘get it’ themselves, so it is really not the cover itself that angers them. Rather, they worry that the illiterate righties who people their fever dreams might not, and then what?”

CARTOON LOUNGE: You were Time magazine’s graphic novel of the year in 2007. How does it feel to be on top of the world?

Chris Onstad: When you are on top of the world, at first you wake up not knowing that. Then you go to your computer, and there is an e-mail from someone with a time.com e-mail suffix, and the e-mail wants to become a phone call. It is uncommon for an e-mail to ask to become a phone call, so you agree, and then the call happens pretty quickly after that. It’s a girl named Julie from Thanking & Congratulations, and she does what you might expect. She makes you feel as though you are sitting Indian-style on top of the world, much like the Little Prince, and in my case I had the distinct feeling that I could have taken her to a trendy vodka bar in Alphabet City and talked playfully and open-endedly about bras for a while. Maybe that’s what they wanted me to feel. Maybe I was played to a T.

But, are you happy?

Onstad: No. That is not a thing I reserve for books or communications or interior progress or myself. Happy is, as defined by my men’s therapist, a mountain bike ride to a place near Mount Santa Cruz, and it takes place around 4:15 in the morning, and when we get to the top he has this ultra-light tripod and he takes a picture of our group. It’s scheduled for next weekend.