The end of January is sort of an odd time to release a book about the campaign that ended the previous November’s election. It’s been over for almost three months now, which may not actually be that long, but it sure feels even longer now that the news cycle has been reduced to less than a day.

What happened on November 4 seems a bit like old news now, doesn’t it? Even given the historic nature of this one, the election of President Barack Obama seems a bit overshadowed by his inauguration, which itself seems a bit like old news now, particularly given everything else that’s been going on this month—war in Gaza, the transition, the financial crisis, the Illinois governor circus, and so on.

Of course, the shrinking news cycle and the dramatic events occurring in each of them may actually have helped 08: A Graphic Diary of The Campaign Trail (Three Rivers Press), as the events it covers now feel so long ago, that they seem older than old news—they seem downright historical. And I suspect that is a perception that will only deepen with time; certainly the experience of reading this next year or in five years or in ten years will be very different than reading it in January of 2009.

Despite the title, the book actually begins in 2006, with the Democratic victory over the Republican Party during the mid-term elections (Actually, the first image is from September 11, 2001…unless you count that one panel of toddler Barry Obama being held by his mother right after the title page). It therefore offers a rather thorough accounting of the campaign, start to finish, from the candidates all throwing their hats in the rings to the party primaries to the epic Clinton/Obama battle to the main McCain/Obama event, which only makes up 29 pages near the end.

This may—in fact, likely—has more to do with the fact that it takes a while to put a book like this together, and it obviously wasn’t started and finished between November 4 and the day it hit stores, but it does give the format a sort of formal objectivity. That is, the last few weeks of the election may have been the big, important parts, but they’re not given more space or more drama.

It’s pretty fascinating re-reading a good two years’ worth of campaign coverage reduced into so small a space, particularly from the vantage point of already seeing how it ended—both Obama and McCain’s victories in their own crowded primary fields seemed so unlikely for so long, for example, and it’s kind of startling how players who seemed so important for so long were all but forgotten by the end of the summer.

The timing of the book wasn’t the only reservation I had about it, and I admittedly went into it not expecting very much.

The title itself is something of a turn-off—I’m not fond of the word “graphic” standing in for “comics;” the term “graphic novel” is troublesome enough, even if it’s the one we’re going to have to all live with, but when you take the “novel” off it, then the word “graphic” changes its meaning, and can then sometimes be applied by publishers to works that aren’t actually graphic novels/comics, while at the same time implying that a comics work is simply all images, or somehow exploitive (think “graphic violence” or “graphic sex”).

And the creators both have impressive resumes, but that’s different than a comics track record. The writer is Michael Crowley, who covered the campaign for The New Republic, and is a frequent contributor to the political media and a frequent TV and radio pundit. This would be his comics debut, and, well, comics debuts are always a little worrying.

The artist is Dan Goldman, who was responsible for the art in Shooting War, an interesting but flawed webcomic-turned-graphic novel about the modern media and the war in Iraq set in the near future (a near future in which, incidentally, John McCain was president of the United States), that really wasn’t my aesthetic cup of tea (Though I did like what Goldman and writer Anthony Lappe did with Dan Rather).

I mention these reservations here only to point out that they were almost immediately made obsolete once I started reading: Aside from the book’s value as an early-out-the-gate historical record of one of the most dramatic and important elections of our life times, it’s also something of a new kind of comic book, well worth a look by anyone at all interested in the medium, regardless of their political leanings or interest in politics at all.

Goldman’s art is heavily photo-referenced, but rendered in black and white, it doesn’t achieve the sort of sickly, pseudo-reality that such photo-referenced art can when also computer colored.

Goldman seems to choose the important lines from the photos he uses, deepening with a black so black it’s actually bright, and excising the extraneous ones, the result being portraits of political figures and pundits that look like they were hand-drawn from memory, even though they are obviously based on particular shots. Backgrounds and settings are usually recreated, but occasionally a hardly-altered black and white photo will host a Goldman-ized Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

As striking as the artwork is, however, it’s the layout that makes this such an amazing book, one that feels like something new. Traditional dialogue bubbles are sometimes employed, but the majority of the text is a form of narration, which is presented in big, black all-caps font of various sizes, juxtaposed against the images, sometimes framing panels, sometimes serving as their own implied panels of information, but never contained within neat little narration boxes.

The effect is somewhat disarming at first, but perfectly easy to read. Panels look a bit like posters, whole pages look like posters, and while I’m tempted to use the word collage, it sounds too chaotic, as each page is organized in a clear, concise way. It’s really something of a triumph of design.

As for the story, well, you already know exactly how it turns out, and you likely know everything that happened in the years preceding that ending. I didn’t really detect much in the way of a political bias one way or another, although I suppose those who want to see it will think this is overly pro-Obama, something that’s somewhat hard to avoid in a book about a conflict in which he is the winner I suppose.

One questionable choice Crowley and Goldman make is the inclusion of a pair of political reporter stand-ins: Middle-aged, rumple-suited Harlan Jessop, and young, funny hairstyle-having Jason Newbury. They’re introduced as “Our Reporters” early on, then completely disappear for a while, popping up occasionally throughout to summarize things or offer opinions.

I can see why they decided to employ these fictionalized avatars of the media, it certainly speeds things up here and there, and allows them to comment on a dirty trick or what a particular bit of political theater might symbolize without finding a real person to attribute it too, but I’m not convinced they should have. There’s no real reason that this couldn’t be accomplished through the narration text.

I am convinced that everyone needs to check this book out, though.

You need not take my word for it, however. You can download a 20-page excerpt of 08 here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Caleb's reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.