SMAHTGUY - Serio Comics 3
SMAHTGUY: The Life and Times of Barney Frank written and drawn by Eric Orner (Published by Metropolitan & Henry Holt Books) - 01/31/23
I went to my first book reading of The New Year…and it may already have been the best!
Graphic literature readings are particularly fun these days because some authors are projecting their pages onto a screen as they act out their story
Eric Orner’s presentation of SMAHTGUY written and drawn by him and published by Metropolitan & Henry Holt Books at Skylight last Thursday was a delight because he’s not just a cartoonist and author, he’s also more than a bit of a charismatic natural as an actor too
Here he is in a video recorded that night telling the story of how Barney Frank, who was the first openly gay member of The House of Representatives in federal Congress & the subject of Orner’s book, felt after Orner shared a draft with him
The person next to Orner is the legendary Mimi Pond, who not only published one of my favorite graphic memoirs, The Customer is Always Wrong, but also briefly worked on The Simpsons, including penning the first full-length broadcast episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" in 1989, which was nominated for two Emmy awards
Even more specifically, happy to journalistically report, that one of her breakout comics in 1983, Secrets of the Powder Room, her second book published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston that detailed the dating & misadventures of a ‘niche at that time’ subsection of women based loosely on her experiences, was revealed by Orner that night for the first time to a delighted Pond to be the inspiration for his own breakout comic strip in 1989, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, which detailed the dating & misadventures of a ‘niche at that time’ subsection of queer people based loosely on his experiences
Orner’s respectful yet irreverent banter with Pond portended well for the experience of reading his graphic biography of Barney Frank who he had worked for as a speechwriter as a day job (shoutout to Eric for honesty about this aspect of many even ‘successful’ artists’ existence) and I was happy to pick up a copy that night from Skylight and finish it out over the weekend
One of the things I loved about Orner’s book was the richness of his testimony of the details of the political process and the power of personal hard work
This verite depiction of government service combined with the versimiltude of the very often funny dialogue reminded me of a comedic David Simon’s THE WIRE
Orner is also able to…
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