TPMDC Reviews The New Michele Bachmann Comic, 'False Witness'

TPM

We've received our review copy of "False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story," the new comic book from our friends at the Dump Bachmann Web site, documenting the rise and extreme statements of our favorite House GOP backbencher, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). It's now in print in Minnesota, and anybody can order it online. So how is it?

As both a comic book fan and a Bachmann fan, I quite enjoyed it, but my hope is that the first issue was really laying a foundation for more to come. This comic introduces us to Bachmann, but then doesn't so much focus on her as it does on the important information we need to truly understand her political prominence -- the nature of extreme right-wing culture that has bequeathed a politician such as her to our national dialogue.

Right from the cover, which has a wacky cartoonish feeling as if it were somehow pencilled by Sergio Aragones and inked by R. Crumb, you know we're dealing with a special politician:

(Click images to enlarge.)

And sure enough, the first page introduces us to Bachmann herself, and her call for revoluation against the Marxist tyranny of President Obama:

From there, much of the focus is on the religious right and talk-radio culture. A specific grievance is that the hard religious right doesn't honestly call itself what it is -- a theocratic movement -- but conceals its intentions under the label of "social conservative," with the media's complicity:

As for Bachmann's own rise, we get to see how she's mobilized the hard-right activists in her area to take control of the local Republican Party. And here's this creepy, eyewitness story of when Bachmann warned an intra-GOP rival with the repeated refrain, "You will pay, you will pay...":

And now that she's risen up, Bachmann is a hero to the right-wing fringe not just in her own distict, but across her state -- with a following that's spread across the country:

Which brings us to the next-issue teaser -- hinting that we'll get more into all the details of Bachmann's own career, such as when she talked to God about running for office (and God talked back!), how she kissed then-President George W. Bush and wouldn't let go of him, and other fun events:

All in all, it's a fun first effort, from some folks who have been monitoring her career and mobilizing against her online since way back when she was just a puny state Senator. Let's see what the next issue holds.