Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition, a searing, timeless graphic novel

There’s something special about a book being out of print for a while. The classic animated Disney films used to go “in the vault” and then had a big hoop-de-do when they could be viewed again. Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition was out of print for over a decade. The only way to get your hands on it was to find the original two-issue comic book miniseries from 1997 or the graphic novel that followed its release. The 2024 presidential election is nigh and Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is as pointed and aware as it was when it was originally released. It’s a beautiful, paranoid fever dream of a graphic novel that sears its way through the political spectrum leaving both sides wondering what went wrong with modern America.

Uncle Sam is an example of an artistic graphic novel that tells a complex story through metaphors, flashbacks, time travel, and a painful, truth-telling mirror that resembles a tragic version of A Christmas Carol. It’s largely a-political that will realistically anger conservatives more than it will liberals. That’s because it’s easy to want to pick political sides while reading this graphic novel. You want something that agrees with the political belief that you have, that’s human nature. It’s also the Rorschach Test of this graphic novel in that those on the right and left will think that Uncle Sam is about them. The political extremes might as well be listening to Carly Simon while reading it due to their vanity. The book’s author and artist surely do have a political leaning, but for the most part it takes a back seat and instead lets the power and artistry of the story drive home the enjoyment.

Enjoyment in this graphic novel is different than others. It’s a difficult graphic novel to read because it doesn’t flinch from any of its topics. The topics change quickly and offer an unflinching glimpse into the ugly side of American history. Even on a personal level, if someone were going to illustrate and write a graphic novel about my weight gain, bad habits or times that I behaved like a jackwagon it would be tough to read. The things that the United States has done throughout its existence have been much worse than those things, and Uncle Sam addresses most of them. Having said all of that, don’t be put off by what you might interpret as our dour comments. Great graphic novels are not all superhero-in-tights, happy-ending stories, this is one of the thought-provoking books that will remain in your forever library next to The Dark Knight or Maus.

Uncle Sam has something in common with one of the most popular sitcoms in American history, Seinfeld. The graphic novel starts and ends in an almost identical spot. Uncle Sam is being picked off of the floor and taken into a hospital where he’s told by one of the attending doctors that they can’t do anything for him and that he needs to leave. He hits the streets again, scavenging dumpsters for food, watching prostitutes laying on the ground and their pimps threatening them in the daytime. It’s a time-travelling head trip that allows the graphic novel to jump from that back alley to a Revolutionary War cabin and back again within a three-page span. He then quickly sees himself in the back seat of the car that J.F.K. was assassinated in, on the battlefield of a Native American massacre, the courthouse steps of a foreclosure sale, meets an imposter Uncle Sam, and encounters a glimpse of a fading Britannia.

You’ve never read anything like Uncle Sam, although the artwork will look like something that you might’ve seen before. I first became familiar with Alex Ross, the illustrator of Uncle Sam when I purchased his Marvels mini-series in 1994. His style of painting the characters is realistic and offers a dreamy, non-fiction sense that you don’t see in comic books. In Uncle Sam this artwork is paired with a jarring, trippy, gut-punch of a story and the results are difficult to look away from. As I said, it’s not an easy book to read, but it’s one that makes you think. Even with all of this talk about a deep book, the ending is slightly whimsical, almost hopeful, which the point of the graphic novel is ultimately. Art is something that promotes discussion, isn’t it? The illustrations in Uncle Sam demand to be called art and the text by Steve Darnall drives home a complex story that looks you in the face, even if it’s uncomfortable at times.

Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is by Steve Darnall with illustrations by Alex Ross and is available on Abrams ComicArts an imprint of Abrams Books.

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