Cartoonist Brett Smith: ‘Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel’ Is ‘One of the Most Subversive Things the Right Has Done’ with Pop Culture

Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel

Comic book artist Brett Smith joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon Tuesday to discuss the newly published Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel.

Smith said of the work:

One of the things that really attracted me to the project was it gave us an opportunity to do something really subversive – probably one of the most subversive things the Right has done when it comes to pop culture maybe since Clinton Cash, the documentary. And of course, Andrew [Breitbart] always said that politics is downstream from culture. And I was really interested in seeing if we could make those two intersect. And I think we were able to do that in a crisp, engaging and new way with Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel, and we do that through humor, which is also something which I think is new and cutting edge – definitely avant-garde for the Right – using satire and humor, parody, mockery.

Added Smith on the development of the work:

I wanted to reach the widest swath of audience as possible – pull in as many readers as possible. And, again, I thought, how do you do that? What’s the vehicle that gets us there? And the first thing I thought of was humor because humor usually makes strange bedfellows. It brings in all kinds of different people. And originally, I was thinking like Dr. Strangelove kind of satire, where everything is played out straight but you’ve got all this ridiculous, crazy stuff going on.

Smith then added that when he brought in writer Chuck Dixon, they decided they just had to go “full blown humor … [and] just blow this thing up bigger and make it just absolutely explosive.”

Smith said the goal was to “just take these people apart in a lot of the way the Left has done for the last forty years to the Right,” adding that the team was comprised of many “A-listers from Marvel and DC over the past 20 – 30 years.” He credited the project’s budget for that.

Concluded Smith:

The Right has not lost the culture war. The Right has almost ceded the culture war by not engaging, and I really wanted to use the Left’s weapons back on them. I wanted to turn the Left’s weapons around and use it on them. It’s payback time. They don’t own pop culture. They don’t own it all. They don’t own that territory, and we need to start taking it back. Jon Stewart just signed a four-year deal with HBO. He’s got an animation studio geared up. He’s got 3-D graphics cranking. We need to start fighting fire with fire and show up to the gunfight with a flamethrower.

Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel is available here.

From Smith’s bio:

Brett R. Smith is a professional commercial artist working in the comic book industry as a color artist, a storyboard artist in the advertising industry, and a graphic artists for multiple clients. He holds a B.F.A. in Animation. Smith started in the commercial art field in 1995 as an in-house color artist for Chaos! Comics. Since then he has worked with a wide array of clients, including Marvel and DC Entertainment, Hasbro, Cartoon Network, McCann Erikson, BBDO, and Saatchi & Saatchi. Smith has contributed to multiple premier properties and licenses including, The Avengers, Batman, Superman, GI Joe, Wolverine, Brett R. Smith is a professional commercial artist working in the comic book industry as a color artist, a storyboard artist in the advertising industry, and a graphic artists for multiple clients. He holds a B.F.A. in Animation. Smith started in the commercial art field in 1995 as an in-house color artist for Chaos! Comics. Since then he has worked with a wide array of clients, including Marvel and DC Entertainment, Hasbro, Cartoon Network, McCann Erikson, BBDO, and Saatchi & Saatchi. Smith has contributed to multiple premier properties and licenses including, The Avengers, Batman, Superman, GI Joe, Wolverine, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hulk, Detective Comics, Heineken, Chase Cheerios, Pillsbury, Birds Eye and many others.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

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