Smahtguy : the life and times of Barney Frank

Eric Orner, the acclaimed cartoonist of one of the country's most popular and longest-running gay comic strips, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green , presents his debut graphic novel—a dazzling, irreverent biography of the iconic and iconoclastic Barney Frank, one of the first gay and out congressmen and a front-line defender of civil rights. What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation's first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn't and wouldn't? In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, one of America's first out members of Congress and a gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. But more than a biography of an indispensable LGBTQ pioneer, this funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account reveals the down-and-dirty inner workings of Boston and DC politics. As Frank's longtime staff counsel and press secretary, Eric Orner lends his first-hand perspective to this extraordinary work of history, paying tribute to the mighty striving of committed liberals to defend ordinary Americans from an assault on their shared society. An irreverent graphic novel biography of the iconic Barney Frank, one of the first gay and out congressmen and a frontline defender of civil rights. With the wit and sass of its subject, "Smahtguy" traces the path of an unlikely gay and civil rights crusader, one of America's first out members of Congress. A funny, beautifully rendered warts-and-all account, this book is at once a history of gay emancipation and a window into the inner workings of Boston and DC politics, laid bare in all their down-and-dirty detail. Author Eric Orner, Frank's longtime staff counsel and press secretary, lends his firsthand perspective to a work that honors an indespensable LGBTQ pioneer and a legislative hero of our age. -- adapted from summary on book