Eric Orner, the acclaimed cartoonist of one of the countrys most popular and longest-running gay comic strips, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, presents his debut graphic novela 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 nations first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn’t and wouldnt?

In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, one of Americas 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 Franks 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.

Author/Artist: Eric Orner
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Page Count: 224pp
Size: 7.25 x 10.75
Notes: softcover, color
Date of Publication: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1250191588