Jules Feiffer, one of America’s finest cartoonists, now in his eighties, revolutionised the strip-cartoons with his witty and cynical social commentaries on the garrulous and the neurotic and their relationships. His political thriller was written in 1970 but set forty years in the future, which is, presumably, the reason it is being revived now.
There are two crises facing the President of America, who is about to seek re-election and would prefer to remain in office. The US is at war with Brazil. How is he going to explain to the nation that an experiment with nerve gas has gone wrong and has killed 750 American soldiers? The President’s wife, a prominent anti-war activist, is murdered in the Oval Room. How is he going to explain that away? Meanwhile two contaminated soldiers in the Brazilian jungle are losing their legs, fingers, voices, eyesight and penises.
The satire is laboured and over-extended. You would get a much better idea of Feiffer by looking at a collection of his cartoons in his book, Sick, Sick, Sick, a Guide to Non-Confident Living, and watching his animated cartoon sketch, Munro, which is about a 4-year-old who is drafted into the army by mistake.