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Twilight of the Assholes

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Tim Kreider’s first cartoon collection, The Pain — When Will It End? was one

of the few bastions of sanity throughout the awful aberration in American history

known as the Bush Administration. The end of his second volume of political

cartoons, Why Do They Kill Me?, saw its author in despair over the 2004

election. In this new volume, Twilight of the Assholes, as reality gets ever bleaker,

Kreider’s humor becomes increasingly apocalyptic, deranged, and hilarious.

He juxtaposes the Biblical Christ with His blonde, flag-draped, machine-gun-toting

American incarnation in “Jesus vs. Jeezus,” proposes a third political

party that represents Americans’ real values in “The Sex Party,” draws the dead

Saddam Hussein as a mischievous invisible imp still causing trouble, and envisions

the officials of the Bush administration getting their comeuppance in the grisly fashion of Dick Tracy villains. And

he finds two cartoons’ worth of “Reasons to Look Forward to the Next Terrorist Attack.” Also included is his infamous

entry into Iran’s Holocaust cartoon contest, “Silver Linings of the Holocaust.”

Kreider mocks not only the evil and hapless Bush but the fecklessness of progressives, the imbecile bigotry of radical

Islam, and, most of all, the dumb bovine complacency of the American voter. His art has become even more dense with

gags and his writing (most recently featured in the New York Times) has never been more astute and devastating. Twilight

of the Assholes is an hysterical chronicle of the end of the Era of Darkness, and, believe it or not, a heartening document

of one man’s loss and tentative restoration of faith in democracy.