This Was an Affair to Remember--and Satirize

As Jeff Mason sees it, the Starr report on White House shenanigans was neither earthshaking nor titillating, but “hilarious. The conclusions, the assumptions are just spot-on funny.”

In short, the stuff of which comic books are made. And that’s what Mason, a 30-year-old Gainesville, Fla., criminal lawyer, has done with “Monica’s Story,” a 32-page spoof just out from Alternative Comics, which he publishes when he’s not in court.

Reached at his Gainesville home, Mason said, “All the characters are sympathetic, even Bill Clinton. Not that we made Clinton out to be some kind of hero. Everybody in the book looks pretty silly.” So silly, suggests Mason, a political liberal, that even conservatives should find it a hoot.

The reader shares the first stolen glances, the tears and tumult and, finally, a somewhat ambiguous ending wherein the president, while dumping Lewinsky, gives her “some glimmer of hope for the future,” Mason says.

Proceeds will benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization working to protect 1st Amendment rights of those who create and sell comics. It is available for $2.95 through Meltdown Comics and Golden Apple in Los Angeles and Another World in Eagle Rock.