Royal Licorice

 

He was decked out in Navajo beadwork and a Sioux war-bonnet when he spoke at the supermarket in Indianapolis. Indianapolis really meant Indian City, didn’t it?

---R. A. Lafferty, “Royal Licorice”

I read Royal Licorice just as the politicking engines were getting stoked for the 2016 presidential race. So perhaps it is no surprise that it was those aspects of the story that caught my attention and fed the illustration.

In the story, Candidate Johnson is a bumbling and disassociated sort of man. A political game player given renewed time with which to further bumble and dissociate himself (and appropriate other cultures for reelection).

I drew him with an disingenuous smile (referencing the lipless curl of a popular politician) and an even more disingenuous war bonnet; the feathers fanning outward like a peacock (or turkey?), disheveled, and incomplete.

Dressed a mess to impress the masses and failing horribly.