Craig McDonald: HEAD GAMES, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: “REAL CHARACTERS” #8 GEORGE W. BUSH & THE BUSH DYNASTY

Sunday, October 22, 2017

HEAD GAMES, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: “REAL CHARACTERS” #8 GEORGE W. BUSH & THE BUSH DYNASTY

The Hector Lassiter novels (ten of them, including HEAD GAMES) frequently incorporate real people.

All of that carries over into HEAD GAMES, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, coming Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017 from First Second Books.

At its darkly comic and Tex-Mex heart, the story of HEAD GAMES turns on an all-too-real Yale University Secret Society dubbed “Skull & Bones” and its rumored collection of the plundered bones of the infamous.

ORDER HEAD GAMES: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

Skull & Bones is equally infamous for churning out politicians—several of them including vexing presidents such as William Howard Taft or “Lubb” as he was known to fellow Bonesmen, many senators (a certain Prescott Bush and John Kerry), and media moguls including Henry Luce or “Baal,” the dude who launched Time Magazine, for instance.

Most directly and tantalizingly tied to all that skullduggery, is the Bush family dynasty.

Yes, those Bushes. At least three generation of ’em were so-called “Bonesmen.”

The aforementioned U.S. Senator Prescott Bush (“Magog," son George H.W. Bush (“Poppy” and the 41st U.S. president) and George W. Bush, AKA “W.,” AKA “Bush 43,” AKA “Temporary.”

(Whatever else you may think of George W., at least give him credit for eschewing creepy nicknames in this context.)

Here’s how some of George W’s participation in HEAD GAMES THE GRAPHIC NOVEL (now newly available as of Tuesday from First Second Books in mostly visual format) plays out directly or indirectly, courtesy of some short excerpts and bits of dark data gleaned from the original 2007 novel of HEAD GAMES:

--A man named Emil Holmdahl pillaged Pancho Villa’s grave in the Panteon de Dolores boneyard and stole Pancho’s head back in February of 1926, purportedly doing so under hire by Yale (and Skull & Bones) alum, Prescott Bush, to display in the S&B trophy cabinet in the fraternity’s spooky masoluem like meeting space dubbed “The Tomb.”

--Prescott also allegedly directly participated in the theft of Geronimo’s skull for S&B’s trophy cabinet, too, where it may remain to this day.

--The Bush family, particularly in the case of George H.W. Bush, were movers-and-shakers in American intelligence circles, primarily via the CIA.

--As various Bushes post-Prescott (AKA, George and George Jr.) sought higher office, according to various news reports, irksome law suits were strategically filed to try and get back some famous heads and hands.

Other news reports in recent years claimed skulls were quietly returned to the Apaches and certain Mexicans to try and dampen down possible stories of Bushes and grave robbing/head thefts.

And so it goes…