John Hinckley Makes the Funny Papers

The Washington Post Sunday comics section features an educational strip entitled "Flashbacks," which recounts episodes from United States and D.C. history. Being both a history geek and a comics nerd, I look forward to these surprisingly sophisticated weekly installments. I enjoy the strip's tendency to focus on topics outside the historical mainstream, such as the city's architectural and African-American history.

But last Sunday's strip, detailing the background of St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital (longtime abode of Mr. John Hinckley) has to be my all-time favorite. For it boasts what surely must be the only graphical depiction of the Reagan assassination attempt ever to appear in a Sunday comics section:

Just look at that detail! In the foreground, Reagan being shoved into the limo by Ray Shaddock and Jerry Parr. In the middle distance, Jim Brady captured in mid-tumble. In the background, a grim Hinckley stark amid a crowd of orange supernumeraries, firing point-blank into the neck of Officer Tom Delehanty. And whereas the familiar press photos and videos look Southwest toward T Street, the artist has turned the action around, situating the reader almost at Reagan's point of view.

Now, a stickler might take issue with a few details: Delahanty was actually facing away from Hinckley and was thus shot in the back of the neck; Jerry Parr had graying brown, not blond, hair at the time, and Hinckley is not, in fact, that distinctive shade of yellow. But given my previously-expressed fascination with the events of March 30, 1981, I am more than willing to let these slide in the face of this educational tour de force.