Yes, there are blogs, websites, satirical music videos and You-Tube-friendly "gotcha" moments -- all the modern campaign tools of the Internet-connected world. But the most vibrantly French element of the 2007 presidential campaign comes from the nation's rich tradition of political caricature.

Step into a well-stocked bookstore in almost any sizable city in France and you're likely to find more than a dozen political comic books and graphic novels. Some, like Le P'tit Sarko (Li'l Sarko) with its cover showing a diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy wearing an over-sized Superman suit, deal with the main candidates' biographies, ambitions and tactics. Others take potshots at France's ruling class. In this comics matrix, where provocative storytelling intersects with childish exaggeration, nobody is off limits. But some candidates make better caricatures than others.

Tough-talking former Interior Minister Sarkozy, with his sunken eyes, frenetic energy, and diminutive stature, has long been a favorite target for French newspaper and magazine satirists. They've portrayed him as, among other things, President Jacques Chirac's unwanted political stepchild, Dracula, and a thuggish Mafioso. Graphic novelists turn Sarkozy's own language against him, indelibly inking unfortunate catch-phrases into the public consciousness. A single Sarkozy sentence, in which the minister of the interior promised to "hose down" a troubled neighborhood with an industrial-strength Karcher machine (that was designed to clean sidewalks and gutters), inspired a runaway best seller. La face karchée de Sarkozy (The Hidden/Karcherized Face of Sarkozy) has sold nearly 200,000 copies since November.

And then there's Ségolène Royal, who is the president of the rural Poitou-Charentes region. She once showed up at an event to support her political fiefdom dressed as a local dairy girl, country skirt and all. In the biting world of graphic novels, Royal is alternately portrayed as flighty or as ruthless, or sometimes both in the same story. The cover sketch on Tout Sauf Ségo (Anyone but Ségo) portrays her as a toothy huntress in a green skirt. Gleefully, she stands before a wall bearing the mounted heads of prominent Socialists she bagged on the way to her party's nomination. (Socialist leader François Hollande, the father of Royal's four children, is shown sweating profusely in fear as he hides behind her.)

These new comic books allow for spot-on send-ups of political stagecraft. The cover image of Tout Sauf Sarko (Anyone but Sarko) shows a disheveled young Nico shaving before a bathroom mirror lined with notes that remind him to do simple things, like smile. (In the mirror, "President Sarkozy" grins back at him.)

Ces Nouveaux Cabots Qui Nous Gouvernent (These New Pooches/Poseurs that Govern Us) includes big-nosed caricatures of Chirac and Sarkozy, each with a pair of barking dogs (spokesmen, perhaps?) -- who look just like them. The cover of L'Actu Tue (The News Kills) shows a goofy Royal and a demonic Sarkozy playing tug-of-war for control of the earth. (Also in the scrum: US President George W. Bush, who has a claw-like hand on the Middle East, and Osama Bin Laden, who, from hiding, has just lit a bomb fuse that will soon blow up the globe.)

Les Cromagnons de la Politique (The Political Cromagnons) portrays the decline of French politics as a reversal of evolution. It begins with a tall, if unimpressive, Chirac, before progressing toward the shorter Royal, who is barefoot in a cheap fur coat, and eventually on to a knuckle-dragging Sarkozy, who is portrayed as a hairy half-man, half-animal. He is the last link before an as-yet-un-nominated monkey.

Center-right candidate François Bayrou is largely absent from the comic book shelves, so far. This is likely a result of his relatively late surge in the polls, rather than an indication that he isn't fodder for the world of graphic novels. After all, rural supporters of the rustic centrist horse-farmer joke that his political rise has been driven by "tractor power." What could be more comic book-friendly than that?

And besides, you don't need to score well in the polls to merit your own comic book. Il Faut Tuer José Bové (José Bové Must Die) was released in 2005, long before Bové began his feeble presidential push. The mostly serious graphic novel tells the story of three angry multinational companies that decide to murder the charismatic anti-globalization activist and peasant leader. (Fortunately, Bové's bodyguard-sheep help to protect him.)

While the radical activist with the handlebar moustache wasn't involved with the project, it brought him full circle. In 1999, Bové became a folk hero in France and rose to international prominence after he helped to dismantle a McDonalds that was under construction. When images of his arrest were broadcast, few French people missed his striking resemblance to the nation's most beloved comic book character, the feisty Astérix. Some of today's politicians, it would seem, are caricatures of themselves.

Photograph of children browsing political comic books by Christopher Dickey