The Year I Almost Broke Up Max and Leo

This week's Graphical History Tour looks back on the year 2025. You may have heard of it.

I was going to post enough of my cartoons to give a more-or-less thorough overview of the year; but, gosh, there was a lot of news these past twelve months ! Most of it bad. You know something? It's just too damn soon to relive the whole damned year.

Instead, I'm pulling together the story line that developed after I drew characters Max and Leo getting swept up into the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Administration's ethnic cleansing spree.

February

MAGA Max and Liberal Leo first appeared in 2024 as my way of commenting on the widening political divide in the U.S.: a same-sex couple with widely divergent opinions on issues not exclusively of LGBTQ+ concern.

I initially thought I could wrap this story line up after a few episodes, but I had no idea that the reality was going to be much worse than anything I had in mind.

March

Max's first step to try finding out what the thugs and goons at ICE had done with Leo was to contact the deep state a government agency, only to find that Elon Musk's Dogeketeers were busy destroying government's ability to function. I purposely left vague what government department this fellow worked in, save that it was apparently not Homeland Security.

April

I never specified where the prison holding Leo was; I called it Trumplinka in my blog, but not in the cartoons. Early reports were that the U.S. was flying detainees to remote locations in Columbia and releasing them with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Originally, I thought Leo would end up being dumped with other prisoners somewhere in South America, then contacting Max to come bring him his passport.

Then we learned that the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime was sending its hapless victims to CECOT, a Dante-esque concentration camp in El Salvador, without even those clothes. 

April

I had no plan for breaking Leo out of that hell, so I had to think of something else.

Having him deported to the Heard and McDonald Islands wasn't going to work out, either.

I could have involved Leo with either of two LGBTQ whose kidnapping by ICE made news in 2025 (statistically, there must be others), but the Trumpsters have consistently lied or feigned ignorance of their status. One was Georgia barber Rodney Taylor, a double amputee seized because of a past juvenile offense for which he had been pardoned. Born in Liberia, his mother had brought him to the U.S. for medical treatment; his pending application for U.S. residence has been put on hold while he remains incarcerated.

May

The other was Angelo Hernandez, a gay Venezuelan stylist wrongly accused of gang affiliation due to tattoos and deported to CECOT.

Tattoos were the supposedly incriminating evidence against another man the Trumpsters sent to CECOT, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. While the State Department tried to prevent Democratic members of Congress from meeting with Abrego Garcia, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Cruella deNoem got herself a photo op with overcrowded CECOT prisoners behind bars as her backdrop, and the White House resorted to PhotoShopping tattoos onto Abrego Garcia's hands.

July

By summer, the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime was flying deportees off to foreign countries, to which the deportees seldom had any ties, including Guatemala, Honduras, Uganda, Belize, and Paraguay — with little or no notice, in order to stymie any legal effort to get them their day in court. So I decided that I had better get Leo out of the Trumpsters' clutches one way or another. 

August

You don't hear much about last summer's catch phrase, "Trump Always Chickens Out" (TACO) any more. He's been doubling down on riveting his name onto everything from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to his latest fantasy of gold-plated coal-powered Trump Classy  battleships.

July

In a movie, TV series, or adventure comic strip, there would have been exciting scenes of the American plane attempting to escape the crossfire only to crash in a huge explosion. The deportees would have wrested the keys to their shackles from that stranded ICE agent. Then, during a ceasefire negotiated by the Canadians and the E.U. long enough to evacuate their embassy personnel — oh, I'll let Leo pick up the story from there:

August

I draw a weekly cartoon, however, which runs in some newspapers and magazines that publish biweekly or monthly. And some of them may have elected to run cartoons I had drawn on other topics during the seven months when this story line dragged on.

In any case, my Better Half and I were taking a road trip to an out-of-town wedding in August, meaning that I'd be away from my drawing board for a while. There was no better reason to wrap the story up in a cartoon I could draw ahead of time — provided Trump didn't declare war on Canada in the meantime. (Especially since our return trip took us through southern Ontario.)

August

So now I have to figure out where Max and Leo go from here.

Assuming Max continues his loyalty to the Trumpreich, how does Leo not end every argument with "Don't you remember, your fascist Trump bastards arrested me without charge, held me in prison for months without due process, and sent me to some third world hellhole in the middle of a civil war?"

Maybe, to borrow a phrase, the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But if this couple can stick it out together in spite of everything around them, maybe there is still hope for the rest of us.