So you’ve heard about these so-called graphic novels, but you can’t locate the ghetto where Barnes and Noble keeps them. Or maybe you’re slightly afraid of your community’s fan-tense comics boutique, with its large and menacing Shazam standee.
Worry not, comics-curious masses. You can explore the more serious side of the splash panel online, courtesy Smith magazine. Shooting War, (written and created by Anthony Lappé, art by Dan Goldman) is a fearsome, near-future vision where the thrills and chills have no supernatural or science-fiction component: It’s 2011, McCain is president, the war in Iraq drags on, and society is starting to come apart at the seams. Our hero is an anti-corporate video-blogger rocketed to fame when a terrorist bomb destroys his apartment. (The moral: In the near future, do not live atop a Starbucks.) He catches the whole thing on film, gets exploited by a Fox News-type cable network, and then, equally furious at capitalist and terrorist culture, ships out to blog from Iraq.
The anger, the artistry, and the very local detail (a Gawker 2011 page, a future issue of New York Magazine with headlines like "Tom Cruise, Mary-Kate Olsen Call It Quits" and "When Did Staten Island Become So Cool?") make this a must-read. What’s more, the comic’s "trailer" opens up a completely new way to tell stories with still pictures. It’s an intense and bracing read, torn from the headlines of tomorrow. And if there’s something excessively petty about Lappé’s at times casual equation of a hard-drive lost and a life ended, remember who your narrator is: a guy who calls himself "the hipster who’s going to save the world." Only in the funny pages, kids…
You think this is impressive, you should check out Goldman’s other work, Everyman: Be The People. That’s the light side of the Force to Shooting War’s Dark Side.
It sounds stupid..
Wow. Sounds horrid. But with trusty lefty politics of course it’ll get a glowing review.
So, let me get this straight – you can’t write the f-word, but you can show a picture that has the word printed? Sounds like the double standard involved with s–t; bulls–t is OK, and it’s English equivalent (“sh-te” is OK, and it’s OK if spoken by certain actors, but it gets bleeped out of articles by rappers or other actors? Please, tell us the policy and be consistent.
It appears from the sample panel that Martin Scorcese has added a middle name to get some street cred. I guess he figures its the only way to get an Oscar. Worked for Emimem and Three 6 Mafia.
Another online strip that has fun with politics (in a funnier vein) is Batton Lash’s “Supernatural Law” (at http://www.supernaturallaw.com ). The current storyline pits an Ann Coulter-type author (who happens to be Medusa from Greek mythology) against a Ted Rall-type cartoonist.
George Clooney urges neighbours at his Italian retreat to fight a planned development in the town…
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