What happend to my comics (link stolen from Finnie)?
So I may have missed this somehow in my subscription sheet from Comix Experience, but I doubt it. This looks like something that Hibbs or Lester would definately have an opinion on. Even though the story looks atrocious, I'm strangely captivated by it conceptually somehow.
It's really sick though. I can't believe how long I've been staring at it. What in the world am I looking at here?
This work speaks to the Right. They have an underdog mentality that seems to permeate them. This is really well documented and a good source is Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter With Kansas?". A big part of this is what Frank dubs the plen-t-plaint. In short it's the Right's ability to catalog and never forget any slight against them in the complete history of humanity. And by any slight Frank mean anything at all. Talking about the plen-T-plaint book "Unlimited Access", by Gary Aldrich, Frank says:
"Unlimited Access is essentially a long list of minor protocol infractions observed by its impossibly straight-arrow author while he worked in the Clinton White House. Aldrich ticks off the bad manners he notices among the Democrats in the White House cafeteria, taking umbrage at the guy he once saw eating yogurt prior to weighing it on the cafeteria scale. He clucks primly at George Stephanopoulus's messy office... He suspects that people are hiding something when they're happy to meet him; he suspects that people are hiding something when they're unhappy to meet him."
Added to this the author's of the comic are feeding their demagogue's egos by making them the heroes of the comic, and their foes the villains. Seriously now, Vice President Michael Moore. Ok stop laughing.
The covers that ACC Studios is showing off of the books are bits of entertaining story themselves. CYBORG Hannity! MOTORCYCLE REBEL Liddy! OLD MAN North! Wha? Why is North an old man with a cane? Are Liddy and Hannity slowly secretly sucking the life out of the man? Are they hoarding their SUPERMAN CYBORG TECHNOLOGY from him? Did he sell all of his share of cyborginess to some foreign power in exchange for a metric ton of opium? I guess the only way to know is to read the damn thing.
The most painful part of this story is presuming that Gore actually won in 2000 (note: He did win.) Ok, let me fess up. It's totally true that if Gore was made President we liberals would deny every person in the United States First Amendment rights. I have the secret file right here in my jacket. Wait-a-minute, no I don't! Because it wasn't going to happen you freakin' nutjobs. Oh yeah and we'd be kissing Osama's ass for twenty year. Riiight.
The UN is represented in a panel showing happy representatives from France, Canadia, Spain, and Germany. On the last page of the preview the police officer is clearly French. It's good to see that xenophobia is alive and well in this modern era. Actually I don't think it's xenophobia. The intention here is malice not fear.
As for the art, I like the covers. They actually look real good. I don't know if it's the fact that I really can't agree with the politics or outrageousness of the story (I know I know it's "satire"), but the interior art is malbona. The actual drawing is adequate. But it seems to my eye that the coloring is off (what is up with that deathly pale girl on this page, and the inks seems thick when it should be crisp (CYBORG-Hannity's arm in the fourth panel.)
Overall I just want to see where they're going with this very silly tale. I may even go out of my way to find a copy of the series to read. And then promptly destroy all of the evidence. Possibly by wiping my ass with it.
This is not a completely original thought, but Liddy is a convicted felon, and North was a convicted felon until his conviction got overturned (it's not clear on the Wikipedia article if all of the felonies that he was convicted of were overturned or if it was just one of them.) Liddy has advocated killing government agents, and North was involved with selling weapons to Iranians funneling the money to Central American guerillas (which I'm sure under today's microscope are two TERRRORIST(TM) groups.) Why are these guys "heroes"? I don't get it. I'm all for flawed hero characters like in Batman, Astro City, and Watchmen. But I have the sneaking feeling that those aspect will surface in this book.
The term "Orwellian nightmare" is used in the press release for the book. Can we expect (or hope) that our "heroes" have a 1984-style ending? My guess is no.
