Writer Mike Mackey and artist Donny Lin have constructed the first comic book to cater to the delusions of oppression suffered by America's ruling conservative elite in this poorly written, poorly illustrated, but weirdly entertaining futuristic political fantasy.
After President Al Gore blundered the response to 9/11, America has become a liberal, Democrat-run dystopia, where Chelsea Clinton is commander in chief, Michael Moore is her VP, Osama bin Laden is an officially recognized ambassador to the U.S., and outcast conservatives are bad-boy rebels. The heroes of the series? Motorcycle-riding Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy, cyborg-armed Sean Hannity and Oliver North.
Sure, Lin's art is poorly suited to casting real public figures as protagonists, and Mackey takes himself and his inane story way too seriously, but the sheer weirdness of the entire endeavor—aren't nightmarish future societies always the fault of the right rather than the left?—makes Liberality For All worth a look, whether you're a proud dittohead or just another America-hating, pinko comics reader.
Holy Shit: Or ... Pat Robertson Is the Anti-ChristSelf-published
Catchy title notwithstanding, writer/artist Mike Luoma doesn't actually believe that televangelist Pat Robertson is the Antichrist, as in the guy who stars in the Book of Revelation and helps bring about the apocalypse.
Instead, he posits that Robertson, and other similar Christian fundamentalists, are simply anti-Christ, as in, they often preach the exact opposite of what Jesus taught in the Gospels. You know, all that stuff about loving your neighbors.
Robertson has the bully pulpit of TV to spout from, but Luoma takes him on via this self-published, magazine-sized comic book. Calling to mind Chick Tracts in its rough, sketchy art and preachy, folksy, occasionally funny tone, Luoma's Holy Shit is a pretty compelling read, tracing the history of Christianity from Jesus' original message to the rise of an institutional church to the fundamentalist movement that began in the 19th century, a movement that seems to rule much of America here in the dawn of the 21st.
Like the 'zine it resembles, Holy Shit might prove hard to track down locally, but you can find it online at glowinthedarkradio.com.
Put The Book Back On The Shelf: A Belle and Sebastian Anthology
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Pop music stars have a long, if not exactly distinguished, history of invading the world of comic books. It's usually the more, um, comic-booky pop purveyors that make their way to the home medium of superheroes, though: Think Alice Cooper's graphic novel, The Last Temptation, or the Wu-Tang Clan and Kiss series of the '90s.
Media-shy Scottish pop 'n' roll band Belle and Sebastian seem as unlikely a group to appear in a comic book as one can imagine—the list of things Stuart Murdoch's public persona has in common with that of Alice Cooper is a short one, indeed—but graphic novel Put The Book Back on the Shelf proves that this particular bit of inter-media synergy isn't as silly as it sounds.
This hefty anthology takes scores of songs from the band's extensive library and hands them over to great indie-comic talents to illustrate, adapt or use for inspiration to create an original story. The results are a bit mixed, as they are with so many anthologies, but the stories that work best are well worth those that don't; taking the heartbreaking poetry of Murdoch's lyrics and setting images to them, like making pen-and-ink-on-paper music videos.
For the band's many cultishly devoted fans, it makes for a great way to spend an afternoon, curled up with the book in front of your CD player, cueing a particular song while you read the corresponding story and look for the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz-style symmetry. For curious comics readers still uninitiated to the cult of Belle and Sebastian, it shouldn't take many stories to convert them into full-fledged fans.