Polytricks

By Regie Rigby

Oh bloody hell – where do I start?

For weeks now I’ve spent the greater part of my “column writing time” staring at the screen and thinking “what the effing hell am I going to write?!” Not that there’s any shortage of stuff I want to talk about, it’s just that I don’t really want to talk about any of it yet.

Now? Now I have a whole bunch of stuff I want to talk about, and I won’t be able to squeeze it in to one column. It’s always the way I guess. I’ll just have to pick the topic at the top of the pile and run with it.

And actually, this is rather exciting. (At least, it is to me.)

It seems that somebody on the internet has been asked to teach “a short course at my college next winter called "Comic Book Politics."”. The aim is to “have the students read the best comics published since the mid 1980s which raise - either directly or indirectly - challenging political issues.”

The question is, which comics? For practical reasons only comics that have been collected in trade paper back, or were published as original graphic novels are any real use – the logistical problems of getting single back issues of monthly comics in the hands of students taking the course and making sure they survive to be used when you teach the course the following year are astronomical. Trust me – I’ve tried. Can’t be done.

So, what would you recommend?

Some are obvious no-brainers. I mean, there’s no way you’d teach a course like this without including the likes of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, and while we’re on the subject of Ellis you’d probably want to throw in The Authority for it’s satirical take on the politics of intervention.

Then there’s the serious journalistic and biographical work – the likes of Maus, which deals with the holocaust, or Joe Sacco’s Palestine or Safe area Gorazde. These are comics that document and explore some of the major geo-political events of the twentieth century (Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarejevo would also fit well here).

But, as I said – those are the obvious books. What else should we include?

You see, for all I whinge and moan about the lack of thought provoking reading matter out there, there is rather a lot of political stuff if you want to be embracing enough with your definition of “political”.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta would be in there (another no-brainer, providing as it does an exploration of a totalitarian regime and the legitimacy of armed struggle and terrorist activity), but would we include the more famous Watchmen? I mean, it does feature a conspiracy to overthrow a government at the heart of the plot, but somehow for me it doesn’t push the political buttons.

Judge Dredd (or at least some of the Judge Dredd stories) does though. Oh, I know, the stories about people who are so fat they need wheels under their bellies, or the ones where robots try to take over the city can be a little silly, but Dredd is an inherently political creation, and to be honest he could probably provide enough material to resource the course on his own.

For a start he’s a fascist agent of a totalitarian state. A lot of stories have been told through his eyes that have invited the reader to disagree with him, even while cheering him on. For years, for example, Dredd has been a staunch opponent of any movement towards democracy in the Big Meg. The arguments he puts up against democracy are often quite persuasive and as such are very disturbing.

Dredd argues that you can’t give people the vote because you can’t trust them to use it wisely. He’s right of course – you can’t.

Then you have the vast cast of characters who are ranged against Dredd and his Judges. Some are undoubtedly out and out evil. There’s no doubt that as readers we’re not supposed to be rooting for Judge Death or Mean Angel. But we also have characters like Marlon Shakespeare, aka Chopper, the juve who went from being “King Scrawler” to the “Midnight Surfer”, champion of the illegal sky-surfing “Supersurf” contest.

Shakespeare is a free spirit. A man who stands up against the dull monotony of mega city life and lives life on his own terms. Of course we cheer for him. More than that, he shows us just how wrong the totalitarian system is by offering a contrast.

That’s all very easy. But then we also have characters like Orlock, the East Meg assassin. Initially he was painted as a straightforward bad guy. He first appeared in the run up to the Apocalypse War storyline when he caused chaos in the city by spreading the “Block Mania” virus, making the citizens rise up and fight each other. He was a villain, and nothing more.

But in subsequent appearances we learned more of his motivations – he was every bit as much of a patriot as Dredd, just for an opposing power. The question arose, just how different are they?

A tour through the archives will show that in his time Dredd has dealt with questions of racism, the morality of weapons of mass destruction, the morality of war, the perils of cultural relativism, corporate greed and so much else. Actually, I think I might be onto something here – “The Cultural Politics of Judge Dredd” – you think there might be a Phd in that?

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing, except we were just talking about Dredd, that movie was on TV last night and the TV guide film review gave it five stars out of five!” either the review was written by the holiday relief, or it’s a sign of the end times…

Anyway.

What else is there?

Well, Grant Morrison’s entire run on Animal Man, dealing as it did with animal rights and political vegetarianism. Come to think about it, Morrison’s The Invisibles, and even Zenith probably would be useful. Rather a lot of the classic Swamp Thing, with its focus on eco-politics would also be useful here. Then there’s Steve Darnell’s take on Uncle Sam, which examined the position the US holds in the world.

But these are all from the fringes of what passes for the mainstream of Western comics. Perhaps the most interesting political comics are the ones which use the iconic characters we all remember from the Saturday morning cartoons. When you get a run of Spider-Man comics that criticise US immigration policy, for example – as happened back in the eighties. When you get a Batman comics that overtly campaigns for gun control laws, as we did in the early nineties.

That’s interesting.

It’s interesting that books which are effectively controlled by massive corporate interests would take a firm position on controversial subjects. It is, after all, a risk they don’t need to take. The reader reaction to such things is also interesting. I remember that there were several objections to the gun control Batman book. Some readers objected to a pro-gun control comic being published at all. Others claimed to be neutral on the issue of gun control, but objected strongly to the fact that a percentage of the cover price was going to gun control charities, and that this wasn’t made clear on the cover so Batman fans were potentially being duped into donating to a cause they did not necessarily support.

In both the Spidey and Batman cases, still others bemoaned the fact that their favourite comics were “getting political”.

So, some questions for you:

1. Should “mainstream” mass market, mass readership comics “do” politics?
2. If “no”, why not? If “yes” should they examine all the arguments or should they be partisan?
3. Which political comics would you recommend?

The boards are yours!