Tag Archives: Climate Change

Seattle Focus: Surviving THE HAZE

Kayakers paddle in view of downtown Seattle, cloaked in a haze of smoke that swept down into the Puget Sound region from fires in British Columbia. (Elaine Thompson/AP)

The Pacific Northwest is hazy, hot, and bothered. So reports The Washington Post. It has really thrown off the routine of us Seattle natives.

Here in Seattle, we are very low-key. Many of us can tolerate grey skies most of the year. Some of us, like myself, are far more tolerant. I accept grey skies as part of the package. When we reach a sweet spot sometime in autumn, all that grey can be the most satisfying backdrop for contemplation and creativity. But not the haze we are currently suffering through.

The Haze, as some of us have gotten to calling it, is something sinister, a harbinger of climate change things to come. Or, one can hope, just one big temporary pain in the ass. Either way, it has cut into us. This time around, we are dealing with Canadian wildfire smoke. What will we be dealing with next time, and the time after that? Many of us moved to Seattle just to avoid having to face those kind of questions. We thought we’d forever said goodbye to such things as hurricanes and heat waves.

The Seattle Haze t-shirt

So, yeah, we don’t do well with oppressive weather. We can barely handle any snow in winter. For us, The Haze is a really big deal. For those of you with a sense of humor, there’s a t-shirt just waiting for you. Find it right here and here. Cartoonist Jennifer Daydreamer and I created it just for you.

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Filed under Humor, Pacific Northwest, pop culture, Satire, Seattle, T-shirts

Review: SNOWFALL #1

Snowfall Image Comics 2016

Screenwriter/director Adam McKay, known for “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights,” and now, “The Big Short,” was asked recently, in an interview with The Wrap, what subject he’d like to tackle next. Without hesitation, he said that subject would be climate change. He said, by far, it is the biggest story to tell today. The creators of this new comic, published by Image Comics, would definitely agree. SNOWFALL (story by Joe Harris; art by Martin Morazzo) is about an Earth so harmed that it is no long capable of naturally creating snow. To add further insult to injury, corporations have found a way to profit from the fact there is no longer any natural snow!

Like an invigorating winter morning, this is one crisp and poetic comic. This will appeal not only to the Bernie Sanders contingent (which is growing by the hour) but to a wide spectrum of readers who may disagree on the details but who can feel in their gut that things have been steadily going south. Our story is set in the not-too-distant future. 2045, to be exact. Is that not-too-distant enough for you? I think it’s a good sweet spot, just far enough away. Corporations took over once the damage to the environment had gotten over the heads of government. In fact, the Hazeltyne Corporation oversees the “Cooperative States of America.”

To be sure, a tragic scene like this needs at least one hero and we get one in the White Wizard. He is a loner, part genius, part crazed zealot. What we get here is a dazzling opener of a first issue with the White Wizard lurking around in the background like some folklore legend. But one rebel can lead to another and so it goes with a college student that has plans of his own. Those plans include the White Wizard. However, the White Wizard did not get the memo.

Image Comics Snowfall

SNOWFALL #1 is available as of February 17th. For more details, visit our friends at Image Comics right here.

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Filed under Climate Change, Comics, Comics Reviews, Image Comics