Tag Archives: Political Science

September 5, 2013 · 4:11 pm

Review: ‘The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide’

“The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” is full of whimsy and wisdom as it follows its characters on a journey to save the planet. It’s all up to a group of friends to figure out if they can smash the capitalist system or just give up and go shopping. What makes Stephanie McMillan’s comic strip such a page-turner is her ability to find the right mix of humor and intelligent discourse.

Stephanie McMillan’s sense of urgency and comedy is irresistible. She has placed a whole new generation with the burden of saving the planet but they’re pretty clueless. There’s Kranti and Bananabelle, who just barely know the struggles from the past. Kranti, an African-American, is quick to join a protest rally and yell, “By any means necessary!” And Bananabelle, intuitively, recognizes that won’t go over well with the “mainstream liberals.”

Then there’s Kranti’s brother, Nikko, and his lover, Javier. They are both at the mercy of the current economic tide. Nikko manages to just get by with his design work. Javier, has let things slip in pursuit of his art and relies on Nikko’s meager income. All four of these unlikely heroes will be stretched to their limits as they try to do the right thing.

Guidance and advice comes from Victoria, a theorist guinea pig; and Bunnista, a trigger-happy rabbit. Each of them, in their own way, have some wisdom to share but they are still working on the ultimate answers. Victoria is uncompromising in her ideals. Bunnista is too eager to blow things up.

As the story unfolds, we find ourselves exploring the available options to make this a better world: everything from community gardening to murder is on the table. What is really compelling about this comic strip is just how far it is willing to go. If Kranti and Bananabelle didn’t appreciate what was meant when someone said, “By any means necessary,” they certainly do by the end of this tale.

One of McMillan’s goals with this particular story is to raise awareness of how corporations are raping the environment, specifically with bio-engineering. She is seeking answers. And the one thing she keeps returning to is the unequivocal need to rid ourselves of global capitalism. But, at every turn, she shows us how futile that effort appears to be. The great contradiction is that we have no choice but to fight the system, a fight that may appear to be too big to win. All life on the planet hangs in the balance. The only sure thing is that we must persist, live to fight another day. It’s a cliffhanger to the story of life that we must all live with.

And just how do you end capitalism? Well, that is an ongoing discussion. This current comics collection makes that clear. The subject is too vital and complex to address in just one book. For instance, McMillan has a guide to the people’s struggle, “Capitalism Must Die,” that will soon come out. For now, “The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” provides an educational and entertaining look at what happens when people must confront the system.

Visit Stephanie McMillan at her website here.

“The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” is published by Seven Stories Press. This book is a 160-page trade paperback priced at $12.71 and is set for release on October 8, 2013. Be sure to visit our friends at Seven Stories Press here.

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Filed under Comics, Editorial Cartoons, Environment, Occupy movement, Political Cartoons, politics, Protest, Seven Stories Press, Stephanie McMillan

Tagged as cartoons, Editorial Cartoons, Education, Entertainment, Environment, Occupy Movement, Political Cartoons, Political Science, Politics, Pop Culture, social unrest

September 3, 2013 · 2:38 am

Review: ‘The Beginning of the American Fall: A Comics Journalist Inside the Occupy Wall Street Movement’

“The Beginning of the American Fall: A Comics Journalist Inside the Occupy Wall Street Movement” does a remarkable job of giving you a sense of the Occupy movement by placing it into proper context. Yes, there is a healthy and vigorous unrest across the globe but what to do about it? At some point, the spirit of protest from the 1960s began to seem like a relic. There was the yuppie backlash of the 1980s. And there was a strident cynicism from Generation X that found Baby Boomers, on the whole, to be self-indulgent navel gazers of the highest order, especially when it came to their politics and activism. They are a tough crowd, those Gen Xers but that harsh critical outlook led to a whole new Do-It-Yourself movement. And from that, arose another generation with strong opinions, Generation Y, or the the Millennials. With social media and gadgetry at their command, this new generation finds itself all the more connected while also all the more self-absorbed.

This bring us back to the recent past and the present. Are people most likely to steer their own lives within relative safety and comfort or do they take notice of the social unrest they see on the news from time to time? That is the question that the author of this book had to pose to herself while still in high school in the early 1980s. Stephanie McMillan picked up a book that would change her life. It was “Fate of the Earth,” by Jonathan Schell which lays out the prospect of nuclear war and how nations are willing to put the planet at risk for the sake of warmongering. This galvanized McMillan into a life of activism. Shortly after that book, she read the newspaper, the Revolutionary Worker. This planted the seed in her mind that the solution to social ills would ultimately come through revolution. Thirty years later, and with plenty of experience in what is possible through protest, McMillan was to finally see in her lifetime a people’s movement on a grand scale.

McMillan sets the stage for us by highlighting some of the key characteristics of 2011, the year that the Occupy movement took hold:

2011 is so recent that it may as well be today and at least the next few years ahead. It’s not a pretty picture, is it? Corporate greed goes unchecked, will continue to go unchecked, and people and the planet suffer for it. When McMillan goes into details about the rise of the Occupy movement, there is a palpable sense of urgency. We are drawn into her concern that the movement she had favored, “Stop the Machine,” was soon to be overshadowed by the rowdy new kid on the block, Occupy. It’s clear these are two very different approaches. Stop is highly organized and has a leadership structure. Occupy is founded on anarchism and relies upon collective decision-making. Will they be able to work together? Or will they work against each other? In a wonderful series of exchanges, McMillan draws for us how a people’s movement finds its way. Her illustrations are funny, irreverent, and quite honest. While she’s a participant in this story, she doesn’t shy away from depicting the inconsistencies, bickering, and mistakes that occur along the way.

McMillan’s main concern is on the eventual work ahead. Throughout this book, we are treated to a treasure trove of insights, facts, and ideas on some of the best options when attempting to do the most good with the energy of mounting social unrest. McMillan boils it down to an unquestionable need to rid ourselves of global capitalism. It is capitalism that is the problem. But just how do you rid yourself of capitalism? Aren’t we all, at heart, hapless consumers? As Pogo, the celebrated comic strip character once said, “We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.”

It is as if a goal is being proposed that is unattainable. Are we seeking to change the world or just a part of it? The answers are not all there but at least we’re asking questions. The very act of questioning is part of the answer! We are not mindless drones. It’s a fundamental impulse to resist oppression. This book proves to be an essential guide in this great new age of change.

“The Beginning of the American Fall” is published by Seven Stories Press. It is a 141-page trade, priced at $12.71 US. Visit our friends at Seven Stories Press here.

9/11 Review: BEST OF ENEMIES

As we mark another anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11, there is a new book out that helps to provide perspective on relations between the U.S. and the Middle East. It is a graphic novel that goes a long way in helping to explain how the pieces fit in the puzzle of geopolitics.

“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” The words to the United States Marine Corps hymn may sound obscure until you dig deeper. For our purposes, let’s consider the shores of Tripoli. This refers to the United States at war with the Barbary pirates. This is also the point of departure to an engaging and informative book on the relationship between America and the Middle East, the graphic novel, “Best of Enemies: A History of U.S. and Middle East Relations.” Take a look at the curious cover: FDR and the king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, perched amid a tangle of oil pipeline. The ironic and determined tone is set and maintained throughout by two masters: historian Jean-Pierre Filiu and cartoonist David B. Many readers will be surprised, even shocked, by what they find here.

But before our history lesson on the pirates, we are treated to the mystical tale of Gilgamesh and his war with the gods. This dovetails into a big leap forward of 4,600 years with a quote from Donald Rumsfeld, circa 2003, straight out of a fairy tale but sadly part of the war in Iraq: “During a war, the kind of ‘evidence’ people are looking for usually doesn’t exist.”

With that in mind, we proceed to the first fumbling steps into another eerily similar war. A newly formed United States of America must confront the terrorists of its day. This would lead to America’s first military encounter on Muslim soil. It would take the new country on a wild ride, from paying tribute to full-on military engagement. The die had been cast. Way before there were any neo-cons, the idea was already alive that the power that ruled in the Middle East, would rule the world. It was in 1902 that American officer Alfred Mahan, a theorist of the projection of power, coined the term, “Middle East” and fostered the mindset that would come back to haunt us all.

It would not be until World War II that the ties that bind would become so apparent: oil. It would be a match made in heaven, so to speak, when the leader of the free world, President Franklin Roosevelt, no stranger to riches and splendor, was able to win over the Saudi family and its oil drenched country. Unfortunately, the thirst for oil is insatiable and not even the Saudis could satisfy it alone.

One of the big hits at the San Diego Comic-Con this year was an interactive digital graphic novel based on Operation Ajax, the covert operations conducted by the U.S. and the U.K. to topple the leader of Iran in 1953, all for the sake of oil. While this is not top secret news today, it can still shock. In this book, the coup of Mohammed Mossadegh, the legitimate leader of Iran, simply to secure oil rights, is handled thoroughly as part of a bigger picture. The machinations of intalling a most unlikely leader, the Shah of Iran, are fascinating. Here is someone Peter Sellars would have had a field day with portraying all his cowardice and ineptitude. But even stranger is the fact that FDR’s cousin, Kermit Roosevelt, is Ajax’s Operations Chief, and proves to be a most diabolical villain. Peter Sellars could have handled him quite nicely too.

The approach of the book is refreshing in how the U.S. is placed among all the other players of geopolitics. There is no shining beacon on a hill, per se, and that goes for everyone. There aren’t any real heroes here, except for Gilgamesh and Mossadegh. David B.’s drawings flow with the narrative, literally bending and twisting as needed. This style owes something to 18th and 19th century cartoonists, with their ornate and fluid line and word balloons that floated along like clouds of custard. David B. takes that style and makes it his own giving characters bendy knees, necks and torsos along with all manner of uninhibited ways to fill the panels. It’s a wonderful mix of political cartoonist sensibilities and fine artist sensibilities.

“Best of Enemies” is a two-volume work so we have even more sensitive material up ahead. What we seem to always forget is that misguided policies have very real consequences. Countries can misguide themselves and they can then misguide the public. One bit of misinformation breeds another and so on. We hopefully still have a chance if we’re armed with the facts.

“Best of Enemies” is part of Abrams ComicArts, a Self Made Hero imprint. This 120-page hardcover is 24.95 U.S. Visit Abrams ComicArts.