Rating: Summary: graphic beauty Review: While Big Brother is in full effect,an ex-performance artist speaks out for the masses.Jennie 2.5 jacks in her pirate broadcasts with such slogans as "Your mind is a weapon. Use it!" Wood`s objective is to be more effective. Well done.
Rating: Summary: Public Enemy No. 1 Review: With a title taken from the a Public Enemy song, it shouldn't be too hard to guess that this is a book all about apathy, complacence, and fighting the powers that be. Another in a long line of dystopian graphic novels, Wood's is notable for both its impressive and innovative page layouts and its proactive message. In the near future, America has jettisoned many civil liberties in favor of the "Clean Act", which effectively places all media in government hands and enforces the notion of America as a Christian country. Enter Jennie 2.5, a revolutionary countercultural culture jammer who uses a network of supporters to beam antigovernment and anti-apathy messages over the TV. The recurrent message is "Your Mind Is A Weapon. Use It!", and to reinforce this, Wood has included little photocopiable flyers for readers to bomb the streets with. Another central message is that "the media" (all media, or just broadcast or mass media? it's not clear) is inherently corrupt and powerful. Corrupt because it always has an agenda of some sort, and powerful because modern society has wholly surrendered itself to its influences. Of course, you might as well say that all humanity is corrupt, because every living person has an agenda of some sort. And there's more than a little self-righteous elitism in the book's assumption that people are sheep and a revolutionary vanguard must lead the way to freedom. Still, the idea that people should think about where their information comes from, and who's behind it is always worth repeating. In any event, it is a wonderful piece of graphic art that can be enjoyed without reading a word.
Rating: Summary: Great design work draws you into CHANNEL ZERO Review: You don't really read Channel Zero -- you sort of immerse yourself in it and experience it. Brian Wood's book is about New York City in an America that has decided that freedom of speech just isn't worth it anymore -- a law called the Clean Act censors all news and all entertainment in order to preserve an image of America as a noble, Christian nation. Various forms of resistance have cropped up, and Channel Zero follows some of them, particularly the efforts of pirate broadcaster Jennie 2.5. If you're looking for a straightforward narrative, this is not the book for you. The book jumps around, and often there's only a tangential connection between the narration and the action being drawn on the page. Like I said, though, this is a book you experience -- thematically, it's all tied together. The action, drawn in stark black-and-white with heavy inks and think lines, amplifies the narration. Snippets of broadcasts -- both those from outside American borders and those that have been scrubbed by the Clean Act -- illustrate the depths to which America has sunk. And as the book draws to a close, Wood uses an interview with Jennie, and Jennie's reaction to her notoriety, to demonstrate how easy it is for a revolutionary message to be co-opted by the mainstream. The real genius of this book is in its design. The black-and-white art is blended with black-and-white photo (or at least photo-like) images of cameras, guns, subway signs, traffic signs, bank logos and other objects -- the realism of the images, blended with the more abstracted illustrations, actually creates a surrealism that draws you into the distorted environment Wood has created. (I doubt I'm reading too much into the physical similarity between the camera and the rifle that keep making appearances, but maybe I am.) Small slogans like "Progress backwards" and "Bomb the system" are buried throughout the book -- little snippets of anti-propaganda propaganda. There are pamphlets and ads that you're encouraged to photocopy and distribute, promoting Channel Zero and its fight-the-power message. It's the artistic/visual equivalent of the barrage of ideas Grant Morrison presents in The Invisibles, and it's just really cool.
|