Saturday, July 15, 2006

Shooting War: a free graphic novel in weekly instalments

Chapter 1: “Boom”


Hokay. Don't miss this one. Click now and be prepared to spend a fair amount of time rivetted to your screen. Cos this is THE new graphic novel.

Several great things about it.

(1) It's set in 2011, in a 'future' VERY similar to the one George W. Bush seems intent on creating for us right now.

(2) There's a hardbitten realism to this that suggests that the writer and artist have done a ton of research into what's ACTUALLY going on in the Middle East today.

(3) The world they posit is technologically probable. The hero of the piece is a video blogger who happens to be in the right place at the right time. He becomes a media hit when he accidentally videos a bombing on his cellphone. This is really where we're headed.

(4) The artwork is nothing short of stupendous. They're marrying hyper-saturated photography with dirty, super-duper illustration. You're IN this world with these characters.

(5) Throw in the fact that it's being released chapter by chapter every week, with a possible love-story in-the-making, and that the whole thing is free... what more could ya ask for?

Stop reading my review. And go and treat yourself to a thought-provoking look at the politics of violence in Shooting War, written by Anthony Lappé and  illustrated by Dan Goldman.

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