2 out of 5

Rushkoff – Whaaaaattt

You’d think I learned my lesson with ‘Testament,’ but I dig Rushkoff’s ideas in book form (…although I haven’t read a fiction book yet…) and his comic ideas sound pretty spot on, plus he works with quality artists (yes, fine, I fell for the Morrison support on the cover of Testament), so what goes wrong?  What happens to derail his ideas so much?

Well, maybe I need to read a fiction book of his, because it seems to be a complete ununderstanding of how to structure or resolve a story beyond setting up the idea and building some conflicts.  A.D.D. is pretty obviously titled but it doesn’t stop it from being a pretty spiffy cool cynical idea – some kind of alterna/future world where we have a group of kids who spend all day every day playing video games, training for competitions in V.R. environments that act as entertainment for the general public.  The kids talk in their own modern lingo and see everything in terms of gaming – a not so subtle spin on the texting / connected culture in which we’re currently existing.  The agency that makes tonsa bucks offa these kids performances (think of them as sports stars) promises that the best player will graduate to “next level,” which is kept as vague as it sounds, and comes with equally vague promises of riches and – since these kids are orphans – the chance to be reunited with their birth parents.

Now it’s possible I’m getting some of the story b.s. mixed up here because Rushkoff just keeps tossing it at you from the get-go, introducing these kids at a game signing, them talkin’ their gaming talk and walking about their insular gaming commune discussing strategies for the next competition…  It’s part of the appeal of this GN, cleanly depicted by Goran Sudžuka, as it was with Testament – a fast-paced proliferation of somewhat standard sci-fi concepts pushed to the limits of the current social realm.  Toss in a bit of Morrison-ism in the way we seem to be getting flashes of an alternate world outside of the current narrative – is that our lead character as an old man? – and we seem to be promised a twisty-turny study in modern day addled-teen connectivity.

But, yeah, it falls apart.  Sudžuka can’t even keep up with how fast it falls apart, the action sequences toward the end of the book a confusing mess of static characters posed awkwardly, trying to fit elements into a panel that just don’t work in a comic book, because they don’t feel fully fleshed out in Rushkoff’s head in time for them to get to the page.  He can explain all of these things on a high conceptual level – the way media affects us – but whereas Morrison excels at extrapolating his LSD life into some world-interconnected nonsense, and knows what he wants to see on the page to get that surrealism across, Rushkoff doesn’t seem to have the desire to push things beyond “well, here’s what I wanted to say, now I’m outta’ here,” leaving his current contributions to the comic world with plot lines that truly build into nothing, that are worth nothing, and that thus cannot resolve in any satisfying way.  Any twists you were expecting fizzle out into something pretty normal, ’cause he wasn’t trying to pull any punches at all.  He’s the nerd who’s telling you his “and then, and then, and then…” story but has no idea what really happens at the end except that everything either settles down or explodes.

Sound horrible?  Well, fuck, yeah, but there are so many cool concept presented up front – and that work for a good 2/3rds of the story – that, since it’s a pretty short GN, if you found it used I wouldn’t tell you not to read it.  Just try to dismiss any concept of story evolution and accept that you’re reading ideas by a media theorist – just ideas – that have been shoe-horned into a comic book.