3 out of 5

If you’re like me (HA I know, impossible to imagine a similar cultivation of stench, social discomfort, inadequate sexual abilities and an impressive knowledge of the history of cutlery under one house of skin, let alone two, but let’s just go with the flow here), you’re somewhat dismissive of the Occupy movement as your right as a Modern Ignorant Unaffected I’ve-Got-Comics-To-Read Person (M.I.U.I-G-C-t-R P.), with the fleeting understanding yadda yadda that this affects us but whatever, shit’s affected everything forever and we’ve still managed to survive in some fashion, so the MIUI-G-C-t-R P class must be as important as the Occupy class…

In a bit more focused of a statement, any ‘movement’ loses traction with me; extreme opinions are extreme opinions, regardless of the side, and while a party or concept might spring from ideals with which I agree, as soon as a tag is tossed on it and you start waving signs about, the momentum gets questionable and the purpose muddled.  Accepting that such pieces of our history are necessary for the world to progress… as are the antagonist forces.  Whatever whatever.  Not the point.  The point is that I see a comic related to the Occupy movement via the seemingly way lefty political ‘Blackmask’ publisher, with a ‘All Profits Will Be Donated…’ blah tagline, and I don’t pick it up.  Or, fuck you, I see Alan Moore’s name on there and then I DO pick it up… but it’s a prose piece, so maybe I put it back down ’cause words ya’ll.

I don’t know if this series is continuing beyond the 3 issues, but Moore’s piece concludes in the third issue, and it’s why I ended up coming back to and purchasing the books… so it’s my focus here.  They are worth the cover price alone.  The rest of the material?  Not at all.  There are a couple of pieces that are unique, finding an interesting angle from which to joke about or study the elements that Occupy rallies around, but I’m seriously thinking maybe one comic from issue 1 – J. M. DeMatteis’ outsider’s perspective of Occupy – and a gag strip from issue 3 by Salgood Sam – but that can’t be enough to justify the comic content for a positive review.  What these strips – and Moore’s essay – do is allow the reader to form an opinion.  What doesn’t interest me about most politically-fueled bullshit is that it just amounts to fluff.  If you’re buying this simply to monetarily support the movement, fine, but let’s say you were buying it because you were curious what Occupy was about… well, these comics do nothing except for assume that you’re on their side and fuck the man.  I understand that the claim isn’t to educate, per se, I just can’t get on board with the masturbatory aspect of books of this nature.  Support your cause, and here’s some text telling you how fucking awesome and smart you are because of it.  Guh.  And then bag and board it and show it off on your coffee table as proof of your beanie bag political dick weed smoke I lost my house and the cops are fucked up

…le sigh.  Digressing, digressing.  SO: Based on comics alone – assuming you’re buying this to read it – pretty pointless.  These are mostly indie creators, and though some are established and deliver some interesting or well-crafted pin-ups or pieces, some are pretty fringe, with the amateurish style – lettering, framing, the whole nine – to go along with it.  And so you have to fall back on the writing or theme, which doesn’t fulfill anything except for the (what I consider) crap I’m complaining about above.  Back to Moore.

I’m not going to ride the dude’s pooter to heaven or hell – he’s a human being, and an opinionated one, and sometimes more wordy than what I would consider necessary.  I think he tunes his 6 part comic history hear to be a bit more vociferously anti-capitalist and anti-Marvel/D.C. than maybe a casual telling would have caused, and maybe that’s him writing for his supposed audience or maybe it’s a result of his retreat to the indies in the comic world… or maybe both, whatever.  So I passed by this initially assuming it would be rather one-sided, but then I came back and gave a few passages a chance… and simply the scope of history Moore covers – and from a slightly different perspective than most comic histories – is ridiculously grabbing.  Grant Morrison’s ‘Supergods’ did an amazingly comprehensive world history skewed toward comics, sci-fi, and, typically, himself.  It was fascinating and notably Grant.  What’s madly impressive about Alan’s compressed coverage here is how he doesn‘t mention himself, even though he’s a big part of several pieces to which he speaks – creator woes, movie-adaptation woes – and he wouldn’t have been out of line in including his experiences.  Of course, you can read his frustrations between some lines, but much less so than I would’ve expected.  While the overall direction of the essay (two parts per issue, six parts total) continues to point out how repression of creativity due to, generally, financial greediness has stifled growth in the industry, he manages to spin the negativity into a positive open-ended story, allowing, as mentioned, the reader to form their own take.

It is a bit verbose at points – typical of the dude’s prose – and while he mostly works chronologically from then to now, at points he jumps back and forth in time to make a comparison or point and I find it causes the flow of the essay to stutter.  But again, I must underline – this is an intensely fascinating history of the medium, told with bias, but with admitted-to bias, and with enough facts (seemingly) of both sides to not feel like you’re just getting the ‘occupy’ picture of things.  For anyone who can tolerate the dry style and is interested in the topic, this is a must read.  Balancing it out with all the filler of the comics, it comes out to three stars.  But I’ll give some extra props to Blackmask for the design of the text pages – I wouldn’t have thought of white on brown, but the font chosen and page spacing all read easily and look pleasing to the eyes, even though it’s a lot of text.