I spent Christmas with my girlfriend’s family, who very thoughtfully got me a couple of books, not knowing what an ungrateful wretch I really am. I already have (and still haven’t read) the Schulz bio. But I hadn’t even heard of Shooting War, a newish graphic novel by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman initially serialized online. Shooting War is the story of Jimmy Burns, a video blogger in 2010 who finds himself in even-worse-Iraq and, naturally, embedded in a fanatical military unit, kidnapped by a terrorist, and rebelling against the news establishment.

Let me digress for a minute. There are a few tendencies in contemporary culture that seem somewhat deadly:

1) A nerd-driven flippancy that signals: “I know more than you do, and I’m right all the time” (see: most blog-driven magazines).
2) The replacement of actual character-driven dialogue with TV or noir-shorthand. (see: any “adult” comic published by DC or Marvel in the last few years).
3) The inevitable “wacky” appearance by a previously “respectable” celebrity figure, in order to set it all in “perspective” (see: Bill Murray lately).
4) The substitution of photoshop technique for compelling images.
(see: most contemporary graphics).

Shooting War revels in all four of the above tendencies, in the process making the following points:

1) War is dumb
2) The news media is biased
3) Sometimes people need to grow up
4) Corporations are taking over America
5) There are fanatical Christians just like there are fanatical Muslims
6) Some old news guys still have integrity, and we can learn from them!

I suppose that it’s enough for a lot of books make the above points and walk away. What bothered me about Shooting War was, of course, that these points are boring and have been said a billion times on comedy shows, in newspapers, magazines, Doonesbury, etc etc. There’s not a single new idea in the book. It’s all recycled, media-driven stuff. And neither is there an original character. Jimmy is the (now) classic angry nerd typified in current culture–the glib, smart, and resourceful boy-man who learns some important lessons and gains maturity over the course of the narrative. And all of this is in the guise of a “revolutionary” narrative. The worst offense committed is throwing Dan Rather into the mix as a newly bad-ass father figure to Jimmy — Bill Murray in a Wes Anderson movie, or John Wayne in a Preacher comic. It’s all so damn easy. The art by Dan Goldman is equally tough to stomach: an undigested photoshop stew with no rhyme or reason to it. Goldman poses inexpressive figures littered with a ton of marks I suppose could be considered rendering against the most basic photoshop filter backgrounds. Anatomy is out the window, and for a supposedly character driven, issue-focused book, there’s not a single telling facial expression or body movement in the book. It’s all just poses. You can cover up a lot with a wacom tablet and CS3, but Goldman’s flimsy grasp on the most basic drawing and storytelling skills is pretty glaring. All the blur effects and shadows in the world can’t cover that up.

All of this is so much the worse because, if you’re going to do a fiction comic about a new media maverick in a warzone, you have to measure up to Brian Wood’s DMZ at the very least. That comic, while still possessing some of the faux-cool mannerisms of Shooting War, is at least smartly satirical and possessed of multi-dimensional characters. Shooting War is a slick, packaged product. It rails against mass media, while presenting something as homogenized and unthinking as the very thing is criticizes. It’s rebellion in a package — a kind of grotesque reflection of what passes for satire these days. Things like Shooting War are the inevitable byproduct of an increased interest in graphic novels (read: glut), but then again, the culture in general is full of them. It’s fake smart, fake rebellion. Seek out something real, something with meaning, instead.

Labels: Brian Wood, Dan Goldman, Lappé, Photoshop, webcomics