Courtesy
In some quarters it is suspected that if George W. Bush loses the upcoming election, the entire American book publishing industry will collapse for lack of anything to write about. I’m not one to speculate about such things, but I do hope that David Rees manages to keep up to good work. After reading his latest collection of bitterly funny comic strips, “Get Your War On II,” I’m betting that he’s going to be around for awhile.
A bit of background: Rees began posting a red inked, clip-art based comic strip called “Get Your War On” less than a month after 9/11. Not so much a comic strip as an illustrated rant, “GYWO” took on modern
American politics from the point of view of a righteously outraged citizen speaking through the staccato images of middle-management cubicle jockeys. The strip isn’t simple partisan ideological exercise, but a wide range assault on loose corporate morals, screwed-up government policy and manipulative media barrages. Rees isn’t so much anti-Bush or anti-conservative as he is anti-stupidity. Such a big target requires a strategic assault, and that is exactly what this new collection of “GYWO” strips provides.
The strip has a fixed set of images with very little in the way of variation between the frames. Most of the images are of suited office workers speaking to each other over the phone, discussing the news of the day. The “characters” in the strip have little in the way of personality and no events outside of political discussion and commentary ever take place. Through this deceptively simple framework comes the voice of a man filled to the brim with indignation over the stupidity of the world around him. The characters are like the unleashed conscious of an average American: a wreathing, dispossessed id which has somehow gotten hold of a Web-based comic strip.
The exchanges cover whatever has been buried in the daily news during any particular nanosecond of our culture, with post-9/11 politics the most common topic. The characters rant over a wide range of viewpoints and cover the different emotional
reactions felt by average Americans, from disgust to the need for revenge to simple befuddlement over what has happened in the past few years, all of it sprinkled with casual doses of profanity. “I still can’t believe they named the thing the fuckin’ USA Patriot Act. Grown-ups did that,” goes one exchange. “You think once they have Benjamin Franklin’s body spinning in his grave fast enough, they’ll be able to power an internal combustion engine with it?”
One thing that shines through all the vitriol is that Rees, unlike many who criticize the Bush administration, actually seems to be paying attention to what is going on in the world. He is aware to an almost painful extent, and he takes every stupid, Hollywood-bravado-fed cliché as a personal insult to his intelligence. Combined with a dead-on moral compass, it makes for a pretty bracing read.
Rees boils down the arguments to simple statements of moral principal: War is bad, people are dying because of the decisions our government is making, people are profiting off of the suffering of others and the current administration does not represent the values we apparently are supposed to have as Americans. Rees doesn’t contain his attack simply to his own country and countrymen, but to other as well, with Islamic fundamentalists and both sides of the Israeli-Palestine conflict his favorite targets.
Ultimately, Rees’s goal is the mockery of stupidity, and “Get Your War On II” is the perfect catharsis for those who feel, as many of Rees’s characters do, as if they are the only adults in a world full of whiny, spoiled children.
