Futuristic Web Comic Echoes Reality

By ZP Heller, AlterNet. Posted June 16, 2006.

It's the year 2011. John McCain is our unpopular president, the war in Iraq rages on, gasoline is $10 a gallon, and Tom Cruise and Mary-Kate Olsen have just called it quits. When videoblogger Jimmy Burns captures on camera a suicide bomb blast that rocks a Brooklyn Starbucks (destroying his apartment above), he's immediately hired by maverick network Global News and packed off to Iraq.

That's the eerie world of "Shooting War," an arresting web comic from author Anthony Lappé and artist Dan Goldman. Only a half-dozen chapters of "Shooting War" have been published on SMITH magazine since May 15, yet this episodic series has already become a prescient commentary on the future of warring Iraqi factions, globalization and citizen journalism's struggle against mainstream media.

"The world of 'Shooting War' is half where I think things are headed and half satire," Lappé told me by phone. As executive editor of Guerrilla News Network, Lappé identifies with Jimmy Burns' dilemma in working for the ficticious Global News.

"Burns is a vulnerable hero with aspirations of fame and money, but his politics are grounded," Lappé explained. "So does he sell out to reach a wider audience?" According to Lappé, Global News is akin to Al-Jazeera (and for that matter, political blogs), in that it prides itself on being uncensored.

"Shooting War<"

"Shooting War" was born out of Lappé's own experiences in Iraq. In the fall of 2003, Lappé filmed "BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge," a documentary that recorded the onset of the Iraqi insurgency. "I was standing in the Sunni Triangle," Lappé said, "when it occurred to me that this war is so surreal because you have teens raised on Play Station 2 who know nothing of Iraqi culture, yet are trying to create an infrastructure and government." While Lappé initially conceived "Shooting War" as an animated film, he realized that developing it as an electronic graphic novel might be a better way to reach the younger generation.

Like Lappé, illustrator Dan Goldman recognizes his audience's proclivity for video games, and has even subtly acknowledged this penchant in the narrative. During a U.N. press briefing in Chapter 5, a bored NBC reporter is seen playing a PSP videogame fighting Iraqis. "We're trying to keep things very meta," Goldman says with a laugh, "though we want to keep the story line very realistic. When I'm drawing this, my satirical bones are definitely twitching."

              

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Zack Pelta-Heller is a graduate student at The NewSchool and a regular contributor to AlterNet.

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