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For more information about this story, or to read from the beginning, visit the Hardhats page. New visitors to the site, become an Archcomix fan here, or order your hard copy of the Honduran coup comic using the button the sidebar. News below.
At last, the comics are now back from the printers and I’m glad to say they look great. They are currently being stuffed into envelopes and will be with those of you who ordered them next week. If you haven’t ordered one, then click on the button on the right-hand sidebar and do so immediately.
Now that the Honduran comic is at last completed, I’m re-focusing on my graphic novel, Hardhats, about the 1970 Hardhat riots and the parallels between the anti-war movements then and now. Click on the ‘Hardhats‘ tab at the top of the page for more info and to read an extract, which I’ll be adding more panels to over the next few months. You’ll also be able to check out all the research that’s going into the book and offer your comments and suggestions on what should or shouldn’t go in.
Big news this week in journalistic circles was the announcement that the Pulitzer prize for editorial cartooning has gone to an animator, the first time in history that the prize has gone to someone whose work only appears online. The judges went on to say “[Fiore’s] biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary. Let’s hope this leaves the door open for other like-minded visual distillers of complex issues – certainly comics journalist Joe Sacco winning the Ridenhour Prize for investigative reporting is a similar step in the right direction.
At last, a sign that innovation and creative use of multimedia in visual journalism is being rewarded -not to mention, taken seriously- by the industry. The winner, Mark Fiore, has loads of free animations available to view over at his website, so check them out. Question is, how different are Mark’s animations to single-panel/editorial gag cartoons? Is their purpose to inform or entertain? Certainly they’ve managed to stir up their fair share of controversy. With the advent of the ipad, you’d think this sort of content would be embraced with open arms by the tech companies, but news came this week that Apple have blocked Mark’s ipad app on the grounds that:
“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”
More on this story at the Columbia Journalism review. UPDATE: Looks like it won’t be long before Apple let Fiore’s app in after all, even though it took Steve Jobs himself to intervene.
The Danish paper Dagbladet Arbejderen (Daily Worker) is running a feature on the last three pages of my Honduran comic today, click here for this just-about-intelligible-enough translation courtesy of Google translate.
Roy Bourgeois, SOAW founder, at the NW Latin American Solidarity Conference on April 9
The Honduran comic made its printed debut at the NW Latin American Conference on Friday, where it was excitedly picked up by NGO leaders and activists from around the US, as well as by Archcomix hero Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch (see left). If you haven’t seen it already, check out the online documentary Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins here. Thanks to Bruce Wilkinson for his support in organizing the event and getting me involved. A fundraiser in Washington DC to get more comics out to Honduras is also in the pipeline. I’ll keep you posted.
Now that I’m deep into the research stage of my upcoming comic on the Israeli lobby, I’ve been mulling over the creation of a visual database that would contextualize a number of seemingly disparate individuals (all of them influential and wealthy) within the various power-broking industries they belong to. A sort of yellow pages of power that would let readers see the connections between lobbying groups, political parties and multinationals on a personal level. Along the lines of transparency advocacy sites such as Open Secrets and Transparency International, but functioning at the level of the individual. With a sprinkling of interactivity thrown in for good measure. I’m delighted to say that the folks over at Muckety have beaten me to it – go there now (well, after you’ve read this, at least), enter a name into their search bar, and you’re instantly able to interactively explore their business, political and financial connections. Granted, it’s not an exhaustive directory, but it’s a fantastic tool for getting a sense of affiliations and influence.
Staying with that same goal of making websites easier to navigate and peruse information, you’ll notice I’ve re-organized this site’s pages to categorise the ever-expanding directory of comics into relevant topics, as well as added some new pages from recent projects. One of which is my recent collaboration with underground comics legend Harvey Pekar on a 55-page graphic history of Yiddish literature and culture. More about that on the Social Histories page.
For those of you in the Seattle, Washington area tomorrow, be sure to check out the NW Latin American Solidarity Organization conference, where the first copies of the Honduran Comic will be making their technicolour debuts. The rest of you will be pleased to know that copies have left the printers so should be with you in roughly two weeks. Another first is in order on Tuesday when the comic will appear both in print and online for Denmark’s The Daily Worker. Staying on the translated tip, more pages of the japanese translation can now be found at the bottom of the Honduras page.
Above is an extract from the final part of the Honduran comic to be translated, providing some historical context to the school of the americas. The observant amongst you will notice the search bar at the top of the window – stick “school of the americas” in there and it’ll bring up all related posts. Many thanks to Apture for such an awesome plugin.
As for news, scroll down to get your fill of this week’s announcements.
I’ve finally come good on my promise to translate the rest of the Honduran coup comic into spanish, which the polyglots amongst you can read here. Feel free to send me any corrections, suggestions or translation errors that may have slipped past my iron-clad grammatical grasp. I’ve also added a Honduran comic thread to the discussion forum on the Archcomix page, so click here and get posting on it. The other big news is that Ryuhei Okada of the Caracas Cafe blog has offered to translate the Honduran coup comic and Right to Return into japanese, so big thanks to him.
Lately I’ve been looking into how animators around the world have been combining narratives with a journalistic message to give a different perspective on news issues and show us what life is like in typically inaccessible parts of the world. One striking example is Fatenah (left) from Palestine, telling the story of a young girl of the same name who’s grown up in the Gaza strip.
Speaking of bringing stories to life, I also recently came across Google’s living stories, part of an online experiment that houses all the contextual information to a specific news story in the same template, similar to a google wave document in a lot of ways. Granted, it still suffers from the same scroll down beyond the break ad infinitum of standard online news sources, but it’s certainly a start. Let me know what you think in the comments section. More cartoons and sequential journalism later on tomorrow.
UPDATE: Scroll down if you haven’t read today’s post for the backstory on Oscar Romero’s assassination, 30 years ago today. For those of you that have, check out this video from the Daily Show’s recent segment on the Texas board of education members who are essentially in charge of dictating the national curriculum, given that their state orders the most copies of school textbooks. The worrying part involving Oscar Romero begins at 2:50, and shows Patrica Hardy from the Texas State Board of Education arguing that Romero should be omitted from text books…because no one knows who he is.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the murder of Salvadorean Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by paramilitary troops at the altar as he celebrated mass, and commemorated in the above snippet from my comic that featured in the latest issue of Presente! To read the comic, click back to the Archcomix archive here, or order your copy of the Honduran Coup: A graphic history using the button on the right sidebar. Here’s the report from the BBC.
Many have linked Romero’s murder to the work of Roberto D’Aubuisson, far-rightist national guardsman who is alleged to have led deathsquads during El Salvador’s bloody civil war, apparently earning him the nickname ‘blowtorch bob’. Here’s his obituary from the NYTimes, which quotes former Salvadorean President Cristiani as labelling D’Aubuisson, “a fighter to open political spaces and look for a democratic path in the country”. Is ‘opening political spaces’ a diplomatic term for “leading a deathsquad”? Use your readerly judgement. Either way, it’s better than “a pathological killer”, which was US Ambassador Robert E. White’s epithet for him. One thing that is undeniable is D’Aubuisson’s links to the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC), placing him in the company of a veritable who’s-who of Latin American military top brass who had a similarly proactive attitude towards “opening political spaces”. Visit the School of the Americas Watch to find out more and get involved.
Below is footage from multiple witnesses of the shooting, eerily chronicling the turn of events from both the shooters’ and the congregation’s perspectives. Thanks to Tim’s ElSalvador Blog for the video.
Voila, the cover to the Honduran Coup comic, destined for the printers later this month. News, non-lethal weapons and Hillary Clinton in Honduras below.
A recent communique from the UK Chagos Support Associations reveals that next week an Early Day Motion (EDM) is being proposed in Parliament to discuss the possibility of a final settlement for the displaced Chagossians whose stories I tell in my 4-page comic, ‘The Right to Return’. You can see a sample page above, and the whole comic is at the bottom of this post.
For even more background info, read my original post on the comic here or visit the UK Chagos Support Association’s website. If that’s still not enough, I highly recommend David Vine’s ‘Island of Shame’ or John Pilger’s film, ‘Stealing a Nation’, below:
So here’s where you Britishers come in: you need to contact your MP and ask them to sign EDM number 960 Chagos Islands as soon as possible. Here’s the link. Don’t know who your MP is or how to contact them? Then turn to the ever-excellent They Work for You site, type in your postcode and hey presto – instant constituent power is yours.
The gist of the EDM proposes:
That this House believes that the interests of the Chagossian people and of Mauritius must be fully protected in the proposed Marine Protected Area; urges the Government to withdraw its case from the European Court of Human Rights and to settle out of court, as already suggested by the Court; and requests the Prime Minister to engage with Mauritius and the Chagossians, before the general election, in order to initiate discussion on an overall settlement of the issues, including timetable for eventual transfer of sovereignty of the Outer Islands to Mauritius and provision for a limited settlement on the Outer Islands.
As ever, please forward, RT and share the links in this post around – this is the last hope of the displaced Chagossians after a protracted legal struggle that has lasted decades.
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