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Now that we’ve reached the end of the Diego Garcia comic, it’ll be a few days before I post more finished comics up as I return to the drawing board and my thumbnails for some other projects – one involving Harvey Pekar. If you’re hungry for more comics, then head to the COMIX page, where you’ll a selection to choose from, including one on the Prop 8 protests in California last year – timely, given what’s just happened in Maine. If that’s still not enough, then stop by the store, order some hard copies, and I’ll ship them to wherever you are in the world.
A date in your diaires: I’ll be on KALW local public radio next Weds, Nov 11, talking about comics journalism and developments in Honduras. I’ll post a link to the show when it’s up.
Speaking of which, after cautious celebrations of an agreement in Honduras, people are beginning to smell a rat at the small print hidden in the US-brokered deal, which sees the US recognizing the upcoming elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. The staunchly republican Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) states: ” I take our administration at their word that they will now side with the Honduran people and end their focus on the disgraced Zelaya”. So much for Zelaya’s proposed non-binding consultation that got him into all this trouble in the first place then. Read the full statement here. This from the man who today also campaigned to keep Guantanamo in use for another year, where the prisoners are “by all accounts …being treated better than any prisoner in American jails”.
At last the US has successfully brokered a deal between Zelaya and Micheletti. Hopefully this will also result in an investigation of the de facto regime’s litany of human rights abuses over the past four months, which are still continuing on the streets of Tegucigalpa. Articles about police ‘meowing’ and firing sonic blasts of pig noises at the Brazilian embassy in total impunity to keep the Zelaya party deprived of sleep sound both surreal and horrendous: here’s a great article by Joe Shansky at Pulsemedia.org on the worrying use of psychological weapons by police, both in the US and abroad.
Today’s comic is the first page of a new piece based on Diego Garcia, which many are labelling ‘the new Guantanamo’ for its role as one of the prime US Military bases for Iraq/Afghanistan, not to mention in interrogating ‘enemy combattants’. I’d entered it in the Observer Graphic Short Story Competition 2009, but perhaps as Joe Sacco was mysteriously taken off the judging panel in their final press release announcing the winners, it may have led to a bigger step away from any non-fictional entries. Who knows.
Although it’s been in the papers as a popular transit point for illegal rendition flights run by the CIA and MI6, my piece concentrates on the backstory to the island, more specifically how the UK and US governments conspired to illegally evict the island’s inhabitants from their home in the 1960s. Two invaluable sources were David Vine’s Island of Shame and John Pilger’s Stealing A Nation, which I thoroughly recommend. As always, the whole comic is posted on the COMIX page, so please forward the link around to raise awareness for the Chagossians’ campaign to return to their homeland.
Here’s the last of the Honduran coup pages: the follow-up is on the drawing board, and the spanish version is now being revamped thanks to some helpful translation tips from Nicolas Ariztia. We may have a bead on a Mexican paper interested in posting it, so keep coming back for updates. Also I’ll be posting my latest piece (and first forray into watercolour) either tomorrow or over the weekend, which involves the British Indian Ocean Territory and the new guantanamo. Plus checkout my flickr page and add me as a contact in the links to the right for more sketches, studies and doodles. The more activist art we can get onto Flickr the better.
Shouts out to the brazilian visitors to the site: Jefferson, Alexandre Lucas from the Faz Caber design/arts blog and Douglas Duarte from the O livreiro blog.
Por fin – the spanish version of the Honduran Coup comic is now available on the COMIX page, and fingers crossed we’re one step closer to finding a home for it at an online Central American paper. Just been to an interesting talk about community building in Columbia as a way of tackling violence too, which may well trigger a Plan Columbia comic spotlight in the not too distant future. Thanks again for the continued interest in the comic – it’s now stocked at Columbia University (NYC)’s Latin American library and will be making its way to the eery-sounding Vault of Midnight comic store in Ann Arbor, MI.
Only a few more pages to go of the Honduran graphic history now. Plus I’ve just added a new comic to the COMIX section featuring a bay area activist group that goes by the name of ‘The Raging Grannies‘. The comic covers their guerrilla campaigning against Prop 8 almost a year ago though more recently they’ve re-invented themselves as ‘the billionaires for wealthcare’ – a group of pro-private health insurance lobbyists. We’ve now thumbnailed the first two pages of the Honduran follow-up, so keep checking back for details on when the finished artwork will be posted.
Check out the latest coverage of our graphic history of Honduras now featured at Operamundi.net, an online magazine from Brazil. We’re now working on a follow-up to our Honduran comic as well as laying out the spanish version, plus Nikil and I are being interviewed on cross currents radio next week, which I’ll post a link to when it’s up. Remember to check out the COMIX page if this is your first visit to the site and continue to post your comments. For links to the original guardian, alternet and Boing boing posts, click on the previous posts to the right. In solidarity, Dan.
Now the Guardian newspaper has picked up the Honduran comic, and given it a positive review to boot:
“A journalistic take on the Honduran crisis whose attention to context puts conventional media coverage to shame. By flipping the pages of history this graphic novel reminds us why the White House is dragging its heels.”
Meanwhile I’m working on a spanish translation of the comic whilst writing the blurb about my upcoming graphic novel, The Hard Hat Riots for Insomnia Publications. I’m also updating the COMIX section of the site, so check it out via the tabs at the top of this page to read the back catalogue of my work.
The piece is indebted to John Perry’s summation of the crisis in the August 6, 2009 issue of London Review of Books. Perry does a great job rooting the crisis in the continuing relationship between the United States and Honduras.
Maria Lohman of Somos Sur’s slideshow “Honduras: mas alla del golpe”
Honduras Coup 2009
Broadcasts from Democracy Now!
We’d also like to recognize the following sources for picture reference:
Susan Meiselas
Democracynow.org
BBC News
Thanks to all of you who’ve posted comments, tweets, or links to my graphic history of the Honduran coup (the above image is p2 of 7), the rest of which is posted here at Alternet. It was picked up by Boing Boing here and is also over at www.presente.org and The Daily Kos so check out the links and please boost the story up the ranking at Daily Kos so more people see it. It’s great to see it stimulating debate about the situation in Tegucigalpa, and we’re working on getting the sources up on at Alternet. If they’re not posted by tomorrow I’ll stick them up here.
For those of you new to the site, check out the COMIX page for an archive of my other journalistic work. And thanks to those of you who stopped by the Center for Cartoon Studies table at San Francisco’s Alternative Press Expo, where me and my mate Sam Carbaugh were hawking our wares. If you missed the chance to get your hands on copies of our comix, check out the STORE section above or visit Sam’s site here.
Here’s the first page of a graphic history of the Honduran Coup that’s been published online at Alternet – click here to read the whole story or on the thumbnails below.
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