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For those of you who aren’t familiar with the back story to the coup in Honduras that happened a year ago today, here’s a short and sweet video synopsis for you. The music is “Innocence” by “Working for a Nuclear Free City” off their “Businessmen and Ghosts” album.
Please digg/tweet/FB/fwd the link on and here’s to the ongoing struggle for justice that rages on in the face of continued repression.
Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the day with visiting graphic novelist Nick Abadzis, creator of the Eisner award-winning Laika. He visited the Stanford Graphic Novel class on Weds, offering some great advice on our atomic bomb story and how to get your work seen by publishers. Later that night he then gave a fascinating talk on his research process and the steps he took from the original idea behind Laika all the way through to finished artwork – including a visit to Moscow to get a feel for his backdrop. Yesterday he, Adam Johnson and I went down to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where Nick offered similar wisdom to the students there, as well as signing the odd dozen copies, each with a meticulously crafted (not to mention lightning fast) dedicated illustration. Here’s the man at work – note the blurred brushpen. A true cartooning gent and top dog (groan). Thanks Nick!
And now, the chance for you to get involved in the creative process of Honduran Coup comic. Below are 4 potential designs for the cover. Have a look at the four different options below and then register your vote for the favourite one using the poll I’ve created here. I’ll announce the results next week. This is a first-time experiment for me, so depending on how many votes come in I’ll expand more interactivity into this site in the coming months. Anyway, back to the voting options:
Number 1 Number 2
Number 3 Number 4
I’m leaning towards number 1 at the moment, which features Zelaya (Z), Micheletti (M), Clinton (C), Romero (R), riot police and Zelaya supporters in a line, outside the Brazilian Embassy and United Fruit factory (for its historical connection to US interests in Central America). Cover 2 features a line of said riot police, no.3 focuses on the reflection of supporters in the protective visor of a riot police officer (my second choice) and no.4 is more of a boxing showdown-style setup with Zelaya facing off with Micheletti, leaving the rest of the ensemble cast in the background.
Above is the last tier of the Honduran comic. Now that the fake election was pushed through and trumpeted by the media, let’s not let the spotlight drift away from the area – check out the video below for some excellent reporting from behind the scenes of the voting process:
Also, here’s a comic from last year exposing the dangers, greed and environmental destruction inherent to Mountain Top Removal – and good luck to those who are protesting in Copenhagen this week.
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A request to new visitors to the site: (welcome!) on the right hand toolbar is a chipin widget that I’m using to get pre-orders for a hard copy, full-colour 32p comic about US intervention in central america – featuring both parts of the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History as published in Alternet and the Huffington Post. Read more about it on the chipin page I’ve created here.
For $5 (plus $2 shipping in the US and $4 overseas) you’ll get a copy of the comic as well as your name printed in the back, along with all the other donors to the project. We’re already well on the way (see the total) and payment is via paypal so totally safe. Be part of a group project to help raise awareness and produce an educational tool that will have a lasting impact. And please use the buttons below to share this link around – facebook, twitter, digg – any help is appreciated.
A request to new visitors to the site: (welcome!) on the right hand toolbar is a chipin widget that I’m using to get pre-orders for a hard copy, full-colour 32p comic about US intervention in central america – featuring both parts of the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History as published in Alternet and the Huffington Post. Read more about it on the chipin page I’ve created here.
For $5 (plus $2 shipping in the US and $4 overseas) you’ll get a copy of the comic as well as your name printed in the back, along with all the other donors to the project. We’re already well on the way (see the total) and payment is via paypal so totally safe. Be part of a group project to help raise awareness and produce an educational tool that will have a lasting impact.
With two days to go before the elections in Honduras, now is as good time as any to clue yourself up on the situation on the ground via the following blogs: www.quotha.net, Honduras Coup 2009 (with a must-read introduction outlining why it would have been impossible for Zelaya to be extending his term, as his detractors keep repeating), and Honduras Resists! – you’ll recognize their banner image from the panel in today’s extract. As ever, if you want a hard copy of the Honduran comic to happen, please pre-order here or the chipin widget to the right and be part of a grassroots effort to raise awareness about US foreign policy – all for $5.
Also, check out ExpressBuzz.com (a South Indian online magazine)’s article on my Diego Garcia and Honduras comic here. According to reporter Amish Mulmi, “what Archer has done is to recreate history in a new medium, an alternate history that delves into the wrongs that superpowers may have committed and the consequences of those errors in today’s world.”
At last, here’s the promised follow-up I’ve been working on, in a slightly different format from usual. From now on I’ll post comix in a tier by tier format (1-3 panels at a time) as opposed to whole pages. This piece is also the first time I’ve used first hand reporting from a journalist in Tegucigalpa, so thanks to Joe Shansky of Pulsemedia.org, who is the narrator in the panel above, and whose article, ‘Smashing the Silence: Community Defiance in Honduras’ I turned into comics for the first part of this piece.
In case you missed it, here’s the link to a recent radio interview I did on the Honduran coup comic that aired on KALW news recently. In other news, my Diego Garcia comic is going up online at Commondreams.org soon, and will be appearing in the forthcoming anthology ‘Salon Des Refusés’. More details when I have them.
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 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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