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You at the back! Close that book and pay attention. My latest comic on education reform in the US and beyond is out now: click here to read it.
Cartoon Movement, the internet’s #1 platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism (and sister site of VJ movement) , is publishing my latest piece on the Sept 2007 shootings that occurred in Nisoor Square, Baghdad – there’s a little taster about it on their blog here. The piece will go up next wednesday, June 15th. In the run up to next week I’ll post some previews of the panels and give more of a sense of how the piece works, and the importance (not to mention the untapped potential) of incorporating interactivity into comics journalism pieces.
For now, let me break down the above screenshot, which is the main viewing area for the piece (which, incidentally, loads in its own window due to sizing constraints). The viewing area is comprised of 3 main parts: the timeline (corresponding to the 15 minutes that the incident took place over), which can be advanced by clicking on the play button, or dragged to a specific point); the background, which is comprised of a satellite picture of Nisoor Square together with an additional layer of brightly coloured icons (corresponding to the various people and vehicles involved in the incident) that move along their respective paths as the incident unfolds; and, of course, the panels, which appear as the user hovers over the said icons, providing an eyewitness account of the event from that specific perspective (the majority of which are taken from direct testimonies).
Above is a continued sequence from Hardhats, my graphic novel in progress, set in May 1970 at the height of anti-Vietnam sentiment. Hit “previous” to read from the start of this little interlude. It being Martin Luther King day here in the US, celebrate it wherever you are in the world by listening to one of his speeches on Vietnam here: “the press generally won’t tell you these things, but God told me to tell you this morning…” RIP MLK.
