I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal today about a comic called "Air". The first issue of "Air" came out August 2008 and it is a comic series by G. Willow Wilson which follows a flight attendant who meets a secret agent while caught in an in-air terrorist hijacking. "Air" is partly Wilson's way of dealing with her status as a white convert to Islam in the wake of 9/11. After having read the graphic novel "Exit Wounds" (which I pitched on Friday) and the other politically based comic I was given to read: "Palestine", I found this topic for a comic narrative particularly intriguing. Ms. Wilson is previously known for her comic "Cairo", a surrealistic jaunt through the city which has been her part-time home. She has also written many political and religious articles for New York Magazine. The writer draws parallels from her creative and non-fiction work saying that "I'd just like to complicate people's existing assumptions about religion and its role in politics. Not necessarily change, but complicate. That's really what art should do, I think--make suggestions, not absolutes. Dealing in absolutes is propaganda. You have to leave people with enough room to make their own legitimate judgments."
Wilson believes that the reality of the situation in the Middle East gets so filtered through its transmission by the media that it becomes biased and skewed and thus looks different to Americans than it does in real life. Thus her comic, much like "Exit Wounds" allows these highly publicized international crises to be experienced and processed from a human level, restoring compassion to the detached headline stories that dominate our daily news.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123810368876651867.html
1 comment:
Sounds like a sweet comic, and I'm interested in Exit Wounds as well. The comic I read, Preacher, deals heavily with religion as well (duh) but politics is lightly touched upon in comparison.
I agree with Wilson says about art and suggestiveness, as opposed to dealing in absolutes and operating didactically. Preacher is anything but subtle, but it doesn't necessarily mock religion; it just takes all the common themes in whole new direction which to me is fascinating and hilarious, but to many would be obscenely offensive.
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