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September 26, 2006

Shooting War

Here's a provocative new graphic narrative I just came across: Shooting War, by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman.

Set in a future in which John McCain is president and the war in Iraq continues to grind on, this one isn't for kids.

Online now is the first part of a longer book that will be published in hardcover next year. Somehow, I think that will have a very different feel than these parts do online.

I came across this in the October issue of Wired, and immediately thought it would be good for every class I teach. My freshperson seminar on digital narrative spent the day today discussing the material form of texts and the effects of the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web. My senior seminar has just finished a few weeks discussing Art Spiegelman's Holocaust narrative MAUS, and is now having great fun exploring the depths of Alison Bechdel's graphic auto/biography, Fun Home. And in the course I'll be teaching this spring, "Lives Online: Cybercultural Studies," the online presentation of Shooting War, as well as its free availability, as well as its central exploration of blogger culture and neuroses, make it triply ideal.

Is this a sign that I'm in a rut? And is that a bad thing?

As always, check it out.

(X-posted to Literature in a Wired World and The Illustrated Novel, though in a shorter form.)

Posted by reparent at September 26, 2006 7:02 PM