Shooting War
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Product Description
The global war on terror is raging out of control. The president is popping Prozac. And the #1 selling videogame in 2011 America is the terrorist-simulator Infidel Massacre: Los Angeles. On the streets of gentrified Brooklyn, videoblogger Jimmy Burns' latest anti-corporate rant is cut short by a terrorist bombing of a Starbucks...but his live feed isn't. When his dramatic footage is uploaded by Global News ("Your home for 24-hour terror coverage") and rebroadcast across the planet, the obscure blogger is transformed into an overnight media sensation. The next thing he knows he's on a Black Hawk helicopter inbound for Baghdad, working for the same mainstream media monster he once loathed. Burns soon finds that everyone from his ratings-ravenous network overlords to Special Ops troops with messianic complexes to a charismatic band of tech-savvy jihadists all want to make him their pawn.
Shooting War is an irreverent and unflinching graphic novel satirizing network news, the Iraq War, and the burgeoning "citizen journalism" movement that Rolling Stone magazine calls "a scary-smart take on what the horrors of the future may hold."
"Fierce, shocking, over-the-top, and wickedly smart." -New York Magazine
"Ambitious...A determined citizen journalist (and overnight celebrity) infuriated by the mainstream media's indifference to the endless war, Burns aims to bring home the facts on the ground." -Paper
"This is a winner...the Apocalypse Now of the War on Terrorism, told in the form of a brilliantly rendered graphic novel." -Forbes.com
"A stunningly rendered graphic novel that manages to stick a red-hot skewer the war on terror, Islamic jihad, the mainstream media and the antiestablishment blogosphere in one fell swoop." -Newsweek.com
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
An uneven satire of the Iraq War
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Comment:
Shooting War is an interesting, horrifying and superbly flawed work that envisions the Iraq War in the near future.
The story sees smartass liberal blogger Jimmy Burns, an angry twenty-something who accidentally films a suicide bombing in New York, recruited by the exploitive, exhibitionist Global News and sent to document the Iraq War. It's now 2011, with McCain in the White House and Iraq even worse-off than it is now, and Jimmy soon finds himself embroiled in a battle between a group of chic Marxist jihadists and a US army group led by a brutal, possibly insane war hero. Oh, and Dan Rather is in there, too.
The art is a mix of stylized drawings and what appear to be real pictures, and sometimes can be quite striking. The group of US soldiers, and their leader, "Colonel Crash," are most noteworthy, and it does a good job of depicting the havoc and chaos of this brutal war. It's not my favorite art ever, and I'm not sure it would've worked in a different book, where the frenetic and sometimes sloppy-looking style didn't serve the story, but it suits Shooting War fine.
The book also does a good job of characterizing its major players. Jimmy Burns is appropriately conflicted, going from an overconfident yuppie to a despondent and hopelessly depressed kid realizing how far in over his head he is to something of wiser veteran journalist by the end. That last transformation comes a little abruptly, and his story arch is a fairly typical coming-of-age type story, but once again, it's done well-enough. If the piece has true villains, they'd be Colonel Crash, an evangelical extremist and a brutal war criminal, and the leader of the jihadist group Sword of Mohammed, who styles himself as a twenty-first century Che Guevera, beret and all. I was particularly pleased by the characterization of these two characters; both are shown to have admirable qualities (Che-clone has some good ideas about bringing Islam out of the dark ages and ending Western exploitation, while Crash has something of a sense of honor to him) to counter the monstrous crimes they commit. The book certainly doesn't allow the reader an easy judgment as to right and wrong in this case.
Ultimately, the portrayal of the brutal chaos of Iraq is the highest point of the book; whether or not it is a strictly realistic picture of Iraq in 2011, I cannot rightly say, but it does an excellent job of portraying a nation torn apart by war--and as we know, we won't have to wait till 2011 for that situation to be true in Iraq. Frankly, though I recognized many of the elements of the book to be satirical, I often couldn't laugh; the thing is just too dark, too horrific. And I can't imagine that's not the point--you should be horrified at what has been wrought in that country, what is happening there right now. Shooting War succeeds on the front of stirring rage in its reader at the suffering of all the innocent victims of this war.
The pointed portrayal of American mass media also hits home; here, the book is at its most satirical, with the bloodthirsty Global News but also with familiar companies like CNN being blasted for their raw exploitation and manipulation of their viewers. Dan Rather makes several appearances as a hero and mentor of sorts to Jimmy, being one of the few American journalists left in Baghdad, and provides most of the book's comic relief.
Where the book falters is, I think, in the details. The dialogue is often stiff and stilted; characters soapbox and make speeches a great deal, and many interactions are fairly awkward or heavy-handed. And though I generally agree with the book's politics, I hate how it crams them down your throat with a wooden stick. A bit more subtlety and a bit less preaching would've done the book a lot of good. The plot also tends to meander, taking lots of dead-end birdwalks before returning to the main story; this could've been an interesting approach to showing other aspects of Iraqi culture in the war, but they mostly just mess up the pacing. And the portrayal of the Iraqi communists, mentioned by another reviewer, is kind of ridiculous, the book's only truly absurd scene.
So that's Shooting War--dark, horrifying, bitingly sarcastic, uneven, and preachy. The book's flaws disappoint me--with tighter writing, it could easily have been a masterpiece. I still wholeheartedly recommend it; I think it's worth it to anyone to read.
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Summary:
Near-future Dystopia by way of System of a Down and Salon.com
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Comment:
Internet buzz darling Shooting War is an excellent comic book. With its slick cgi-real photo imagery meshes, deliberately provocative storyline, and adolescent upper-middle class anti-corporate rhetoric, it creates an appalling yet thrilling view of a possible near future Iraq. It paints a War on Terror two seconds from tomorrow, with the same quagmire and tragedy, except with different politicians to blame and worse atrocities to shock our senses. It's all very edgy, yet blogosphere chic, but ultimately, its message ends up being muddled and unconvincing.
Lappe's version of Iraq isn't much more believable than Alfonso Cuarón's U.K. in Children of Men. Don't get me wrong; I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Lappe's views, and I was listening to M.I.A. while reading this novel, so don't call me a FReeper. But he just lays on his political viewpoint so thickly it ends up sickening. Yes, horrible things are going on in Iraq. Yes, the occupation is not such a good thing for the country and her people. But I have to question the way Lappe chooses to express his beliefs. As much as I enjoy dystopias, did he have to milk the outrage of the anti-war movement? Iraq as it is now is bad enough. Why does he have to trivialize it by inventing his own atrocities? Depicting the sort of violence that occurs right now, that's not as bad (though still rather cheap). But that whole sequence in Baghdad at the end- does he really believe U.S. forces can be so cruel? That the Army would resort to such an indiscriminate measure? That all Iraqis are poor victims whose only source of suffering is the U.S.?
Not to mention the implausibility of the dystopia. If the occupation really went so badly that Arab League peacekeepers under the U.N. are allowed in, the Iraq War would cease to be the sole responsibility of a McCain administration. The U.S. admitting that we need help in Iraq would be a momentous change from current policy. It would no longer be the fault of the neocons, because there would be other people, other nations, presumably people with better ideas to help stabilize the situation. In any case, I find it odd that Lappe chose throw in that plot idea, because while world opinion would certainly continue to be angered towards America, in the U.S. it would cease to be a "let's withdraw" issue and more "let's solve this thing with the rest of the world's help." In other words, it would open the door to multilateralism, something completely different from the current Bush policy.
Oh, and Chavez cutting off oil to the West? And the "mullahs" of Iran as well? I guess they're both tired of running things and would like to retire at the hands of an angry mob of a counterrevolution.
Though maybe bits like that are meant to be satire. Because while there are some lighter, more absurdist Catch-22-esque moments, they're few and far between. Most of the humor of "Shooting War" is derived from the scads of references and in-jokes to the near future. Which I totally dig and eat up. (The real reason why the future is truly terrifying: Only 10 megs per upload on YouTube!) But most of the overall tone is awash in cynicism that Iraq is completely fubared, that there is no hope for it, or for the U.S., or something. Which raises the question just what Lappe's entire point is, besides revel in the fact that we screwed up.
"Shooting War" hides a smarter view. The villain's initial speech at the bunker where he dismisses Chomsky, Negri, and other would-be modern day Marxes, was rather novel for such a genre character. But it ends up muddled, and we never get a clear view of just what the ominous Sword is trying to do. Are they trying to build a Caliphate? Not only is such a notion about as realistic as trying to build a New Roman Empire by recruiting Jack Chick, the Westboro Baptist Church, and the Pope, the villain seems too modern looking for that. Are they new-pan-Arabists? Apparently not, since they are composed of Algerians to Iranians, which is also about as realistic as the previous idea.
There's probably a small mountain of other political inaccuracies, and that's not even counting the patronizing depiction of Iraqi culture. A holdout of Iraqi Communists teaching their children Mao's Three Phases of Guerrilla Warfare? Is Lappe trying to be cute, or does he honestly think that all Marxists are the same?
Ultimately, "Shooting War" is all about the shlock-shock value of its subject matter and slick presentation. It's the dailyKos version of your 1980's right-wing jingoist action flick. But instead of American triumphalism, you get some sort of polemic against the corporate media, condescension towards the Iraqi people, and a lot of guilt and shame. And instead of Chuck Norris, you get Jimmy Burns. It's definitely worth a read, but ultimately, not enough to take seriously.
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Summary:
Shooting War kicks butt!!!
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Comment:
This savvy look at the all-too-proximate future couldn't be smarter or more gripping. It holds up a mirror to our own times and beams back an absurd apocalypse. It's a beautiful hardcover coffee table accoutrement. The pictures are amazingly vibrant. A great conversation starter.
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Summary:
Innovative and edgy - makes a great xmas gift!
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Comment:
Shiny, pretty, without too many words, Shooting War takes a look at the war, at our media, at the corporate take over of our country without taking itself too seriously. Hiding behind animation, Shooting War is able to face, head on, the brutality of the war without any danger of becoming a sensationalistic blood fest.
Makes a great gift for any socially active person!
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Summary:
Sign of the Times
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Comment:
Lappe & Goldman's "Shooting War" is a fast-paced, gorgeously illustrated rollercoaster ride through a predicted future of the state of war in the Middle East. The hypothesis is that the conflict won't be over by 2011 (of course, it has been going on, "with or without" the USA for decades) and a video-blogger, Jimmy Burns, gets his big break with a very "lucky" live feed of the explosive destruction of a local Starbucks. We follow Burns, a limelight-chasing media newbie, in his quick rise to fame to the warzone in the Middle East itself. His experiences prove that life doesn't just exist through the lens, but that it's happening all around him and TO him, but he is there to do a job, hence the only way he is permitted to survive in such a volatile place is by way of his camera. Lappe's story gets a little confusing at times, but moves very quickly and is chock-full of warning. But it's Goldman's illustrations that are the star of the show, mixing real photography and digital drawings on two-page spreads that make one look away due to the occasional gore. It's a beautifully executed book and well worth the small price.
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