Book Review: Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice by Eddie Ahn

 reviewed by Margaret C. Flinn

Eddie Ahn. Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice. Ten Speed Graphics, 2024. 208 pp. US$24.99 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781984862495; Ebook ISBN: 9781984862501. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729254/advocate-by-eddie-ahn/

 

The subtitle of Eddie Ahn’s Advocate, A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice kind of says it all. Graphic memoirs are numerous and it’s difficult to stand out. Ahn’s book is an engaging look at a particular intersection of identities and experiences: unique in as much as each individual is unique. The book gives insights into Ahn’s family’s trajectory from Korea to Texas (and return visits for various reasons), and Ahn’s own relocation to California, initially as an Americorps volunteer. The book flashes back and forward between different moment of Ahn’s family history, including a mélange of documents (details from diaries, maps, drawings of photographs) as is frequently seen in the graphic memoir. While the story focuses on Ahn’s own journey, it thus includes stories recounted to him by family members, or pieced together between family stories and material in his grandfather’s diary.

            If Ahn’s story stands out, it will probably be for its ordinary weirdness. He shares the quirks of his life, like playing poker and health issues in law school, and the financial struggles through his life that lead to unexpectedly amusing, if melancholy, details like calculating the cost of everything in its burrito math equivalent (a tank of gas equals four or five burritos)—the burrito being the expensive, filling, and nourishing meal of choice for Ahn, particularly through his early years in the Bay Area. Ahn is at once informative and banal, educating the reader through his own story about the vicissitudes of environmental and social justice, the constant challenges of immigration and racism in the U.S. and depicting a quiet passion and dogged labor that allow anyone to imagine that what Ahn has done is doable, although most of us never will. It also documents recent realities such as the way COVID-19 impacted community organizing and social justice work.

            The self-taught artist’s realist lines are clean and clear, with single color washes in a soft palette changing by page or panel and includes a brief annex regarding the making of the book and environmental justice work. In all, the book is readable and informative. Many readers will be able to relate to parts of Ahn’s story, and young readers may even be inspired by the non-glamorized yet dignified representation of doing meaningful work in today’s world.

Chatting with 1/6 comic book writer Alan Jenkins about insurrections and threats to democracy

 by Mike Rhode

On the weekend of Juneteenth, and Awesome Con, I had the opportunity to speak with Professor Alan Jenkins, co-writer of 1/6: A Graphic Novel, which was funded through Kickstarter, released digitally earlier this year, and now the first issue is now being distributed in print as a standard comic book. I think we had an excellent and eye-opening talk, and I’m very glad that we met when he was down for the Con.  Here’s some background from his press release:

Harvard Law professor Alan Jenkins, who is heading to D.C. this weekend for ComicCon to showcase his new book, 1/6: The Graphic Novel. This unique work delves into an alternate history, envisioning what would have happened if the January 6th Insurrection at the US Capitol Building had succeeded. It's one of the first pop culture vehicles to take on the insurrection, representing Alan's ongoing commitment to leveraging popular culture for social change. Comic books have a rich history in the fight for democracy and freedom from bigotry. The first issue of Captain America featured the superhero socking HItler in the jaw—nine months before the U.S. entered WWII. Drawing inspiration from this legacy, Alan, an avid comic book enthusiast and prolific writer on the intersection of pop culture and social change, joined forces with NY Times bestselling author Gan Golan to create a compelling graphic novel that tells the story of 1/6 in a compelling way. Their aim is to inspire everyday Americans to become engaged and demand a better future as our right to a free and fair election faces threats. This release follows the success of the team's previous superhero comic, Helvetika Bold, which galvanized a wide audience to take action for social justice. Alan is not only a Harvard Law professor but also a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter and a regular commentator on CBS and MSNBC. He teaches courses at Harvard Law on Race and the Law and Social Justice, and co-founded The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab.

Alan's previous interviews have been with with CNN, VICE, CNET, Washington Post,  and WNYC so we’re in good company.

Mike Rhode: What type of comic work do you do?

Alan Jenkins:  I'm a freshman comic book writer. This is my first book. I produced a short comic book several years ago, but this is my first time actually writing.

Mike Rhode: What was the short comic you produced?

Alan Jenkins:

It was called Helvetika Bold. My former organization that I co-founded, the Opportunity Agenda, we thought that a comic book would be a good way to lift our profile and explain what we do, and we were correct. The organization works on communication strategies to advance opportunity and human rights in the US.

Mike Rhode: And that was a giveaway from the organization?

 Alan Jenkins: Yes, exactly.

Mike Rhode: Regarding 1/6, your new comic, I'm going to ask how actually you pronounce it.

Alan Jenkins: One six.

Mike Rhode: So it's not “one slash six,” it’s going to be four issues, and it's a standard comic book size book. Why don't you give us the basic plot?

Alan Jenkins: The series asks and answers the question: What if the January 6, 2021 insurrection had been successful?  It follows actual events up until the point at which many people will remember, especially in the DC area, when Officer Eugene Goodman led the mob away from the Senate Chamber on January 6th. As a whole, the series follows the events that led to the insurrection, both physical and political. And then it imagines a world in which the mob turned right instead of left, and they entered the Senate Chamber. They did everything they were threatening to do. Then President Trump does many of the things that he was threatening to do: declaring martial law and deputizing the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which they were asking him to do. Democracy is extinguished, and then the remainder of the series is about everyday people coming together to try to restore the democracy. Also, as the founders of our country did, arguing not only about how best to win, but about what kind of country should emerge. Just as Hamilton and Madison and Jefferson were arguing about what our constitution should be, even as they were fighting the British [ed. note: Professor Jenkins is slightly hyperbolic here for the sake of the story. Actually, the Constitutional Convention took place later in 1789, after the war was won and the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate to maintain a government, and new agreements and rules were required]. Our characters are having those same arguments. At the end of the series, we expect readers will have some hope, but I won't spoil the ending.

Mike Rhode: Because you still have three issues to come too. Why is this a graphic novel instead of short novella?

Alan Jenkins: The short answer is I love comics and I love democracy. There's a long history of comic books being both entertaining and upholding the values of democracy and fighting authoritarianism and bigotry. The first Captain America issue has a cover of Cap slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw. This was six or nine months before the US entered World War II. Cap’s creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were young Jewish Americans. They had family in Europe under threat of the Nazis and what became the Holocaust. They created an amazing hero and were intent on depicting Adolf Hitler as the villain that he was. Superman fought the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s [on his radio show]. The Black Panther fought the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. And then there are graphic novels like Maus and others. This is a part of a long tradition. It seemed very natural. In addition to that, I and my co-writer Gan Golan wanted to reach a broad audience, including people who maybe don't have the time to read an 800-page report from the January 6th committee. Maybe they aren't glued to CNN or reading the Washington Post as vehemently as we are, but they care about our democracy. In addition, if you're 80 years old, you grew up with comics in the US, if you're eight years old, you're growing up with comics now, and you don't have to have an advanced degree to read them. You don't have to be super fluent in English in order to consume and understand comic books. And so it felt like just the right vehicle for us.

Mike Rhode: You mentioned your co-author. How did the team come together?

Gan Golan

Alan Jenkins: I had worked with Gan on the previous comic book that I mentioned, Helvetika Bold. He's a New York Times award-winning graphic novelist mm-hmm. When I had this idea to do a graphic novel, not only about the insurrection, but with this speculative fiction idea of “what if the insurrection had been successful?” he was the first person I called. In part because I wanted to work with him, and in part because I wanted to see what he thought about the idea, “Is this gonna fly? Does this make any sense?” He's very busy, because he's a climate activist, but he immediately said, “Yeah, we've gotta do this. But I can't do the art.” He's a very talented artist, but he said he didn't have the bandwidth. So he and I wrote the script. We've been writing each issue, and we assembled a team of veteran industry artists to do the artwork and I'm really, really pleased with what they've done. Will Rosado, who's a veteran DC and Marvel artist, is our main penciler and inker. [Lee Loughridge does colors and letters are by Tom Orzechowski].

Mike Rhode: Did you form your own company to publish this?

Alan Jenkins: We did. We wanted to move very quickly. So the first issue came out in digital form on January 6th of this year. We'd have to jump through too many hoops in order to go the traditional publishing route. We just jumped in and created OneSix Comix.

Mike Rhode: And it's partially funded through grants?

Alan Jenkins: That's correct. We did a Kickstarter, and we also approached a number of funders.

Mike Rhode: How do you write? Did you and Gan just write a full script with what the action should be? Or did you do it more like Marvel method, where you wrote roughly what you wanted and then expected the artists to interpret it?

Will Rosado

Alan Jenkins: It was a mix. I would say we got more Marvel style as we got more comfortable with our artist. Gan and I sat down together many hours doing what they call in TV screenwriting, “breaking story.” Like, “What's gonna happen? What are the big moments? What are the images that we need to include?” We actually created some images up on the monitor for us that we could look at, and then we committed it to a script which is quite specific. But then we also told, Will, our main artist, “Look, we want you to try things out to experiment,” and he definitely came up with some ways of conveying big ideas that were both more compelling and more succinct than what we had created.

Mike Rhode: Did you do thumbnails or was it just a written script?

Alan Jenkins: Written script. And then there's a lot of real places and people so there’s a lot of reference images.

Mike Rhode: In fact, the front cover appears to have Mike Pence hanging, or at least Mike Pence's feet.

Alan Jenkins: Well, we intentionally left that ambiguous, but you can see in the lower right hand corner is the Vice Presidential pin. We want to depict what the rioters and the Insurrectionists told us they were going to do. And that was certainly one of those things.

Mike Rhode: Let me ask one more thing about your artist before we move on to more general stuff. Is this all digital drawing, or is there a paper and ink behind it?

Alan Jenkins: Will's process? He does both. He works in both media.

Mike Rhode:  It looks like you did variant covers with people that are known as either African-American cartoonists or political cartoonists, since I guess Pia Guerra has switched to being an editorial cartoonist. I assume one of you reached out to find additional people?

Shawn Martinbrough art

Alan Jenkins: Both of us thought it would be a great opportunity to bring in other artists who might not have the time to do an entire issue or series, but could give us a compelling image. Alex Albadree's variant is coming out soon. [The other cover artists are Jamal Igle and Shawn Martinbrough]

Mike Rhode: How do you actually buy it now? How does one buy the copy of the book?

Alan Jenkins: You can get it on Amazon. You can get it at http://www.onesixcomics.com , and we're starting to market it through comic book stores. It’s in about a dozen comic book stores right now [and stores can order it wholesale here]. While I'm here in the DC area. I'm going to visit a few more and see who might want to carry it. I’m hoping that your readers will ask for it because I would much rather sell it that way. Amazon sales are great, and they're doing very well…

Mike Rhode: But they take an amazing amount of money off the top…

Alan Jenkins: Money and time, and you don't always know what you're getting. I want people to be able to see the quality of the book, of which we're very proud. So I would like it to be available in comic stores as well.

Mike Rhode: Let's go back to your background now - when and where were you born?

Alan Jenkins: I was born in the sixties on Long Island, New York, and I grew up in New York, and spent most of my years, other than in college, in Brooklyn.

Mike Rhode: The book is dedicated to your mom, Olga Jenkins. And I see she had a doctorate, so did she inspire your career?

Alan Jenkins: Yeah, very much. She had a doctorate in education, while her parents did not finish high school. They were immigrants from The Bahamas. My mom was dyslexic, and, grew up really in poverty in Philadelphia and, through intelligence and hard work, became a teacher. She was a math teacher, and got a doctorate in education from Columbia Teacher's College.

Mike Rhode: That’s the real story of immigrants in America.

Alan Jenkins: Yeah, exactly. And she was a civil rights activist, which also influenced me, in a lot of my career as a civil rights lawyer.

Mike Rhode: Your degree is in law? Where'd you take that from?

Alan Jenkins: From Harvard, and that's where I'm teaching now.

Mike Rhode: And that's where you're teaching? So you commute to Boston?

Alan Jenkins:  Yeah, every week during the school year.

Mike Rhode: All right. <Laugh>, everything's a decision. So why are you visiting DC now?

Alan Jenkins: I'm here for Awesome Con, which so far has been awesome. Great. Just as advertised. And I love DC. I spent several years here, the weather's great today, and I'm enjoying hanging out. I'm gonna visit some comic book stores and see some friends.

Mike Rhode: Returning to 1/6, can you explain how you learned to write a comic? You said this was your second one. It doesn't sound like you've done storyboarding from movies or anything like that. Did you look at a book? Did you just talk to your co-author and decide to take his lead?

Alan Jenkins: This is actually the first one that I've written, because for the other one I was just the publisher. It was a mix of inspirations. I read a lot of comic books. I've been reading comic books all my life, but I returned to speculative fiction works, recent ones such as DMZ and Calexit. And the George Orwell 1984 graphic novel adaptation and V for Vendetta. I looked at a lot of different types of work. I looked at Scott McCloud and his book Making Comics. And I learned a ton from, and I'm still learning from, my co-writer Gan Golan and from Will, because it's an interactive process, right? We'll write something and Will will say, “You know what, what's this? I don't know how to depict this.” And then we'll have to go back and make it clear or do it differently. It's been a constant, very steep learning curve and constant learning over time.

Mike Rhode: I've got to say for your first comic you picked good collaborators because it runs very smoothly, and sometimes it's very hard to write this sequential nature of a page. I think it's easier to jump from scene to scene to scene, in which case, it's more of an illustrated story and less of a comic.

Alan Jenkins: Well, thank you. Yeah, it's a different medium. I've done some screenwriting, but in screenwriting you'll say, “Joe walks into the room,” and here either he is in the room or he is not in the room.  Figuring out that one image that depicts a whole series of events or motion is really a new skill.

Mike Rhode: We just talked about your influences for the book, but was John Lewis’ March an Influence?

Alan Jenkins: Absolutely. I actually knew John Lewis. I don't know how well he knew me, but we had spent time together. He’s a huge inspiration, for my entire life, not just in comic books. The fact that he chose to tell his own story through a graphic novel, is very inspiring. And I think because it did well, it signified that it was okay -- that this was a legitimate storytelling form for serious material, and that it could be profitable or at least, marketable. Yeah, it was very important. There was Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a comic book [link to download a pdf] in 1956 about King, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and that was in the hands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Egypt and helped to inform the Arab Spring and then the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. I actually have that one up on my wall at home. That was also very inspiring to me. And back when I was a kid, there was something called Golden Legacy comics which was a series about black history and black leaders. My dad got me the whole series of those. I have them somewhere in my attic. So the idea of comic books relating stories of civil rights and democracy and equal dignity was, to me, a very long tradition and felt very natural.

Mike Rhode: Did you do the bicycle ride to 7-Eleven in the 1970s before comic book stores?

Alan Jenkins: I did indeed. We had Frederick’s Stationary and every Wednesday we were there right after school. I also went to some of the earliest comic cons back in New York City. Around 1973, Marvel had a convention. It was just Marvel and I still have the program from it. And I went to some of the early New York Comic Cons where it was just comics. It was a very small, intimate bunch.

Mike Rhode: The guys in the bottom of the hotel…

Alan Jenkins:  <Laugh> Exactly. Exactly.

Mike Rhode: So are you a DC person or a Marvel one? Sounds like a Marvel guy.

Alan Jenkins: Oh, definitely Marvel. Yeah. Definitely Marvel. DC's come a long way in terms of nuance and sophistication and storytelling. But yeah, coming up I was very much a Marvel kid.

Mike Rhode: After this set of comics, what do you want to do? Do you want to do more comics? Do you have an idea?

Alan Jenkins: Yeah, I would love to do more. Now that we've created One Six Comics I think it would be great to take on some other subjects, but we haven't even discussed it. We’ve got three more of this one to do.

Mike Rhode? Although you may have to change your logo of a hangman's noose over the Capitol building, depending on where you go after this.

Alan Jenkins: We'll see.

Mike Rhode: What do you think about the current political climate? Unfortunately, your book is coming out in a time of pushback by what we would consider the regressive forces, and obviously you are speaking against them, but your book is a dystopia where they won. You must see some hope for the future, but in the meantime, is there anything you want to say?

Alan Jenkins: I'm very worried about the future of our democracy and the fundamental principle that we're all created equal. I think most of the forces that led to the insurrection on January 6th are still with us. There's been accountability for many individuals who showed up because President Trump told them to show up. People have to be held responsible for their actions, but we've seen almost no accountability for the political actors who really laid the groundwork for this insurrection. There are still 179 election deniers in Congress who were either elected or reelected in the 2022 midterms. The forces of anti-Semitism and racism and xenophobia that fueled the insurrection, the actual riot, are still very much with us. I'm very worried, which is one of the main reasons why we wrote the series.

At the same time, I do have a lot of hope. I think that we have in our country a history and a legacy of standing up to bigotry, of standing up to authoritarianism and defending democracy. It was a small group of elected and appointed officials, mostly Republicans, who said “no” to the coup. Instead of just choosing teams, they insisted on playing by the rules. And that gives me a lot of hope. The activism of the American public right now in this era similarly does -- the Black Lives Matter movement and the Immigrant Rights Movement, and many of these movements for voting rights and justice all give me a lot of hope. The story's unwritten, literally and figuratively. And I'm betting on democracy.

Mike Rhode: I hope so. Democracy has meant different things in American life throughout two centuries. And forces are opposed to what I would consider true democracy, and doubling down with book bans, voting restrictions, et cetera. Every day in the newspaper we see something that's very old, but popping up again cloaked as something new.

Alan Jenkins: Yeah, that's right. In future issues, we're going to be taking on book bans and the oppression of LGBTQ Americans, and a number of other themes of that kind. Because it's set in an alternate present, we want to really see how a lot of these things play out for good and for ill.

Mike Rhode: In the first book, I noticed there are some fun pieces like the Clarence and Ginni Thomas Federal Judicial Building with a statue of them, and elsewhere there's this large statue of Trump. And one thing that made me think it was leaning towards being an African-American book, and I'm interested to hear what you say, is that Ben's Chili Bowl restaurant seems to be the center of the revolution, or at least one cell of the revolution. I noticed it's not specifically named, but those of us in DC will realize it's Ben's Chili Bowl <laugh>.

Alan Jenkins: It's one of my favorite locations in the city. It's endured and weathered so much. Ben's certainly was the inspiration for the center of the resistance. But it's a multicultural resistance. It's including white folks, and one thing that was very important to us. As you'll see, there's a MAGA voter who's one of our main characters. We really believe it's important to treat everyone with empathy, to try to understand people's motivations, rather than demonize them. There are bad guys in this story, but there are also people who are kind of coming to grips with it, who believe in democracy, and were duped by former President Trump and are trying to come to terms with that.  Hopefully we told the story. We are telling a story that can be appealing to everybody.

Mike Rhode: It will be appealing to many, but not everybody, I think. It's been very well done. It looks like you've got about five main characters whose story you're going to be following?

Alan Jenkins: That's about right.

Mike Rhode: It's hard to talk about the book without having spoilers, because the things that drive people to the actions that they take are shocking, but you don't want to ruin the book for people. Have you guys hit any ruts or writer's blocks while you've been working on this?

Alan Jenkins: No, but the news has been constantly changing. Issue number one is set a few months after the successful insurrection. Issue two jumps back to the events leading up to the insurrection. And we were learning more and more and more about those events. We have a Google doc, which is our script, and every couple of days we had to go back in and try to change something. You can't include everything or it wouldn't be a compelling readable story, so we're kind of constantly making decisions about what we learned about Tucker Carlson, or Fox criticizing Trump, should we include that? I would say the biggest challenge is both reacting to emerging events and also deciding what to include and what not to include.

Mike Rhode: So the story then is obviously not written all the way through issue four. You must have an outline?

Alan Jenkins: Exactly. We have an outline.

Mike Rhode: So when do you see it wrapping up then?

Alan Jenkins: Probably around January 6th of next year.

Mike Rhode: Are you going to try to have a trade out around the same time as the four singles finish?

Alan Jenkins: We are shopping it as a full-on graphic novel, so, we'll see.

Mike Rhode: You're not necessarily publishing the full graphic novel?

Alan Jenkins: No, I think comic book publishing is enough <laugh>, so…

Mike Rhode: Is this distributed by Diamond? Or one of the other big distributors?

Alan Jenkins: Not yet. I think in part, because they don't distribute just single issues, so I think they want to make sure we have a track record.

Mike Rhode: Oh, that's right. Cold Cut used to take the single issues and they don't exist anymore.

Alan Jenkins: Yeah. But of course, the distribution channels are changing so fast. I don't know, we'll see where Diamond emerges.

Mike Rhode: Is there anything else you want to say about this project that I haven't asked?

close-up of the defaced Lincoln Memorial panel

Alan Jenkins: We have, to go along with the book, a free Education and Action Guide. There's a QR code in the back of the book, and if you scan that, readers can get direct access. We did this with the Western State Center which is a pro-democracy non-profit out of the Pacific Northwest. Some people will read the book and enjoy the book, and that'll be it. But some people, we hope will want to take action in support of democracy and challenging bigotry. The Action Guide has very specific and easy steps that people can do either as individuals in their community, or on the political policy front.

Mike Rhode: Did you actually make enough money with the Kickstarter and grants to fund the whole project? Or are you going to need to raise more money?

Alan Jenkins: It depends in part on sales, but I think we're good financially to host the whole thing. But what Kickstarter, and our supporters on Kickstarter helped us do, is get it into lots of hands. For example we sent issue one to several hundred members of Congress, including 150 election deniers. We sent several thousand copies to civil rights groups, to prodemocracy groups, to public libraries. We sent Ron DeSantis a copy. Haven't heard from him.  And also, libraries in Florida and many other states, and our Kickstarter fans really helped with that. So it takes a village.

Mike Rhode: Did any members of Congress that you sent it to respond back to you?

Alan Jenkins: Haven’t heard back from any MoCs yet.

Mike Rhode: Do you still buy comics?

Alan Jenkins: I do. And, in fact, I bought some comics at Awesome Con

Mike Rhode: Anything you want to recommend that you get regularly?

Alan Jenkins: That's a good question. I like to see what independents are doing. I like the Black and follow-up White series by Kwanza Osajyefo. It posits a world in which only black folks have superpowers, and it's not well received by society. That’s a good one. My college classmate Reggie Hudlin now owns Milestone, so I'm really interested in where that's going to go.

Mike Rhode: Do you still have a local store?

Alan Jenkins:  I do. East Side Mags in Montclair, New Jersey is my go-to place. I'm actually doing a book signing there on July 1st. The owner is Jeff Beck. Jeff was one of the people who I reached out to when I was first setting up the comic book operation, and he gave me a ton of really useful information about how to survive and thrive in the industry. So he's a hero.

Mike Rhode: What's your favorite thing about DC?

Alan Jenkins: Besides Ben's Chili Bowl? I like that DC is a place of ideas and culture, even if not always interwoven in the way that I think they should be. Obviously it's the seat of government. You have a lot of social justice and public policy organizations. You have a lot of activism. You have remarkable arts and culture here. And that's what I'm about. My career has been at the intersection of storytelling, social justice, and and law. And so this is the place for it. I think that's the crux of it.

Mike Rhode: The least favorite?

Alan Jenkins: Well, it's similar. The cynicism of and around government these days is really disheartening. I've worked in the Justice Department. I was law clerk in the Supreme Court for Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe versus Wade. And a Republican. There were people of both parties who were devoted to our democracy. Justice Blackmun was appointed by Richard Nixon, and then he ruled against Richard Nixon in the U.S. v. Nixon case about the tapes, because he believed in rights and democracy, and there's a lot less of that now.

Mike Rhode: It seems like people have chosen the side for their sports team as opposed to what's good for the country.

Alan Jenkins: I think that's unfortunately the case. It's not the first time that that's happened. We've been through McCarthyism and lots of other dark periods, and we're capable of coming out of it smarter. I think we have it in us, but it's not a foregone conclusion. It's up to us.

Mike Rhode: Unfortunately, the current trends one can track all the way to the establishment of the country or earlier. I think the current Republican party is clearly in line with Barry Goldwater's idea what the Republican Party should be which was a very white for Republican party.

Alan Jenkins: I agree with you, but it's also interesting that after Goldwater's defeat, the conservative movement spent a lot of time reinventing itself to move away from explicit racism and more towards the dog whistle. And Trump blew that up, you know? He has been saying the quiet part out loud and without consequences. It's very dangerous when elected officials, especially the most powerful in the country are explicitly racist and white supremacists, because it gives permission to lots of other people.

Mike Rhode: I noticed that when Trump was in power, that all of a sudden people were willing to say stuff that they would never have been willing to say before that.

Shawn Martinbrough art

Alan Jenkins: Exactly. And one of the things you'll see in the book is that Trump doesn't get much ink. The book is in part about Trumpism and the transcendent threats to democracy and equal dignity that he represents. But, if Trump went away tomorrow, those forces would still exist. That's an important theme of the book.

Mike Rhode: I think a lot of Trumpism actually has an economic underpinning too, as people are feeling like they're losing out on the American dream, and I think those people have been voting Republicans since Ronald Reagan was elected, which is absolutely amazing to me. Do you address that type of inequity in the books? I know you can't fit in everything.

Alan Jenkins: We do a bit. It's true that the United States was never the land of full and equal opportunity that it aspired to be, but we, at our best, have been headed in the right direction. And right now, we're headed in the wrong direction. We're less and less equal, and everyday people have less and less opportunity. And we do take that up because, to your point, that is ripe for exploitation. We know that the reasons for that have to do with laws and policies that favor the rich and suppress for instance, union organizing and other efforts. But it's very easy to blame immigrants, or people of color, and there are always going be demagogues that are going to do that.

Mike Rhode: When you come from people who have worked their way up the ladder in America, it's hard to understand the people that think that immigrants are their problem, or unions are their problem because, if you know any American history, the five-day work week was not a gift from the gods.  The Food and Drug Administration didn't magically appear one day. People had to be poisoned by corporations giving them adulterated food, and to see people turn their backs on progressivism in favor of a different type of populism has been very, very strange for my entire adult life.

Alan Jenkins: I find it baffling but also something that we have to constantly work to combat. I went to law school with Barack Obama. If anybody had asked me, “Is there anyone you know who's likely to be the first black president?” I certainly would've said Barack Obama. If somebody had asked me would that happen in 2008, I would've said, “Absolutely not.” But he is a remarkable person who was able to channel our greatest values and inspire people, majority of the electorate, to vote those values. And so we know it can be done.

Mike Rhode: Unfortunately, he became a face that people could oppose, and I think a lot of that coalesced because he was the president, not because of him personally, but just because he was a black man as president. It could have been a woman who was president and the same thing would've happened. Or an Indian-American or anybody who wasn’t a white man.

Getting back on track did the Covid 19 outbreak affect you personally or professionally?

Alan Jenkins: It did both. I was fortunate that I didn't lose any close family or friends, but did lose some people in our orbit and actually a close friend I have who was one of the first people in New York to get the virus has not fully recovered. My mom was in assisted living and so we had to visit her through the window. I was fortunate that she was on the ground floor. And we were able to interact with her. The aides, God bless 'em, would bring her to the window and open the screen and in the dead of winter we were out there. And then, professionally I was teaching and so I taught an entire academic year online on Zoom which is a terrible way to teach or learn. We adapted to it, and I think, well, and the students certainly stepped up, but it was very difficult for them. And the law school experience is not just the classes, it's not just the readings and the conversation. It's the people you interact with. It's the school, the activities that you do. I met my wife in law school, I would not have met her on Zoom. I really feel like they missed out. Many people lost much, much more than we did, and I feel very fortunate. It was a very difficult period for all of us.

Mike Rhode: Is there anything else you'd like to close with?

Alan Jenkins: I hope that your readers will check out the book, and that they will ask their local comic book stores for it. But it's also on Amazon and at http://onesixcomicsstore.com. And I hope they'll check out the Action guide, which is free online and consider the things that they can do. One of the things that we've talked to some readers about is a democracy comic book reading group to read some relevant comic books, for instance, X-Men: Days of Future Past—it’s a “what if” speculative fiction story about democracy and bigotry—and to actually read that series, which is so good. To talk about, “what does it mean for us today? What are the real things that are depicted? What are the metaphors?” The mutants have always been a metaphor for so many things, for sexual and gender identity, for race. So that's one maybe concrete suggestion. And reach out. Let us know how you're using it.

This interview is being published simultaneously on ComicsDC and IJOCA's blogs, and will appear in print in the 25:1 issue of IJOCA.

Book Review - Drawing Fire: The Editorial Cartoons of Bill Mauldin.

reviewed by Lizzy Walker, Wichita State University Libraries

 DePastino, Todd (ed.) (2020). Drawing Fire: The Editorial Cartoons of Bill Mauldin. Chicago: Pritzker Military Museum & Library. 250 pages; $35.00. ISBN 9780998968940.

All images and their captions in this review are courtesy of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library

            William Henry "Bill" Mauldin (1921-2003) had a lengthy career spanning 50 years as a popular and award-winning cartoonist. Drawing Fire: The Editorial Cartoons of Bill Mauldin, collects essays and selections of his wartime and political cartoons from Chicago's Pritzker Military Museum & Library, which boasts over 4,500 cartoons by Mauldin in its collection. The publication of this important volume will include a spring 2021 exhibition at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago and will then travel to the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas later in 2021.

            The book opens with a brief preface by Tom Hanks. It is the perfect opening to this poignant book. He states, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, Bill Mauldin drew hundreds of novels" (6). Hanks describes how Mauldin's works depicted the everyday soldier, and discusses two of Mauldin's pieces that resonated with Hanks the most.

            In her foreword, Colonel (RET.) Jennifer N. Pritzker, founder of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, describes how Mauldin's work affected her interest in following in her family's legacy of joining the military, and how seeing his work helped her in her own journey, down to her attitude and how she treated those above and below her station. She mentions that Mauldin's ability to communicate through different sociopolitical climates showed how his work still presents valuable history lessons in each short cartoon. She sums up nicely, writing "you can take out the print date or the caption and still see contemporary issues and subjects in his drawings. There is a Bill Mauldin cartoon for every situation, for every topic" (10). History marches on, but it also recurs.

            Mauldin's biographer Todd DePastino provides the introduction to Drawing Fire, discussing Mauldin's life and fifty-year career. He joined the Arizona National Guard in 1940 and then transferred into the 45th Infantry. During World War II, Mauldin's cartoons featuring Willie and Joe, two American GI grunts on the front lines in Europe, earned him a position on Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper. DePastino discusses Mauldin's success at having his characters depicting the less-than-glamourous aspects of wartime while acting as a platform for criticism of the military hierarchy. The characters quickly became favorites of both soldiers in the trenches and civilians on the home front. Mauldin won a Pulitzer at the age of 23, before he even arrived back stateside. DePastino then explains Mauldin's return home, his difficulty re-acclimating to civilian life, the divorce from his first wife Jean, and other topics of his personal life.

            DePastino continues by looking at the subject matter Mauldin started addressing in his cartoons upon his return, such as the rampant discrimination against Japanese-Americans, free speech, civil rights, public housing, and more, which made certain editors request that he censor himself, lest they do it for him by canceling their subscription for his syndicated cartoons. Mauldin's pushing of boundaries throughout his career earned the ire of high-ranking political and military figures, such as J. Edgar Hoover and General George S. Patton. Mauldin retired in 1991 after an injury to his drawing hand. Further tragedy struck as he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and he lived in an assisted living facility in Orange County before his death in 2003.
            In "Thank you, Mr. Mauldin," Tom Brokaw, one of the most recognized names in news broadcasting, weaves a beautiful essay about growing up as a military child during World War II and how Mauldin's Up Front was an influence in shaping his career as a journalist. Brokaw discusses themes of Up Front, as well as other works that Mauldin published all the way through Desert Storm in 1990.

            "Bill Mauldin, Thunderbird" by Denise Neil provides a brief discussion of Mauldin's time with the 45^th Infantry Division (also known as the Thunderbird Division), his regular feature in the 45^th Division News called Star Spangled Banter, and Up Front published in Stars and Stripes. Neil asserts Mauldin blended humor with the realism of the "exhaustion and fear endured by the dogfaces" (48), which explains Mauldin's popularity among soldiers, past and present.

            "Back Home" by G. Kurt Piehler addresses the challenge of reintegration of soldiers back into civilian life and Mauldin's hand in assisting with the effort via his post-war cartoons, reprinting some of them in Back Home in 1947. He had to face his own problems head on when he returned as well. Mauldin was witness to many traumatic events, and many of his friends, both members of the infantry and journalists, did not make it home at all. As he was during the war, Mauldin continued to be an advocate of free speech and exercised his right as much as possible in his cartoons. For example, he used his medium to speak out against anti-Semitism and the Ku Klux Klan. Piehler writes of Mauldin's cartoons that "American veterans, if given access to housing and decent jobs, would be able to readjust to civilian life and that the nation as a whole might emerge from the greatest war in history a wiser, more tolerant, more generous power" (69).

            In "Bill Mauldin Goes to Korea" by Cord A. Scott mentions that Mauldin was highly sought after by publishers during the Korean War and reviews his process for creating his new book Bill Mauldin in Korea. Scott states that the "one aspect that distinguishes Mauldin's work on Korea from the illustrations of other cartoonists is that his are consistently realistic even if they do not appear as finished as his other pieces for the book. None of the characters, especially those of enemy combatants, relied on stereotypical cartoon features" (75-76). He also retained his military humor while still making his work accessible to the layman as well as soldiers, presenting the struggles of "sacrifices and conditions in which ordinary people serve. It presents the unique perspective of a famous WWII enlisted veteran on a different, more complicated conflict" (81). Scott writes that Bill Mauldin in Korea is "a reflection of how Mauldin as a person was evolving in his worldview, relaying those views not through his own thoughts so much, but through his character" (81). Scott's follow-up essay, "Korean War Cartoonists," presents a great discussion of Mauldin's contemporaries, including those who were clearly influenced by the artist himself.

            "Bill Mauldin's Legacy in Military Cartooning" by Christina M. Knopf opens with discussion of a Peanuts comic strip conversation between Linus and Snoopy that was a memorial for Mauldin upon his death. Knopf states of military humor that it "helps to strengthen community, buoy morale, teach valuable—even life-saving—lessons, make sense of war, and express universal concerns about daily life" (89). Knopf shows other military cartoonists, including Vernon Grant, John Holmes, W. C. Pope, and others who are what she calls "modern Mauldins," who may use the web to disseminate their work. A particularly amusing section of this chapter, titled "Grumbling in the Ranks," discusses Mauldin and an earlier wartime cartoonist, Captain Bruce Bairnfather from World War I England, and their ability to ruffle the feathers of the military "brass." Knopf then reviews the role and benefits of military cartoons and satire, providing a thoughtful comparison between Mauldin's realistically-styled comics to the more “heroic” war comic books of the time.

            "Sparky and Bill Mauldin" by Jean Schulz is a touching end to the narrative portion of the book. Jean Schulz, the widow of Sparky, better known as Charles M. Schulz of previously mentioned Peanuts fame, briefly but poignantly tells a moving story about the friendship of two major figures in cartoon strips and how they became friends and colleagues.

            "A Selection of Bill Mauldin's Cartoon from the Pritzker Military Museum and Library Collections" takes up a bulk of the book and images cover a wide range of topics, such as post-World War II soldiers returning to civilian life, commentary on his perception of the ridiculousness of bipartisan politics, and civil rights issues, up until commentary on the Gulf War.

            Drawing Fire is a worthy tribute to the soldier, artist, and free speech advocate Bill Mauldin. The first time I came across his work was while I was doing some cataloguing for Wichita State University Special Collections and University Archives. I picked up the well-worn copy of Up Front from the book cart, carefully flipping through the yellowed pages, and was immediately struck by Mauldin’s artwork, and then his captions. It is easy to see why each of the contributors to Drawing Fire included how Mauldin influenced their chosen professions, as well as how he helped shape their ethics, in their essays. The glimpses into Mauldin's life and career, paired with the inclusion of 150 of his military and political cartoons, provides the reader with an historical portrait of the artist, as well as fifty decades of sociopolitical history and wartime coverage.

Versions of this review will appear online and in print in IJOCA 22:2.

 

Bookmarks

Mauldin drew this cartoon on June 6, 1968. In the early hours of that day, forty-two-year-old Senator Robert F. Kennedy died in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles after being shot on June 5 at the Ambassador Hotel by assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Following on the heels of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination tow months earlier, RFK’s assassination triggered national soul-searching about the role of violence in American history and society. (Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1968.)

A strong proponent of civil rights and social justice campaigns throughout his lifetime, Mauldin illustrated here that those who advance reforms or policies are often the most unqualified to do so. (Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1974.)

“We won!”

The U.S. Victory in the First Gulf War left Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in power and raised a number of questions about the United States’ role in the region. Mauldin saw that despite President Bush’s proclamation of victory, the Middle East was far from won. (Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1991).

“Yer a Menace to the People. It’s me duty to sink your end of the boat.”

(Originally published by United Features Syndicate, Inc., 1947)

“Good gosh! Willie struck oil!”

In the summer of 1941, the War Department held the Louisiana Maneuvers, a massive exercise designed to test the underfunded Army’s readiness for war. Bill accompanied the 45^th Division to Louisiana, where soldiers still clad in World War I -vintage uniforms often wielded two-by-fours instead of actual machine guns. Two men in seersucker suits and a big Oldsmobile approached Bill and convinced him to produced a souvenir book of cartoons to sell to the troops. Bill drew fifteen cartoons and twenty-five drawings in forty-eight hours for a book he called Star Spangled Banter. It cost twenty-five cents and was a hit with the 45^th Division, though Bill never saw any royalties or the two men again. (Originally published in Star Spangled Banter, 1941.)

“This damn teepee leaks.” 

This cartoon from 1973 plays on Mauldin’s well-known wartime cartoon and GI comic book titled, This Damn Tree Leaks from almost thirty years earlier. At a time when the Nixon administration was trying to diffuse the situation at Wounded Knee over Native rights, Mauldin not so subtly reminds his readers of the deceit and dishonor that characterized the history of U.S. federal relations with Native American tribes. (Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1973.)

“I got a hangover. Does it show?”

This cartoon from January 1945 plays on ordinary civilian concerns about self-presentation in public to highlight both Willie and Joe’s disheveled and grimy appearance and their dependence on alcohol to cope with the trauma of war. It was precisely this kind of cartoon that rankled the spit-and-polish General Patton. (Originally published in Stars and Stripes, 1945.)

“It’s either enemy or off limits.”

American infantrymen in World War II encountered devastation wherever they went. The Germans demolished towns as they retreated, while the Allies did the same as they advanced. It was a war of brute force that left Italy looking, in Bill’s words, “as if a giant rake had gone over it from end to end.” Occasionally, a town escaped ruin. In that case, it would be placed off-limits to dogfaces and reserved for rear-echelon soldiers and high-ranking officers to enjoy. (Originally published in Stars and Stripes, 1944.)

“Come on in – the quicksand’s fine.”

During the Salvadorian Civil War of 1979 to 1992, the Reagan administration increased U.S. support for the military junta government fighting a left-wing insurgency. Observers like Mauldin feared a quagmire akin to the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Mauldin references (or, perhaps, simply copies) a chilling cartoon by M.A. Kempf that appeared in The Masses in June 1917 during WWII. It shows the great powers of Europe dancing with death in a pool of blood. The caption reads, “Come on in, America, the blood’s fine.” (Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1982.)

 “Ain’t you gonna buy a war hero a drink?”

Bill Mauldin returned home before V-J Day. His reluctance to wear his uniform or talk about his wartime experiences led many strangers to assume that, because of his youth and civilian clothes, he had avoided military service, and he was subjected to much bravado from home front GI’s. (Originally published in United Feature Syndicate, Inc., 1945.)

“Investigate them? Heck, that’s mah posse.”

(Originally published by United Feature Syndicate, Inc., 1947.)