When discussing his collaboration with veteran graphic novelist and comic illustrator Gan Golan and William Rosado, Harvard Law professor Alan Jenkins is straightforward and honest. This is fitting given the nature of the trio’s recent accomplishment, the first issue of a comic strip revolving around an alternate timeline where the events of January 6 turned out…differently.
“…I love comics and I love democracy,” Jenkins states, in an interview with Comics DC. “…(Writing) (1/6: The Graphic Novel Issue #1: What if the Attack on the U.S. Capitol Succeeded) 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.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Novel-Attack-Capitol-Succeeded-ebook/dp/B0BR4BVFGX
They succeeded with flying colors. 1/16 has to be one of the most chillingly compact, and realistically frightening narratives I have read all year. You barely have time to catch your breath as Jenkins, Golan, and Rosado thrust straight into the heart of the action, where banners dedicated to a neo-fascist presidency line the streets, the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys have been deputized as legitimate forces of authority, and President Trump continues to reign – less in a view of the founders, and more within a tyrannical, neo-monarchy with decidedly far-right, Nazi-like symbolism and imagery. It makes gestures like the spray painting and protest tactics of a movement like Black Lives Matter that much more potent, as well as bolstering their claims about fighting fascism – in a literalist context.
“I’m very worried about the future of our democracy and the fundamental principle that we’re all created equal,” Jenkins has said, in aforementioned vein. “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 becausePresident 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.”
This is reflected in the matter-of-fact way the graphic novel issue presents the stark reality of a future we could be headed towards. Like any piece of great artist activism, it shows rather than instructs the reader how to think about the ramifications. The thing saddest to me as an individual was seeing how monuments of our democracy were turned inside-out, transformed into faux alters of a Trump dictatorship without the values or morals laid bare in the US Constitution.
Heather Savage