“The Supreme Court is saying that campaign spending is a matter of free speech, but it has set up a situation where the more money you have the more speech you can buy. That’s a threatening concept for democracy. If your party serves the powerful and well-funded interests, and there’s no limit to what you can spend, you have a permanent, structural advantage. We’re averaging fifty-dollar checks in our campaign, and trying to ward off these seven- or even eight-figure checks on the other side. That disparity is pretty striking, and so are the implications. In many ways, we’re back in the Gilded Age. We have robber barons buying the government.”

— David Axelrod

The week in review

Watching (selected parts of) the Republican National Convention this past week has accentuated the distinct feeling that we have been witnessing a gradual dismantling of democracy in America over the past fifteen years or so. The nadir so far was still the stolen election in 2000, closely followed by the disgraceful first election of George W. Bush on the backs of a vulnerable minority in 2004. However, the political deadlock in Congress for the past four years has been a dismaying spectacle to say the least, as has the Obama administration’s utter failure to correct the political abuses of its predecessors in its foreign policy.

And now we’re getting myth-making on a grand scale, with bald-faced lying and deception the order of the day for the Republican candidacy. Romney seems to be the ultimate candidate of this particular moment in time. Entirely malleable in his effort to reach the majority that will win him the election, he is now running along with a right-wing ideologue whose approach to facts as something equally malleable was made apparent in his address on Wednesday. And with the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010, the stage is set not only for the mass propagation of these lies, but the further marginalization of the greater electorate.

I know, politicians have always lied and American politics have long been dependent on special interest, it just seems to me that we are witnessing an accelerated decline these years. For all its disappointment, the Obama administration have achieved — or seemed to achieve — a few important victories for democracy, from ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to fledgling universal health care, but overall the prospects that the fundamental problems of the system by which they rule, starting with its dependence on big money, will be solved are bleaker than ever. This election will not even carry the entertainment value of the last one, it’ll just be depressing, but it will also be a real test of a severely tested democratic system.

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Jon Gorga and Palle Schmidt dipping underground at Bergen Street

I particularly enjoyed it as an opportunity immediately to get acquainted with the New York comics scene and meet in person a number of people whose work I’ve been appreciating, and some of whom I’ve been corresponding with, over the last half decade or more. I enjoyed attending the Strandicon event and meeting for the first time the whole Comics Journal crew, old and new (videos of panel here); it was great to drop in for a reception at the fine Bergen Street Comics, where I’d never been before, and chat to Tucker Stone. I was great finally to meet comics critics and scholars such as Bill Kartalopoulos, Joe McCulloch, Marc Sobel, Chris Mautner, Alex Dueben, Heidi McDonald and others, and it was cool to sit down and chat with my good internet spirit Derik Badman (read his MoCCA report here). I also got to catch up with a bunch of my Danish friends and colleagues, who were over here in force, as well as some of our Nordic brethren, plus several New York cartoonists I haven’t talked to much since I last lived here.

All good times, but it really overshadowed what seemed to me a somewhat unremarkable festival. The programming was largely unremarkable, lacking in both marquee names or particularly worthwhile themes, so it came down to the offerings in the main hall. I like the democratic aspect of MoCCA, with tables being sufficiently cheap that a lot of DIY and underground stuff is on display, but at the same time I saw very little remarkable work outside the rosters of the show’s few “big” publishers. The impression it left of the American grass roots scene was one of slight stagnation after many years of redoubtable creative growth.

Søren Mosdal, Cav Bøgelund and Rikke Bakman at the Danish table

Yes, a new book by Lisa Hanawalt is not to be scoffed at, Austin English is always interesting, and that Warren Craghead piece in the Sundays antho is gorgeous, but these are still slim pickings. Joseph Lambert’s hyped I Will Bite You is a pretty book, but seems to me slight… I dunno, maybe I’m just grouching or I possibly missed a lot of good work.

Of course, a lot of the high-profile books released or teased at the show seems remarkable — I cannot wait to get my hands on Chester Brown’s Paying for It (D&Q, in a smart marketing move, only brought 25 copies selling out almost instantly); Jim Woodring’s Congress of the Animals predictably looks great, if also perhaps plain predictable (the new Dave McKean porn book is the opposite: unpredictably kitschy, even for him…); it is fantastic to see Lewis Trondheim’s Approximate Continuum Comics finally out in English (after all these years); Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is a fascinating if flawed work that I’m glad to see released in English; and the collection of Bagge/Hernandez’ Yeah! and the latest Hate! Annual are welcome distractions; Winshluss’ Pinocchio is an impressive if somewhat shallow book, but worth a read; and that fat-ass 301st issue of The Comics Journal (the Éprouvette version) packs a great critical punch.

Perhaps it was just the historical surroundings (noblesse oblige!) or the awareness that across the ocean, in Luzern, another awesome-sounding installment of Fumetto is taking place right now. Anyway, it was great meeting everyone!

So, it is now easier to sign up for our RSS feed — just tap the switches on the upper right of the sidebar. Other than that, we’ve decided finally to activate our dormant Twitter account as an experiment, in order to see whether that particular piece of hyped online ephemera is going to cause any revolutions in our neck of the woods. We ain’t asking for much — a little fun will do — so we might just be pleasantly surprised. Please note, however, that we haven’t yet managed to set up a mechanism to hype updates made here directly in that succinct format, but it may happen sometime soon!

In any case, we hope that you’ll keep reading and find something to enjoy. There’s always stuff in the pipeline. Let us know what you think!