Could it be true? Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has been adapted as a graphic novel?! Finally, offhand anti-Americanism will become an accessible option for the alt-comic crowd. Oh wait…well, whatever–at least it has its market cut out for it.
To make things even juicier, Zinn & Co. have made significant changes to the original, which is why it warrants the new title, A People’s History of American Empire. Among the fresh updates is the queen of all ironies: Zinn’s own lifestory is included to provide a heroic element to combat that dastardly supervillian, The United States of Scumerica. Watch as our hero’s immigrant parents come to the Land of Opportunity to provide their child with a better life–which allows him to rise from nothing to become one of the most important intellectuals in the nation…by explaining how no one can really rise from nothing and become something in this dirty plutocracy.
But perhaps you have little patience with the written word, and would prefer your visual vitamins in a more direct manner. To solve that problem, Zinn has teamed up with intellectual luminary Viggo Mortensen to produce a web video that explains the story of how Zinn realized that American pride should be tinged with deep regret–in case there’s some lost soul out there who isn’t familiar with the idea, but somehow has YouTube.
I’m interested in acquiring Zinn’s little gem of early-twenty-first-century visual culture, but reluctant to patronize the vile capitalist system through which it’s been made available. Do you think Zinn would excuse me if, in a protest against the very idea of private property, I stole it?
