Graphic novel review: Jonathan Hickman's 'The Nightly News': No cult membership required

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Image comics
Released: June 2007

You’d think that a book such as this, about media manipulation and the role of powerful corporations owning and controlling both the mainstream media and their political puppets, would be right up my alley, but I really didn’t enjoy this book much at all.

I found that it was more of a research project by writer Jonathan Hickman put into a comic book format, with some cult members as the protagonists because I guess you have to have lots of gratuitous violence to make a comic book interesting, right?

Err, I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that this comic book wasn’t very interesting or insightful to me, at all. So, what does it tell us?

Cults are bad. No shit. Mainstream media journalists are career whores. No shit. Powerful corporate elite’s own and control mainstream politicians. No shit. Vaccines are poison. No shit. There is poison in our food. No shit. The television is lying to you, programming you. Again, no bloody shit Sherlock. I already know this stuff, we all do. Just because the corporate whore mainstream media is not discussing it, that doesn’t mean we don’t already know about it, because we do.

WE KNOW.

And what’s the point in portraying those that protest against corporate/media corruption as dangerous cult members that have been brainwashed into committing violent acts in order to further the agenda of yet another corporate elite? What is that saying? That all protest is probably being controlled, and if you want to protest you’ll be joining a mind controlled cult? That’s not exactly a good message, is it? It’s saying that you might as well not bother protesting. It's saying that you might as well stay at home and read silly superhero comics instead.

This is a largely unenjoyable book. It’s a book with overly stylised and annoying page layouts and far, far, far too much textual information per page. This information is presented like it’s shocking, like it’s some sort of secret revelation, when it’s really nothing of the sort.

Anybody with any epistemological curiosity already knows far more about this stuff than is presented here. This is media manipulation for beginners. The fancy pants page layout hides what is a largely formulaic cult story book with lots of violence and swearing, Chomsky quotations, people being Darwinian and ruthless and a message that is stating the acknowledged fact that mainstream media news bastards are lying to us all.

I know this book was released in 2006/2007, but this stuff wasn’t new then, and it’s very, very dated now, especially after the recent revelations by Wikileaks, information that just confirmed what we already knew anyway. This book dresses up fact as a conspiracy, and that's just how the corporate elites like it.

The book did get one thing right though. 'Chomsky's a fucking retard.' He sure is, and that's why he is in the position that he currently fills. An ageing gatekeeper, letting you feel like you're getting close, but then slamming the door shut when you threaten to break through the corporate/banking/education matrix.

Oh dear, and what happens next for writer Jonathan Hickman? He buggers off to a huge corporation (Marvel/Disney) where he will have a very soft and easy career writing escapist books about cold war era, anachronistic superheroes. If you want to get his latest polemic, super controversial and revolutionary mind expanding stuff then pick up the latest issue of Marvel’s Avengers. <<<<HUGE SIGH>>>>Way to go mate. You did a little bit of faintly anti-authoritarian stuff, and then it’s straight to easy Suburb Street working for one of the giant evil corporations you gently criticised in this book. There’s a two-word cliché for people who do that, and it really does apply here.

SELL-OUT.

There was nothing revolutionary about this book, at all. It was a depressing book about media manipulation and how there’s nothing that you can do about it. That is a lie, a lie that promotes learnt helplessness, the feeling that there’s nothing that we can do, so why bother even trying. We need to break through this destructive feeling of learnt helplessness because there is something we can all do about it. The solution is very simple, and that solution does not involve cult membership or violence. All we have to do to break the destructive cycle of corporate/media manipulation is the following. Turn off the mainstream media. Stop voting between left arse cheek and right arse cheek, and stop reading statist comic books like the Avengers. That’s all you have to do. No cult membership required.

Rating: 5/10 (For the information that the largely sleeping comic book fanboy readers might not know about, but really bloody well should do)