Comic review: The Superannuated Man #5- A warning from the future

Created, written and illustrated by Ted McKeever
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 14th January 2015

A man making his living working off of ‘Blackwater’ Pier sees horrible animal mutations. A disease is coming, spreading rapidly, and he attempts to warn people. The people don’t want to hear him. He is told that, ‘No one gives a s**t,’ and is forcibly removed from institutions that could help. His warnings ignored, he resigns himself to a life of solitude where he witnesses the collapse of human civilisation.

What could this comic book possibly be saying?

Blackwater Security Company (they change their name frequently to confuse people, but this is the name they started with) are a private security firm that works in Iraq, and other countries that have been invaded/liberated/destroyed by western governments.

Blackwater (their current name is ‘Acadami’ but it will change again) has a simple job. They protect western interests as countries are looted on the pre-text of neo-liberal human rights and democracy. Here’s how the Guardian newspaper describes its operations:

‘The mercenary firm Blackwater has become a symbol of the utter lawlessness and criminality that permeates the privatised wing of the US war machine. The company's operatives have shot dead scores of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, while former employees allege in sworn statements that Blackwater's owner Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe", and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life". (Jeremy Scahill)

This is not a ‘conspiracy theory.’ It’s a conspiracy reality, and the world has been warned. So what has been the reaction to the warning?

A shrug of the collective shoulders, and a very clear, ‘No one gives a s**t.’ And what happens to a species when it no longer cares? What happens when morality disappears, when whistleblowers to state sanctioned evil are either imprisoned or ignored? What happens to a civilisation when it chooses to ignore morality, when it chooses to ignore reality itself?

Look around you.

Civilisation collapses. People act selfishly, and do what is best for them only, sod everybody else. The world burns and people warm themselves by the fire.

‘I suddenly found the sheer absurdity of it all to be completely and utterly…. hilarious.’ (Ted McKeever in ‘The Superannuated Man’ #5).

So what to do? Ted is laughing, and I don’t blame him. I’m going to keep on knocking out these reviews, keep on learning, keep on making mistakes, and keep on trying to improve myself as the world teeters on the edge of total collapse.

We haven’t gone over the cliff just yet. There’s still time to avert it, and the warnings are everywhere now. Will we heed them? Can we stop the end of everything? Yes, we can. But, as always, it’s up to us to do it. Nobody is coming to help us, it’s up to us, as it always is.

Rating: 10/10


Click link below for Guardian newspaper article quoted in this review:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/11/blackwater-mercenary-scandal-legal-sanction

Click link below for Wiki page on Blackwater/Academi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi