Comic Review: Material #1- Slaves to the Wage

Writer: Ales Kot
Artist: Will Tempest
Contributing Author: Fiona Duncan
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th May 2015


There’s a long essay at the end of this book, and it goes on and on and on. Self-obsession, sex references, Marxism and a bit of moaning about neo-liberal capitalism are the themes, but does it really say anything?

I was going to do a short review on this comic book, keeping it simple, unlike that long essay, but as I was writing this review I answered my own question about whether or not that essay actually said anything, and I changed my mind about a couple of things.

Don’t be confused, this won’t be complex. I’m a simpleton, so don’t worry about not being able to understand what I’m going to go on about here. What I have to say about the essay ties in with the themes of this book, so I’ll discuss those themes first.

Material #1 is about unsatisfied, depressed, confused, traumatised, disaffected people.

There’s a Chomsky like professor who is sad, as I expect the real Chomsky to be as well. After all, being a careerist gatekeeper to real truth can’t be that much fun, can it? This professor talks his theories, but is in the process of questioning reality itself.

There’s a girl, an actress, she takes drugs, is creative, and self obsessed. A director wants to make a movie about her. Why? What’s going on here? We’ll find out at as the book progresses.

Next we get some ‘I can’t breathe’ panels of horribleness, with some order followers doing what order followers always do, and a young boy possibly being radicalised by the control system that shouldn’t be as he witnesses scenes of order follower (cop) violence.

Next there is some sex stuff that involves a bloke released from Gitmo. He’s innocent, messed up, and it’s sex stuff. He’s sad and confused, as you would expect him to be, but the sex stuff felt a bit over the top, a bit too outrageous, just for the sake of being outrageous, but that’s opinion. I’m not a fan of the weird sex stuff in ‘adult’ comics. Bottom line, I don’t think that it’s necessary.

Then we get some real world horribleness again, with some panels showing a young boy being interrogated in that Chicago black site called ‘Homan Square.’ Hey, it’s order followers just doing what they do. You vote for a master, you get a goon in a black uniform that’s how it works. That’s democracy, suckers.

Then Chomsky (his name is Julius Shore in this book) gets an email. The email claims to be from the, ‘First artificial human intelligence on earth,’ and finally, amidst the sex stuff and sadness we have some semblance of plot. There’s no connection between the characters as of yet, but at least something interesting appears to be happening.

The book then goes to the self obsessed girl and her movie, hints more about the radicalisation of the young boy, and concludes with the sad Gitmo bloke wanting to have a chat with the girl he pays for sex. It’s a weird ending, but then again, I guess it was supposed to be.

So, what do I make of it all? Look at the subject matter: Gitmo, Police brutality, the radicalisation of youth, useless academic careerism, human life being defined by ‘Market Value,’ and the vague notion that things have to change, if not, we might as well not bother getting out of bed in the morning.

That’s my kind of stuff, the kind of stuff that I talk about on my blog, and in real life, and the kind of stuff that results in one overwhelming reaction.

That reaction being, indifference.

I’m a reality junkie, writing about a genre (comic books) that has an audience of hard working people, busy people (it’s a theme in this book) that have no time for my reality/truth nonsense, and would rather spend their free time reading about superheroes, and cool stuff that reminds them of when they were happy, when they were children.

I can understand that. I can understand the need to escape for ten minutes from a life that sucks. People that know me in the real world, the people that I meet at work and out and about, they don’t really like me. I know. It’s no secret. I’m not a popular guy.

People see me as somebody with too much time on his hands. They see me as somebody who does too much thinking, and not enough working. They dislike me because I jumped off the career, jumped off relationships, jumped off of the endlessly moving airport treadmill (goes back and forwards, but never up) way of living my life. They would like me more if I was more like them, if I stopped writing, stopped thinking, and instead spent all of my day working in a job, any job, just as long as I don’t have this wicked ‘too much time’ on my hands.

That is a mindset, and it’s nicely summed up by writer Fiona Duncan in her essay at the conclusion of this book. (Fooled you. I didn’t hate it. I just thought that it was too long). Here we go:

‘Everything has to be sacrificed to an abstract growth of money, and of value, of nothing. This is madness. This philosophy of the deregulated (neo-liberal) economy where everybody is demanded to give CEASELESSLY in order to survive.’

She borrows quotations from a Marxist (Boo) academic called Francis ‘Bifo’ Berardi, to make her point, but even though I have no time whatsoever for dusty old discredited Marxists, I have to recognise a point well made.

The problem that we have (as a whole) is a mindset problem. We have been taught through our schooling and mainstream media programming (funded by the neoliberal, free-market rulers of our time) that our value as people lies not in our actual inherent qualities as decent, moral human beings, but in our ability to maximise our own profit potentials.

This has turned money into a god, and humanity into a slave to that false god. I talk about the New World Order, and people hate me for it. I talk about governmental control systems (like Marxism) and people hate me for it. They want me to shut up, get a proper career job and to stop talking, please stop talking, just stop talking. They want me to join them, and I understand. The system, the society that has been created around them is all about joining, about maximising your earning potential, and when somebody like myself refuses to play the game, it makes them question the game that they are spending their entire life engaging with.

So what did I think of the book?

I thought that it had ideas that somebody like myself could interact with. It is a very different book, because it’s slow, and it has real world issues in it. I didn’t like the sex stuff, but sex sells, so I understand. Hang on. A book with themes that concern the maximising of earning potential includes a weird sex angle that reads very much itself like the maximising of earning potential. Is that ironic? What did Alanis say? Oh, she was wrong, yeah, funny.

Anyway, it’s not the sex that interests me about this book, it’s the ideas, or the possibility at least of ideas being discussed at all. The essay at the close of the book was a very good idea. It created more scope for thought, for ideas, for somebody like myself to interact with.

Here’s the problem, and I’ve hinted about it during this review.

Material #1 is a book that somebody like me is bound to enjoy and give a positive rating to, but do you know how many people I’ve met in my life who are like me?

Just one, and yeah, obviously, it’s me.

The book is talking about ideas, about the real world, about how messed up it is, about how we need to stop sleep walking through life and start doing something other than making money. Comic books largely cater towards the sleeping sections of society, the workers, the careerists, and the young people that want to join the money making, anti-human system themselves.

I enjoyed the book, and I’ll keep on reading. It intrigued me, it helped me to think, but in a comic book world largely dominated by fanboys/girls who want to chill-out and not think at all, how many other people will be up for this one? I’m the one comic book reviewer who is guaranteed to like this book, but I really do worry about what the other reviews are going to say about it. *

Rating: 9/10 (A rare book, worth checking out)


* Just checked the other reviews. There’s not many. The majority of the reviews gave the book a low rating and didn’t appear to understand it. It’s not surprising, as the mindset that the book is addressing is the same mindset of the comic book reviewers themselves.