Shooting War

Overview

The global war on terror is raging out of control. The president is popping Prozac. And the #1 selling videogame in 2011 America is the terrorist-simulator Infidel Massacre: Los Angeles. On the streets of gentrified Brooklyn, videoblogger Jimmy Burns' latest anti-corporate rant is cut short by a terrorist bombing of a Starbucks...but his live feed isn't. When his dramatic footage is uploaded by Global News ("Your home for 24-hour terror coverage") and rebroadcast across the planet, the obscure blogger is transformed into an overnight media sensation. The next thing he knows he's on a Black Hawk helicopter inbound for Baghdad, working for the same mainstream media monster he once loathed. Burns soon finds that everyone from his ratings-ravenous network overlords to Special Ops troops with messianic complexes to a charismatic band of tech-savvy jihadists all want to make him their pawn.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. A scathing near-future satire of the Iraqi occupation that rings with eerie plausibility, this Web comic-to-print hardcover collection follows a cocky young journalist named Jimmy Burns, who finds himself video-blogging across the front lines of Iraq in the year 2011. An accidental Internet celebrity transplanted suddenly to the Baghdad battlefields, Jimmy quickly progresses from arrogant to regretful, then jaded--in short, he is America in Iraq. As the world slowly disintegrates around him, Jimmy finds himself caught between the competing agendas of Muslim insurgents, the American military and a sensational cable news network as they all clamor for blood on the battlefields. Journalist and first-time graphic novelist Lappe takes obvious delight in skewering all three with a whip-smart, left-leaning indictment of both American media and foreign policy that offers little hope and fewer heroes. The bleak prognostications are cut with black humor and a penchant for explosions that keep the narrative moving. The collection adds 110 pages of new content to the Web version, and Goldman's art, a cinematic blend of photography and digital painting, is framed in widescreen panels that lend an air of video documentary to a grim graphic novel that manages to make media--and the truth--seem more fluid than ever. (Nov.)
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Author Information

Bio of Anthony Lappe

SHOOTING WAR creator and writer Anthony Lapp� is Executive Editor of GNN.tv, the web-site for the Guerrilla News Network. He is the co-author of their critically acclaimed book True Lies (Plume, 2004) and the producer of their award-winning Showtime documentary about Iraq, BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge. He has written for The New York Times, the Huffington Post, New York, Vice, and Salon among many others, and has been a producer for MTV News and Fuse. He is a frequent guest on Air America and other radio stations across the country.

Bio of Dan Goldman

No bio available for Dan Goldman.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Grand Central Publishing

Filesize

57.82 MB

Number of Pages

192

eBook ISBN

9780446561259