Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Channel Zero is the kind of comic I’d give to people who don’t like comics. It’s not a gratuitous spandex book, where the characters consist of women with outsized breasts and men with torsos too large for their spines. It’s not drawn in a cartoony style by someone who’s grown up idolising Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. Most importantly, it’s not for kids.

What Channel Zero is, is a distinctly adult book by someone who is obviously an artist, rather than a professional. There’s a political message that is being actively put across by Channel Zero, both visually and textually, that can be appreciated by anyone open-minded enough to read it.

The book is done entirely in black and white, with a lot of negative space, and almost totally avoiding the use of traditional panels. Visually, it’s about as far from an issue of Spider-Man as you can get in the medium. Wood mixes photomanipulation into his art so that at times, it gets hard to see where the reality ends and the comic begins. Through most of the book, two, sometimes three narratives run simultaneously through different means, and though they all tie together in some way, you can almost go through the book reading just one part. That said, it’s not an easy book to read, even (if not especially, given the departure from the norm) for someone accustomed to the usual visual cues of comics, but it is certainly rewarding - the political current of Channel Zero pulls you along making the specifics of the story almost unnecessary. Channel Zero isn’t about Jennie 2.5 and her attempt to run a pirate TV station, it’s about media manipulation and freedom of expression, about the supression of rights and the necessity of exercising them.

Ironically, Channel Zero is a story that quite possibly wouldn’t even be allowed today, were it published in another medium. Since it was written, certain national governments have empowered its authorities to arrest and detain anyone who displays the kind of views Channel Zero expresses - Jennie 2.5 is, make no mistake, a terrorist who attacks the US government - the Timothy McVeigh of television. Jennie One, the Channel Zero prequel, goes back in time to the formation and passing of the “Clean Act”, conceived initially for Channel Zero as an ultra-paranoid bill to keep terrorism under control and stop the spread of anti-government propaganda, which is taken to extremes and used to arrest anyone for any reason, it’s now far too close to becoming a reality.

Jennie One explores the recent political climate metaphorically within the Channel Zero universe. It shows how Jennie, an artist, goes from being a top class student to a criminal, simply because the Clean Act changes the standards by which she is judged, rather than because of how she changes when it is introduced. Where Channel Zero is clearly set in a future close to, but not our own, Jennie One actively shows how close the link is. State-sponsored street-level executions aside, Jennie One requires nothing to be interpreted unbelievably far - the registering of immigrants and the censorship of certain works serves as a credible link between the current political situation and the previously hyperbolic extension of that, as seen in Channel Zero.

Perhaps working best as a companion piece to Channel Zero, Jennie One is, if nothing else, too short by half. Visually it’s not as forward as Channel Zero, but it works well as an introduction to that style of art, the look of the story evolves towards Channel Zero over the course of things.

On its own, Jennie One is a story about not giving in, about finding your place in society, and about activism. On its own, Channel Zero is about information and the necessity of expression. Taken together, they are a guidebook about how the current political situation could lead to an almost dystopic era of freedom. When Channel Zero wrote about the christian right taking control of America, it was far to early to know how prophetic it was being. When Jennie One writes about riots in New York and the prevention of terrorism being used as an excuse to take any remotely political view opposing established society and use it as an excuse to lock you up, even kill you, one can only hope that it’s not as astute as its predecessor.

The Channel Zero universe is an inspiring piece of work. Anyone interested in media manipulation and the political trends of the post-millennial climate would do well to read from it. Will you like it? If you’re a fan of Fight Club, if worry we’re heading into an Orwellian future, if you think that your country is being run by madmen, then you will identify with what Channel Zero is saying. Of course you will like it. The real question is can you be like it?

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