David Rees Gets Your War On
By Adam Jones
If you haven't heard of Get Your War On, then you probably haven't been reading the Indy. Welcome to your first issue. There's usually a GYWO comic on the second page. This issue contains this focus article because David Rees, the comic's author, will visit ISU on November 26 at 3pm in the Bone Student Center Circus Room to read from his new Get Your War On collection. He will also show slides, sign (and sell) copies of his book, and present a short video on what's being done to eliminate the worldwide crisis caused by landmines (a crisis largely caused by the U.S. military).
Rees, a New York City office temp, began posting his Get Your War On strips online one month after September 11. Emails quickly passed the URL across the Internet, and even mainstream new sources, like NPR, Rolling Stone, and Newsweek (Newsweek?!), have by now run articles.
Last summer, Rees collected many of the strips into a limited (1000 copy) edition booklet, the profits from which he donated to Adopt-A-Minefield (www.landmines.org), a group run by the United Nations Association of the USA, the Better World Fund, and the United Nations.
Adopt-A-Minefield passed GYWO monies to Mine Detection & Dog Center Team #5, currently at work removing landmines from the mess that is Western Afghanistan.
Last month, the Brooklyn-based activist publishing group Soft Skull Press reprinted the comic collection in a 15,000-copy edition that includes extra, unpublished strips and an introduction by the Pulitzer Prize Finalist novelist Colson Whitehead. Rees is again donating his profits to Adopt-A-Minefield; Soft Skull will also donate a percentage of the sales. Throughout the past year, Rees has raised money for de-mining efforts not only by selling books but by playing benefit concerts with his band the Skeleton Killers, hosting book signings, and displaying his drawings in galleries. Like the Vancouver-based independent rock band Mecca Normal, he's demonstrating how artists can successfully combine their work with activism.
Rees has worked for many years now as an office temp, creating his clip-art comics with company software and printers (a good example of something Jello Biafra mentioned during his visit on October 25: tech-sector corporate sabotage.) Besides in the pages of the Indy, you can read GYWO at Rees' site, (www.mnftiu.cc), which contains the latest GYWO strips, info on the de-mining team, fan fiction, fan fiction about fan fiction, fan artwork, a weblog, fan fiction about the weblog, and other comic strips. ("MNFTIU" stands for two other very funny David Rees comics, My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable and My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable.)
I find Rees's GYWO comics giddily tragic, and see in them what I think is an important warning for anyone outraged by fundamentalist terrorism and the U.S. government's terrorist war on terrorism, as well as by other issues Rees touches on, such as the Enron scandal and Exxon's complete disregard for human life.
One overarching message of the comics, I believe, is the ineffectiveness of continuous verbal critique when not matched by action. In strip after strip the GYWO characters, outraged and profane, decry the insanities of their (and our) world. But they remain frozen, their protest limited to curses, alcoholism, masturbation, binge eating, and pulling their hair out.
Built by the repeated image of horrified office workers talking on phones and sitting before computers is the following warning: the real elimination of terrorism, the end of U.S. imperialism, and the defense of civil liberties and human rights are battles that cannot be won if we remain isolated; they are battles that will not be won by swearing over the phone or surfing the Internet. Yes, it makes us feel better, and, yes, we need to vent. But activism-hell, concerned citizenship-must not stop there.
David Rees has helped get the critical war on. I'm pleasantly surprised (somewhat stunned, actually) that his work has struck such a nerve with so many people. It's satisfying to know that so many others are unsatisfied with the official venues for mourning and "rolling" on (to endless war and war profiteering).
But what's next? The final comic panel in the collection sees a character stunned into silence, I think, not only by the insanity of the Bush family's murderous desperation for Iraqi oil but also by her co-workers' desperate joking. "Is this truly the only earth I can live on?" she wonders. Is a U.S. at war with Iraq the only U.S. we can live in? Is a world of the Patriotic Act and T.I.P.S. the only U.S. we can live in? Is war the only thing we can get on? Well, is it?
