Gallery: Topical Comics Tackle Israel, Cuba, New Orleans
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Comics like Cuba: My Revolution, Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story and How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less explore geopolitical controversy using pretty pictures rather than dense historical text. Vertigo's topical titles have arrived in a cluster bomb: [Dark Rain](http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/graphic_novels/?gn=15047) fell in August, [Cuba: My Revolution](http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/graphic_novels/?gn=15267) hits Tuesday and [How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less](http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/graphic_novels/?gn=15627) launches Nov. 3. But does the complexity of the real-life situations the comics depict get lost in translation, or will they pack as much impact as their hard-hitting predecessors like Art Spiegelman's [Maus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus) and Joe Sacco's [Palestine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_%28comics%29)? We asked the comics' respective writers in the gallery above, probing their desire to dissect historical tragedy for a publisher better known for hawking superheroes in tights. Click through and let us know in the comments section below if the comics stack up, or if serious-minded graphic novels should stand down.
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In writer Inverna Lockpez and artist Dean Haspiel's Cuba: My Revolution, a young woman becomes a medic in Fidel Castro's army, and learns universal constants about our idol (or is that idle?) worship. "The book talks about our fatal flaw, which is the unwillingness to think that our heroes are also sinners," Lockpez told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "We are fools, but we are also gods. And in the majority of situations, we rise to the occasion."
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Cuba: My Revolution is based on Lockpez's personal experience and features evocative, sometimes deep-red, illustration by Haspiel, who has collaborated with Harvey Pekar and whose art appears at length in the second season of HBO's Bored to Death. It was a suitable combination, said Lockpez. "I'm a visual artist that thinks in shapes and forms," she told Wired.com. "I pictured this book in scenes of baroque architecture, palm trees, alligators, '50s cars, uniforms, rifles, guns and blood." The only thing missing was the men and women in tights, and for good reason. "Superheroes in tropical countries don’t wear tights," said Lockpez. "They go natural. Although you will see many military boots in my story, thigh boots didn’t come along until the '70s."
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[Hurricane Katrina](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_katrina) drowned the '00s in enviropocalypse. Incognegro writer Mat Johnson and artist Simon Gane's Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story tries to lighten that existential load with a story about two ex-cons planning a bank robbery right in the middle of the decade's worst environmental disaster. "I wanted the reader \[to\] really feel what Katrina meant, in a way that wasn't preachy but enthralling," Johnson told Wired.com in an e-email. "The heist thriller offers a lot of space to deal with other interesting things along the ride."
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Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story is something of a metafictional exercise: Johnson's family was temporarily displaced by [Hurricane Ike](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike) while he was writing it. The graphic novel has since passed into hyper-reality overload after BP's devastating [Deepwater Horizon spill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill) in the evidently blessed and cursed Gulf of Mexico. "Some days, I wake up down here invigorated by the natural and cultural wealth of the Gulf Coast," Johnson said. "Other days I wake up and think, 'We're doomed.'"
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Johnson doesn't want superheroes to step in and save him and the Gulf Coast. Unlike the world of Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story, they are a complete fantasy -- and wouldn't come if he called. "The biggest comics cliche left is that America still thinks they're only about superheroes," Johnson explained. "That's been over since Maus. A huge segment of literate America knows that now, and is diving in."
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A memoir written and water-colored by Sarah Glidden, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less tackles religious and cultural birth-righteousness in Earth's most charged region. Although her imagery is rougher than that of her smoother Vertigo counterparts, she's just interested in getting along, thanks very much. "I’ve had friends ask me why on Earth I would write a book about something as controversial as the situation in Israel, and it’s a question that I don’t really have an answer to," Glidden told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "I’m not the kind of person who likes writing about hot-button issues just to get people riled up."
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Glidden wrote the book after making a pilgrimage to Israel, and caught a glimpse of a geopolitical thicket twisted with complexity. "I think sometimes we fall for the trap of approaching a complex issue as if it’s a sporting event, and all you need to do is cheer for the right team," Glidden said. "I hope my book can convey the message that it's OK to be comfortable in the murky gray area with Team Curious Ambivalence."
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Glidden's painterly riff on identity politics and cultural assumption is more benevolent than the jagged punk journo approach perfect by [Joe Sacco's Palestine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_%28comics%29). But she's got DIY roots of her own: How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less was originally a self-published mini-comic series before its discovery at a [Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art](http://www.moccany.org) festival in New York. "My book is about the experience of traveling to a new place and being confronted by new ways of thinking," she said. "But I’m not interested in telling people what they should think. They can make up their own minds." For her part, she's far from an optimist when it comes to Israel. "'Concerned' would be putting it lightly," she said. "If you keep up with the news coming out of Israel and the occupied territories, it can drive you nuts."
