I know DC Comics’ new title “The Movement”, based on the Occupy encampments that encroached on several cities not long ago, looks like it should not work. After all, who writes a business plan which success is based on selling your product to people who spent more time sitting in their own filth and pooping on police cars than they did earning a living? Of course, if you slather the whole project with re-treaded and tepid hippie-speak, you might bank on a few nostalgia sales.
It’s a book about power. Who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down.
The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence. What if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner?
I honestly don’t know what that second paragraph means except that I’m sure Gail Simone, who will write the books, will somehow find a “racist or homophobic group” to put in her story and that group may well have come connection with a certain revolutionary protest that occurred in Boston. I’m sure the title will do well for a little while. Contrary to their slovenly appearances, those who protested under the Occupy banner were mostly one-percenters themselves. They’ll be happy to give the corporate comic book company their dirty, dirty money.
I wonder, though, what it would take for DC to do a truly brave series on the Occupy movement. Perhaps they could create a storyline in which Batman patrolled the Occupy Wall Street encampment and protected the women there from sexual assault. That would be some revolutionary storytelling, don’t you think?