Mike Dawson
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A Year of Making Comics - Update 2
🕑 Added 2023-01-06 17:21:50 +0000 UTC
I have an idea for some kind of comic, but I'm not sure what exactly it should be just yet. I think I mentioned in the first one of these updates that I've been experiencing a touch of cartoonist's block. I drew these four panels above as a way to maybe find my way into whatever this thing will be.
1984
A joke I'm going to make in this strip, which also happens to be true, is that I re-read about half of "1984" fairly recently, so I am an expert on it. I like George Orwell's essays more than his novels, the re-read was impeded by the fact that I wasn't being, like, entertained. 1984 is a book we all feel like we know, and having had read it a few times over the years, but not remembering the exact details, I felt like, OK, I got the gist.
Now that I want to make a comic touching upon it, I might want to think about getting through the rest of the book.
Make Orwell Fiction Again
My assumption about whoever owns the truck that had this sticker on it is likely thinking about it from a right-wing perspective. Lots of reactionaries have claimed George Orwell in the years since at least 2016. That's when I started noticing 1984 book covers showing up in right-wing friends-of-friends Facebook avatars back when I used to regularly engage in online arguing with strangers. That said, it's not just the right who want to claim George Orwell, there's that "Make Orwell Fiction Again" meme that presumably comes more from the #Resistance/Donald Drumpf crowd.
Whoever Controls the Past
Lots of parts of 1984 ring true to our present day, but not all. The obliteration of any shared sense of concrete "truth", for sure. "Two minutes of hate", the upside-down "Peace Means War", all sorts of stuff I was absolutely nodding along with during that re-read.
But, whenever I see the reactionaries claiming Orwell (and I think when they claim Orwell, they're basically just claiming "1984", and just to add one more small aside, I suspect they've never actually read the book), I think the bit they're attracted to is the concept of an all-powerful all-seeing "Big Brother", and they themselves as the one individual who alone sees and perhaps dares to speak "the truth". This stuff drives me up the wall.
The Jokes
I started writing out the actual jokes I've got in mind for this comic, but I think there's a reason I'm a cartoonist, not a writer of essays. What I want to do is poke fun of the idea of the lone truth-teller in a world where the most highly rated cable news show on television parrots every same wing-nut idea these guys are so bravely daring to think.
When I post next week, I'll hopefully have a bit more progress on a comic made, and perhaps a better idea of what I might do with a piece on this topic.
Comments
Drew
I haven't read 1984 since high school, now a couple decades ago, but remember it being my favorite book at the time. I recently acquired a new copy I'm excited to check out because it contains both annotations by Orwell biographer D.J. Taylor as well as a few essays Orwell wrote around the same time he was writing the book.
