Get Your War On by David Rees

(Soft Skull Press)

Alright, here's the problem: in a perfect world, cartoonist David Rees wouldn't have a job. His cartoons, political in the way it's a political gesture when you call someone you don't like a fag or when you fill up your SUV with gas from Exxon, wouldn't be funny in a perfect world. In that perfect world, the hilarity of the unspeakable obviousness of how terror becomes quixotic wouldn't be anything more than silly. Then again, there is an unelected junta in the White House, civil rights are literally as endangered as the most threatened species of life on the planet, and we've been asked, by leaders we've supposedly elected (will whoever actually voted for Norm Coleman now stand up? Who are you? Do you only exist one day every four years?), to live our lives on a color-coded scale of fear. Anybody red yet?

Rees is. He's been red since October 9th, 2001, when his first strip premiered online. And what did he give us? Crappy clip art, silly white guys speaking into telephones in their offices, speaking in slang, and swearing so goddamned much it was sad because wouldn't great granny Thea just get a hoot out of it if every other word wasn't some derivation of fuck? She damn well would. Mom too? Of course: cussing fun for the whole family was what Rees was practicing. Cussing fun with some of the most bullshit free commentary being practiced anywhere in those first months post-terror. And what did he title his brilliance? Get Your War On.

It was from the first minute, and has continued to be with each installment (all online, still, with more added by the week, go and find it), brilliant satire, the sort of boot-to-the-gut brashness that we needed when the veil of "with or against us" descended and everyone choked on their pretzels. Rees is so terribly good and effective with his comics because he's so absolutely honest. No pretty witticisms fancified here—the whole glut is bursting with all the hyper/postmodern/meta commentary we all, simply by virtue of living in a culture where we supposedly spend double-digit hours in front of the TV per week, understand more quickly than any Dick and Jane stuff.

You want Voltron? Got it. Discussion of Jihad on Mars? Check. Digressions range from themes including, but of course not limited to, whether or not the United State's military's bombs are hollow, how many pain killers are too many pain killers, the weakened economy and the very real (but of course too prosaic for much newspaper or governmental coverage) effects said economy has had on all us 'patriots' in whose name a war machine has been primed, the appropriate age for a child to have to learn who really, between Sadam Hussein and GW Bush, is the head motherfucker, the goofy wonderfulness of an entire world split over just who/what this one god really is, and what it is she wants.

In short: everything. All those scary little gnawing thoughts that you either kept mum about or just whispered because you couldn't really find a way to articulate how overwhelmingly confused you were to begin with. I mean really, how does anyone talk about Hussein and his theoretical weapons of mass destruction? If he's got any, we gave them to him and then, surprise surprise, quit paying him attention when our needs shifted. Who doesn't wonder how it can be that no one from either the CIA or FBI has been fired for what is, um, maybe, you know, the most horrible, stupid, blatantly ignorant intelligence failure since some doped guard was hanging at the gates of Troy and thought the huge pretty wooden horse was just some peaceful gift?

Rees has captured all of that, and more, with nothing but clip art and some of the funniest, most biting, most direct language available. The swearing, after the first few pages, makes all the sense in the world: when the world starts working like ours began to that day a little more than a year ago, who's to say that the word 'fuck' can really mean anything at all? What do you need by way of permission to start laughing at terrified people trying to make sense of the insanity around them? A sky to fall? Really? Again? Well...

And here comes the doctor now, with the bad news: that perfect world isn't coming, no time soon anyway, and more than likely the world we've got has terminal Bushism, which is a new, extremely virulent bug they can't figure out yet. The specialists so far can only tell that there seems to be a cheer leading group, almost like an advisory board, for whatever this bug is, and the board works together to tell the bug which cell to strike next. And even when it seems like the Bush bug doesn't win, somehow the board makes it look that way. The specialists are scared. We're all scared.

There are still a couple options. Vote. Freak out. Read more. Specifically David Rees, online or in print, in bed our under it. Laugh. And then find your voice and add it to the chorus of all the other confused, crazy ones already building.

- Weston Cutter

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