Illustrator-journalist Susie Cagle shares news about a new tablet magazine of comics journalism, Symbolia, that launches Monday, Dec. 3, and includes some of Cagle's own excellent work. Symbolia editor Erin Polgreen explains,

Graphic novel-style investigative journalism now has a home and its name is Symbolia. This Mon. 12/3, the premier, double-length edition of Symbolia will be available for the iPad in the App Store. The first edition includes work by Susie Cagle, Sarah Glidden, Andy Warner, and more, and will be available next week for free. Symbolia subscriptions cost $11.99 for a six editions over the next year, or $2.99 for a single issue. Each issue of Symbolia is packed with ground-breaking, insightful stories by world-class illustrators and journalists, plus stunning info-graphics, video reports, exclusive audio, and more.

At Cartoon Movement, "graphic journalist" Susie Cagle (Twitter) surveys the impact of recent DEA raids of medical marijuana centers, and legal attacks against Harborside and the like, in 'Down In Smoke'. The work includes sound clips, which is brilliant.

Oakland, California. Ground zero for a medical marijuana fight between states and the federal government that has only been heating up. Incorporating real audio from activists, Cagle portrays what "feels like class war" as local growers, patients and city officials fight against losing their jobs, medicine, and tax revenue.

The whole thing is here, and it's fantastic. Susie has done some of the best reporting I've seen of the Occupy movement and related protests in America—she's been jailed and injured for it. The fact that her reporting is focused through the medium of comics is just so innovative and cool. She takes true risks for her reporting, and what comes out of it is insightful, informative, and funny. I just love her work.

[Video Link] A fine short interview with the talented Owen Brozman, who illustrated Nature of the Beast, a graphic novel written by Adam Mansbach, who also wrote the mega-hit faux-kids' book Go the F**k to Sleep.

I have not yet read Nature of the Beast, but the description is intriguing:

An alien race of religious extremists plan to honor their deity through the ritualistic annihilation of our planet. The only man who knows this is Milan Marlowe, an unstoppable media baron who sees opportunity everywhere.

Earth’s only move is to engage the invaders according to their holy law and issue The Challenge of the Heretic—a winner-take-all gladiator battle for our right to exist. Marlowe launches Beast Wars, a televised interspecies tournament designed to select Earth’s mightiest champion. On a decadent private island, sharks, lions, gorillas, and polar bears square off to the delight of screaming fans oblivious to the sky-high stakes.

Enter Bruno Bolo—single father, blues belter, and alligator wrestler from the swamps of Florida. Beset by personal demons, corporatized killer sharks, Yeats-quoting pit fighters, and looming alien eradicators, Bruno will emerge as our desperate planet’s final hope.

Free States Rising is the 11th (and penultimate) collection of Brian Wood's masterful (anti-)war comic, DMZ. Wood has spent the past half-decade spinning this tightly plotted, gripping, and sardonic adventure story about a second American civil war fought in Manhattan, told from the point-of-view of Matty Roth, a reporter who becomes part of the story. DMZ is a textbook example of how science fiction can provide just enough distance between the real world and the reader to allow for a critique that is trenchant, but never strident. So here in volume 11, we have drone-wars, austerity, conspiracy and crass media manipulation, and it's all allegorical as hell, but since none of it constitutes an actual accusation about the actual world with its actual wars, it's possible to consider it all at arm's length and realize a) how profoundly screwed up Wood's world is, and b) how like our own it is.

If you've been following DMZ for all these years, volume 11 will not disappoint, as Wood crashes towards what promises to be a tremendous finish. This volume also contains a two-part short prequel to the series, explaining something of the origin of the "Free States Army," one of the factions in the DMZ story. Here's my reviews of the previous volumes.

DMZ Vol. 11: Free States Rising

As reviewed in Gweek - Tom Gauld's tragic, darkly funny retelling of David and Goliath from Goliath's perspective. Gauld's work is always quietly powerful and emotionally grabbing. Here's a seven-page taste of the new graphic novel, which is presented in a beautiful hardcover format from Drawn & Quarterly

Buy Goliath on Amazon

Donovan Leitch and I were together during the holidays of the year 2000, I think it was. We had been discussing the Hip-Hop movie trend where musicians were having shoot-outs with cops and/or other Hip-Hoppers, drug dealers, gangs and whatnot. We thought it would be interesting to invent a story where this was happening to a rock band. As the night progressed we discovered that we had both been into the Krautrock/German art scene as teenagers, so it evolved into a German electronic band. Well, one that dresses like Laibach. We discussed what scenes would be "awesome" and "rad" and that maybe they should all dress alike and be incredibly resourceful computer and electronic geeks. Then at some point during the night we dropped it and that was that.

Several months later Donno had run across the Baader-Meinhof gang on the internet and began sending me pictures and stories of their exploits of the late '60s and the '70s. It got us interested in the story again so we began putting together an outline, employing the classic Greek "hero's journey" as our narrative structure. Pretty much every story you've read, or movie and TV show you've seen, uses this structure because it just makes sense to the human condition. We began plugging in events from German history as well as inventing drug lords and rival bands and developing the world in which our band would play out their thing.

I was touring with my band at the time so it gave me an opportunity to be in Germany and interview and research those people who were living back then and in that actual world. While in Hamburg (I think), I met with Karl Bartos from Kraftwerk, and he was the one who suggested that the Germany in which the story played out should be fictionalized into a hyper-reality and that it would help make it more interesting than it really was.

We had very nearly finished our first draft when we began pitching it to writers and filmmakers whom we knew and without really being told so, we began to realize that it pretty much sucked. One very successful director/producer whom I was friends with hasn't called me back since. Really.

Well, Donno became a husband and a father and so had absolutely no time for anything else and the whole thing got dropped. It was a couple of years later that I started it up from scratch again in the wee hours of my regularly jet-lagged mornings. I incorporated stories from my own band's experiences and based the four members of One Model Nation on real people with whom I was very familiar and the idiosyncrasies which make them odd and interesting. It took me a few years but eventually I had a full blown tale which fit nicely into a classic structure and was apparently exciting and satisfyingly epic to the people whom I gave it to read.

Buy One Model Nation on Amazon