Today, we're going to see two sides of the opinions of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The first will come from creator Frank Miller - Frank began at Marvel Comics, illustrating two issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, co-starring Daredevil. He then took over the art chores on Daredevil and eventually the scripting chores. Along with Klaus Janson, they brought a new era of greatness to the character. On his second run, Frank had an even greater run, when the character of Daredevil / Matthew Murdoch, lawyer, was broken down to its core elements, when his identity was revealed by his now-junkie girlfriend, Karen Page, for a fix. Frank then moved on to DC Comics, where he created Ronin, retold the history of Batman in Year One, and crafted the last story of the character, set into the future, called The Dark Knight Returns. Moving on to Dark Horse, he created Sin City and 300, which have been adapted as movies.
One of the main themes in Frank's work has been about getting justice, via legal means or otherwise; so it was surprising to find this coming from him:
URL of article: http://frankmillerink.com/2011/11/anarchy
Alan Moore is another creator with a vast body of work, some of which you have been exposed. He was a contributor to fanzines, which led to his being hired to publlish work for Warrior Magazine in the U.K. - the titles he created were V For Vendetta, Marvelman (changed to Miracleman due to a lawsuit from Marvel Comics), D.R. and Quinch, and other characters. Marvel U.K. hired him to write Captain Britain; on the success of this, Alan was hired to write The Swamp Thing for DC Comics. DC would also reprint V For Vendetta in color; Eclipse Comics collected the chapters of Miracleman and continued the story with new artists. In 1985, along with illustrator Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgings, Alan produced Watchmen, the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award. He also wrote Lost Girls, with his wife, Melinda Gebbie; From Hell, with Eddie Campbell (this delved into the story of Jack The Ripper - the movie starred the incomparable Johnny Depp); The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Kevin O'Neill, and many other projects in and out of sequential art. Here is Alan's rebuttal:
URL of article: http://www.honestpublishing.com/news/the-honest-alan-moore-interview-part-2-the-occupy-movement-frank-miller-and-politics/
I think you all know where I stand in regards to the Occupy Wall Street movement, but just in case:
I am no socialist - I've worked in one industry or another for the last 28 years, but one thing I'm sure of is that I'll have to learn to love the taste of Purina if I am dependent on my Social Security check for subsidence.
One disturbing trend has been people being rewarded for not actually producing anything of value (i.e. derivatives). Remember the Enron debacle? If Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and the others involved saw some real penalties, we could have nipped this level of gross malfeasance in the bud. As it was, many other schemes followed, such as Worldcom. Arthur Andersen was actually able to re-market themselves as Accenture.
Amazing - a pile of crap by another name doesn't stink?
Someone brought up an interesting point: if banking rules were followed like park rules, we wouldn't be in this mess.
As the movie Inside Job attempts to illustrate, let's set concrete rules regarding financial transactions, and when they're violated, prosecute, prosecute, PROSECUTE!
It has long past been established, to the point of ridiculousness, that the financial industry cannot be trusted to police itself.
You don't place foxes in charge of guarding henhouses, right?
Our financial institutions are in it for themselves - they have FAILED US.
Our representatives are in it for themselves - they have FAILED US.
Our judicial system turns a blind eye to their continuing attempts to game the system, while throwing away the key
on We The People at every opportunity - they have FAILED US.
As Alan said, we need to wrest away the steering wheel from them, because they're driving towards oblivion with
blinders on. All they can see is QUICK PROFITS.
You constantly hear about mega-mergers, with the downsizing of "redundant" jobs; what you don't hear about is what
happens to those "downsized".
Many of them are your brothers; your sisters, your mothers; your fathers; your cousins; your best friends - and they're out there, getting pepper-sprayed; being brutalized; being maligned - and all they (and all we want) want is OUR FAIR SHARE.
We The People are NOT asking for "handouts"; after all, that's what the big banks got...and in excess of SIXTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS.
The first will come from creator Frank Miller - Frank began at Marvel Comics, illustrating two issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, co-starring Daredevil. He then took over the art chores on Daredevil and eventually the scripting chores. Along with Klaus Janson, they brought a new era of greatness to the character. On his second run, Frank had an even greater run, when the character of Daredevil / Matthew Murdoch, lawyer, was broken down to its core elements, when his identity was revealed by his now-junkie girlfriend, Karen Page, for a fix. Frank then moved on to DC Comics, where he created Ronin, retold the history of Batman in Year One, and crafted the last story of the character, set into the future, called The Dark Knight Returns. Moving on to Dark Horse, he created Sin City and 300, which have been adapted as movies.
One of the main themes in Frank's work has been about getting justice, via legal means or otherwise; so it was surprising to find this coming from him:
ANARCHY
posted 11.7.2011
Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense:
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached - is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.
This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.
Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.
Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.
And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently - must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh - out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.
In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.
Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.
They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.
Schmucks.
FM
URL of article: http://frankmillerink.com/2011/11/anarchy
Alan Moore is another creator with a vast body of work, some of which you have been exposed. He was a contributor to fanzines, which led to his being hired to publlish work for Warrior Magazine in the U.K. - the titles he created were V For Vendetta, Marvelman (changed to Miracleman due to a lawsuit from Marvel Comics), D.R. and Quinch, and other characters. Marvel U.K. hired him to write Captain Britain; on the success of this, Alan was hired to write The Swamp Thing for DC Comics. DC would also reprint V For Vendetta in color; Eclipse Comics collected the chapters of Miracleman and continued the story with new artists. In 1985, along with illustrator Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgings, Alan produced Watchmen, the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award. He also wrote Lost Girls, with his wife, Melinda Gebbie; From Hell, with Eddie Campbell (this delved into the story of Jack The Ripper - the movie starred the incomparable Johnny Depp); The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Kevin O'Neill, and many other projects in and out of sequential art. Here is Alan's rebuttal:
On the Occupy Movement, Frank Miller and Politics
With the Occupy movement, it seems you and Frank Miller have conflicting views. Would you say that he’s against it and you’re for it?
Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided.
I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time. Since I don’t have anything to do with the comics industry, I don’t have anything to do with the people in it. I heard about the latest outpourings regarding the Occupy movement. It’s about what I’d expect from him.
It’s always seemed to me that the majority of the comics field, if you had to place them politically, you’d have to say centre-right. That would be as far towards the liberal end of the spectrum as they would go. I’ve never been in any way, I don’t even know if I’m centre-left. I’ve been outspoken about that since the beginning of my career. So yes I think it would be fair to say that me and Frank Miller have diametrically opposing views upon all sorts of things, but certainly upon the Occupy movement.
As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.
What do you think needs to change in our political system?
Everything. I believe that what’s needed is a radical solution, by which I mean from the roots upwards. Our entire political thinking seems to me to be based upon medieval precepts. These things, they didn’t work particularly well five or six hundred years ago. Their slightly modified forms are not adequate at all for the rapidly changing territory of the 21st Century.
We need to overhaul the way that we think about money, we need to overhaul the way that we think about who’s running the show. As an anarchist, I believe that power should be given to the people, to the people whose lives this is actually affecting. It’s no longer good enough to have a group of people who are controlling our destinies. The only reason they have the power is because they control the currency. They have no moral authority and, indeed, they show the opposite of moral authority.
In the sixth issue of Dodgem Logic, I remember doing an article and I was trying to think of possible ways in which our society might be altered for the better. I’m not saying that any of these ways would necessarily be practical but it’s important that we try to think these things through. It’s probably more important now than it ever has been. There is a sense that we don’t have an infinite amount of time to get these things right.
With politics at the moment seemingly determined to keep ploughing on their same destructive course because they can’t think of anything other to do, when we’re facing the possibility of an economic apocalypse, of potentially an environmental apocalypse, we don’t necessarily have an infinite amount of time. I think that since our leaders are not going to address any of these problems then we really have no choice than to attempt to wrest the steering wheel from them. If they’re aiming at the precipice with the accelerator pedal flat to the floor, then we don’t have any other choices left. Do it now, in this generation, because we don’t how many more there’s going to be.
The economic problem is a strange one…
Economics is always strange. You’re not talking about anything that’s actually real. Researching a chapter for Jerusalem, I read a couple of books on economics to see if I could get my head around the facts of the situation.
I was astonished when I found out the value of derivative bonds, in 2008. These are bonds that have a value in themselves that were once connected to a real thing, there might have been a bond made for the sale of a herd of sheep, but that can be sold on and they gain in value. The notional value of the world’s derivative bonds was in the region of sixty trillion. Exactly ten times the economic output of the entire planet, which is around six trillion. That means that the gap between what economists and what the world’s economic forces and the banks thought they had to play with and what actually existed was fifty-four trillion. That would seem to me the depth of the hole we are in.
So something has to be done about that. I would suggest beheading the bankers, but while it would be very satisfying and would cheer us up, it probably wouldn’t do anything practical to alter the situation. Behead the currency. Change the currency, why not? It would disempower all the people who had bought into that currency but it would pretty much empower the rest of us, the other ninety-nine percent.
URL of article: http://www.honestpublishing.com/news/the-honest-alan-moore-interview-part-2-the-occupy-movement-frank-miller-and-politics/
I think you all know where I stand in regards to the Occupy Wall Street movement, but just in case:
I am no socialist - I've worked in one industry or another for the last 28 years, but one thing I'm sure of is that I'll have to learn to love the taste of Purina if I am dependent on my Social Security check for subsidence.
One disturbing trend has been people being rewarded for not actually producing anything of value (i.e. derivatives). Remember the Enron debacle? If Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and the others involved saw some real penalties, we could have nipped this level of gross malfeasance in the bud. As it was, many other schemes followed, such as Worldcom. Arthur Andersen was actually able to re-market themselves as Accenture.
Amazing - a pile of crap by another name doesn't stink?
Someone brought up an interesting point: if banking rules were followed like park rules, we wouldn't be in this mess.
As the movie Inside Job attempts to illustrate, let's set concrete rules regarding financial transactions, and when they're violated, prosecute, prosecute, PROSECUTE!
It has long past been established, to the point of ridiculousness, that the financial industry cannot be trusted to police itself.
You don't place foxes in charge of guarding henhouses, right?
Our financial institutions are in it for themselves - they have FAILED US.
Our representatives are in it for themselves - they have FAILED US.
Our judicial system turns a blind eye to their continuing attempts to game the system, while throwing away the key
on We The People at every opportunity - they have FAILED US.
As Alan said, we need to wrest away the steering wheel from them, because they're driving towards oblivion with
blinders on. All they can see is QUICK PROFITS.
You constantly hear about mega-mergers, with the downsizing of "redundant" jobs; what you don't hear about is what
happens to those "downsized".
Many of them are your brothers; your sisters, your mothers; your fathers; your cousins; your best friends - and they're out there, getting pepper-sprayed; being brutalized; being maligned - and all they (and all we want) want is OUR FAIR SHARE.
We The People are NOT asking for "handouts"; after all, that's what the big banks got...and in excess of SIXTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS.
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