Liberality For All, Ulra-Conservative Cyberpunk Comic Options

[hyzmarca]

Liberality For All - 8 issue mini series - Color

Synopsis:

America’s future has become an Orwellian nightmare of ultra-liberalism. Beginning with the Gore Presidency, the government has become increasingly dominated by liberal extremists.

In 2004, Muslim terrorists stopped viewing the weakened American government as a threat; instead they set their sights on their true enemies, vocal American conservatives. On one dark day, in 2006, many conservative voices were forever silenced by terrorist assassins. Those which survived joined forces and formed a powerful covert conservative organization called “The Freedom of Information League�, aka F.O.I.L.

The efforts of F.O.I.L. threaten both the liberal extremist power structure and the U.N.’s grip on America, the U.N. calls F.O.I.L. the most dangerous group in the world. It seems the once theorized Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has now become a reality.

The F.O.I.L. Organization is forced underground by the “Coulter Laws� of 2007; these hate speech legislations have made right-wing talk shows, and conservative-slanted media, illegal. Our weakened government has willingly handed the reins of our once great country to the corrupt United Nations. The Department of Political-Correctness is required to assist U.N. monitors to properly edit all print and broadcast media. Live broadcasts are a thing of the past; all transmissions are monitored by the U.N. and any ‘offensive’ material is dumped.

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to defy the “Coulter Laws� hate speech legislations, has bankrupted News Corporation. George Soros has bought all of News Corps assets and changed its name to Liberty International Broadcasting. LIB’s networks have flourished and circle the globe with a series of satellites beaming liberal & U.N. propaganda worldwide.

The New York City faction of F.O.I.L. is lead by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, each uniquely endowed with special abilities devised by a bio mechanical engineer affectionately nicknamed “Oscar�. F.O.I.L. is soon to be joined by a young man named Reagan McGee.

http://accstudios.com/f/synopsis1.htm


Liberality for All takes place in an ultra-liberal cyberpuink dystopia that came about due to Al Gore winning the 2000 Presidential election. The punks in this case are Conservatives who, having been marginalized and outlawed, embrace all of the accoutrements of the counter-culture.

One memorable scene from the first issue involves Sean Hannity, wearing an eyepatch and an obvious right cyberarm and holding a stolen XM-9 rifle in his left hand, tears through the roof of the modified Greyhound bus that served as his mobile broadcast station after knocking out several police officers. He is surrounded by international police from the despotic U.N. World Government and stalls for time while G-Gordon Liddy rushes to the scene. The G-Man arrives wearing a baddass longcoat and riding a baddass motorcycle, jumping the motorcycle onto the roof of the car. Ubber-hacker Hannity deactivates the biometric safety in the rifle before handing it to Liddy, and uses the safety chip to wireless hack all of the rifles of the police officers them while Liddy stalls with a very eloquent speech about how the firearm he is holding is a "weapon" or a "rifle", not a "gun" and should be treated with respect.

[Fabe]

I've heard of that comic, it sounds like a bunch of right wing fear mongering and paranoia, but to be fair there has been more stories about right wing take overs so a comic like this was going to get written sooner or later.

[BlueRondo]

I thought it was all tongue-in-cheek. Is my irony-alarm yielding false positives?

[Wounded Ronin]

I always giggle when I read right-wing people being terrified of the United Nations, and especially when they talk as though removing handguns from American homes is in any way remotely a priority of UN disarmament efforts, which tend to focus on things like landmines.

[Fabe]

I thought it was all tongue-in-cheek. Is my irony-alarm yielding false positives?

Well it might be, I haven't actually read it so maybe it is just tongue-in-cheek fun. But it could be 100% serious which would make it even funnier.

[adamu]

I thought it was all tongue-in-cheek. Is my irony-alarm yielding false positives?

Haven't read it, but the tongue-in-cheek part seems obvious.

That's what satire is.

Johnathan Swift never really intended for anyone to eat babies, but his message was no less serious.

C.S. Lewis did not really think devils organized themselves into polite teacher-pupil tutorials, but his theme was no less heartfelt.

What I'd have to read it to find out is, is the target of their satire the right, or the left, or both (a la South Park: "We hate conservatives, but we fucking hate liberals!")?

[hyzmarca]

I always giggle when I read right-wing people being terrified of the United Nations, and especially when they talk as though removing handguns from American homes is in any way remotely a priority of UN disarmament efforts, which tend to focus on things like landmines.

It isn't the UN per se, but globalization in general (ironically) and the degradation of sovereignty it produces. Many treaties require that their signatories create domestic laws for one reason are another and and US is signatory to many such treaties. Likewise, recent years have seen the creation of some very powerful trans-national, extra-national, and supranational entities. The ICC sets a very broad precident that could potentially lead down a slippery slope to international law enforcement and the mere existence of the European Union proves that the rise of multinational federations within our lifetime is plausible. And multi-national corporations outsourcing to third world countries on top of tis, and it should be easy to see the potential for disaster. International trade begs for the normalization of laws - First trade laws, and then, eventually, other laws too.

While the UN is generally powerless, it is also the most viable entity with the potnetial to become a true world government should a global federalist sentiment take hold. It wouldn't even need to be retooled very much to turn the General Assembly into a legislative body. The WTO is also a possibility, but significantly less viable and less prominent.

Given the state of weapon control laws in most major countries, it is likely that such a federation would adversely affect American firearms owners as well as owners of other sorts of weapons.

I don't think that it is unfair to say that if the UN metamorphasized into a global Federation then it would probably have rather strict gun control laws. I don't think that it is unfair to say that it is unlikely that this will happen, but not impossible, and that some people would like for it to happen. The big leap comes when some people believe that this metamorphosis has already occurred in secret and the UN is just waiting for the right time to make its move, which is obviously insane.

[Fuchs]

The funny thing is that "liberal" in Europe stands for "less government, more personal freedom, only as many laws as needed, etc.".

[adamu]

I don't think that it is unfair to say that if the UN metamorphasized into a global Federation then it would probably have rather strict gun control laws.

I agree. But the irony is that countries where rule of law is locally the weakest make up a majority of votes in the UN general assembly. So you could have (we do have - look at the committee on human rights as just one example) delegates from undeveloped economies forming voting blocs to push laws that will never have a hope of being enforced at home,even if they were inclined to do so.

Strife-ridden countries like Mozambique and Colombia could be voting for gun control, but only relatively peaceful countries like the US or Switzerland would have the necessary institutions to take a half-effective stab at enforcing such regulations. It takes the "if guns are outlawed..." cliche one step deeper into irony, because it will be the outlaws voting to outlaw the guns.

But no - the US hasn't allowed its sovereignty to be totally compromised at this point. It's a slow creep.

[BlueRondo]

What I'd have to read it to find out is, is the target of their satire the right, or the left, or both

That's what I mean. Given their choice of characters (Coulter, Hannity, etc.) and use of September 11th references, I got the impression that they were poking fun at right-wing media tactics more than anyone else.

But then again, maybe the writers really do admire those kinds of people.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Screw Single World governments. What we need is a Multi-World Government that will take all the guns away and abolish any trace of the free market, to the point where we don't even have money anymore. Then, it needs to tax us exorbitantly, and use the revenue to set up star bases and maintain a fleet of primarily scientific and exploratory vessels. Then, after some initial hostilities, we need to use diplomacy and humanitarian aid to end our conflict with the Klingons. This way, we get to see a Shatner on Shatner hand-to-hand, where one of the Shatners is a shapeshifting alien played by David Bowie's girlfriend, and EVERYTHING WILL FINALLY MAKE SENSE.

[Wounded Ronin]

I don't think that it is unfair to say that if the UN metamorphasized into a global Federation then it would probably have rather strict gun control laws. I don't think that it is unfair to say that it is unlikely that this will happen, but not impossible, and that some people would like for it to happen. The big leap comes when some people believe that this metamorphosis has already occurred in secret and the UN is just waiting for the right time to make its move, which is obviously insane.

Well, the strict gun control thing is really more of a European thing, which I blame on the fact they use 9mm pistol cartridges instead of glorious Chuck Norris-esque .45 ACP.

Even if there were a trend towards normalization of laws on an international level that kind of thing would probably be much more workable in Europe, where there's a great deal more cultural homogeniety, than in the US, where I get more culture shock going from New York to Louisiana than I do going from New York to Paris. Here in the US we can't even get the states to agree on uniform laws because there's such enormous demographic and cultural differences on a state to state basis. I think it's pretty laughable to imagine that anyone in the UN would seriously expend the time, energy, and resources on a sysyphisian task like tring to go through a place like the US and collect everyone's handguns, because it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what the UN does and in what contexts. The UN can't even do things that everyone agrees would be a good thing, like prevent agricultural fields from getting mined. The last thing they need to do is create a huge backlash in the US pursuing a goal with limited impact on global public health measures that would be nearly impossible to attain.

That's just common sense, really.

[Stahlseele]

there's this:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/manga_com...ime_style_12378
and then there's something that's not even remotely safe for work so i will only mention it's name and not point at any links: VIVA FREEDOM
the first one is okay and i warned you about the second one *g*

[Wounded Ronin]

there's this:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/manga_com...ime_style_12378
and then there's something that's not even remotely safe for work so i will only mention it's name and not point at any links: VIVA FREEDOM
the first one is okay and i warned you about the second one *g*

Inventor spot?

[Stahlseele]

what? O.o

[paws2sky]

Screw Single World governments. What we need is a Multi-World Government that will take all the guns away and abolish any trace of the free market, to the point where we don't even have money anymore. Then, it needs to tax us exorbitantly, and use the revenue to set up star bases and maintain a fleet of primarily scientific and exploratory vessels. Then, after some initial hostilities, we need to use diplomacy and humanitarian aid to end our conflict with the Klingons. This way, we get to see hot Shatner on Shatner manlove, where one of the Shatners is a shapeshifting alien played by David Bowie's girlfriend, and EVERYTHING WILL FINALLY MAKE SENSE.

Fixed that for you.

[Fuchs]

I can't believe someone honestly thinks Europe is culturally more homogenous than the US. /boggle.

[JonathanC]

Ugh, I heard about this piece of crap years ago. It's not satirical, this jackass is a true believer; he posted on some comics boards a while back. Chelsea Clinton is the President, Michael Moore the VP, and as the story begins, they're organizing some kind of event to apologize to Osama Bin Laden for the "misunderstanding" that was 9/11. I don't even know if I'd call this actual cyberpunk...it's near-future dystopia, but just because one of your characters has a robot arm doesn't mean you've got a valid sub-theme of post/transhumanism in your work. This is probably the nadir of neo-conservative fiction...this, or that book Scooter Libby wrote about 14 year old Geisha trainees being raped by bears.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Fixed that for you.

Oh my bad. That IS what I meant to say. Thanks!

[Wounded Ronin]

Ugh, I heard about this piece of crap years ago. It's not satirical, this jackass is a true believer; he posted on some comics boards a while back. Chelsea Clinton is the President, Michael Moore the VP, and as the story begins, they're organizing some kind of event to apologize to Osama Bin Laden for the "misunderstanding" that was 9/11. I don't even know if I'd call this actual cyberpunk...it's near-future dystopia, but just because one of your characters has a robot arm doesn't mean you've got a valid sub-theme of post/transhumanism in your work. This is probably the nadir of neo-conservative fiction...this, or that book Scooter Libby wrote about 14 year old Geisha trainees being raped by bears.

Poor Chelsea Clinton. She's not even really a politician, but she got dragged into the silly graphic novel as being representative of a political position.

[Wounded Ronin]

I can't believe someone honestly thinks Europe is culturally more homogenous than the US. /boggle.

What? They all use 9mm. Here in the US we use .45 ACP, .357 magnum, .380, and the list goes on and on...

[Fuchs]

What? They all use 9mm. Here in the US we use .45 ACP, .357 magnum, .380, and the list goes on and on...

I think my S&W M686 disagrees with you, as does my StgW90 in 5.6mm. Or my friends 10mm Auto, or his shotgun. Or the 7.6 mm rifles and assault rifles older shooters have.

[Wounded Ronin]

I think my S&W M686 disagrees with you, as does my StgW90 in 5.6mm. Or my friends 10mm Auto, or his shotgun. Or the 7.6 mm rifles and assault rifles older shooters have.

You know, I'm really trying to think of a comedic reply, but I just can't. You're being too deadpan serious. You're like the Adam West of this thread.

[Fix-it]

I think this is stupid, for the following reason:

classic cyberpunk in and of itself isn't liberal. or conservative. it's realistic.

realistic in the sense that it acknowledges the fact that the world isn't black and white. it's shades of grey. Very Dark Grey, but grey none the less. everyone gets farked over equally, (in different ways) in cyberpunk.

[BlueRondo]

Poor Chelsea Clinton. She's not even really a politician, but she got dragged into the silly graphic novel as being representative of a political position.

The likes of Rush Limbaugh were picking on Chelsea Clinton even during the 90's (when she was only a teenager.) Now that was uncalled for.