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MEENA: AN IMMIGRANT TRAGEDY
by Stephen Turner and iKE%mORPH
($2.00 US from
Stephen Turner)
Review by Mark Campos
This review is loaded with
spoilers, please skip to last paragraph if you don't want me to ruin the plot for you. An Afghan refugee, on the cusp of receiving Australian
citizenship, is interviewed by a native-born Vietnamese student, and talks about the draconian immigration policies that contributed to the deaths of his wife and his daughter. Then he goes to the ceremony and shoots the Prime Minister and the Attorney General.
Whether or not you think it's merely leftist scale-loading, it takes stones to do a comic in which one shows current political figures getting it in the head. Stephen tells the refugee's story quickly and without dosing it with sentiment, but what point does the double assassination make? In the story, Stephen doesn't link the immigration policies firmly enough to the PM and the AG (an afterword tries to make their actions plainer, but you'll have to go online or read the Aussie press to really get the connection); without an explicit reference, their "deaths", which should be cathartic, seem vaguely melodramatic. As for the art, iKE%mORPH's illustration design switches between cartoon, photo-realism, and photo images, dropping in a brilliant use of PSP at the climax
(but pictures should not be distorted to fit panels – the panels should be shaped to fit the pictures, I say).
Australian PM Howard and AG Ruddock are far from dead; they are currently campaigning to ban gay marriage and adoption of foreign-born children by gay couples – this comic is still timely, the repressive forces are still on the march. A unique political statement; a little rough but worth your notice.
[ Link to this review ]
