Libertarian Web-comics
I expect that quite a number of our regular readers enjoy webcomics. I want to introduce you to a pair of them sponsored by Big Head Press.
The first one, Roswell, Texas, is written by L. Neil Smith, an award-winning science-fiction author and the man responsible for The Probability Broach, which won the Prometheus Award for best Libertarian science-fiction story. (That parallel-universe novel is available in graphic novel form from Big Head Press, and looks to be worth the price.) Roswell is also set in a parallel–one in which Santa Ana was killed during the Battle of the Alamo. Smith has embedded a lot of historical characters (including Walt Disney, John Wayne and Bette Page) in a milieu that includes time-travelling physics-babes from Mars arriving in Texas in 1947. Scott Bieser collaborates with Smith on the comic.
The second one expands on a theme near and dear to those of us who read Stranger in a Strange Land during our college years. La Muse is the story of a pair of alien sisters, one oh-so-human and the other with deity-like powers. The latter decides to fix the world and have a few laughs along the way. It’s sexy, tongue-in-cheek, and lovingly drawn at two pages per week. I have a feeling that the two creators of the comic, Adi Tantimedh and Hugo Petrus, will be famous very, very soon.
Tom
Comment by JM Doran on 18 June 2007 at 10:36 am:
What exactly makes these comics Libertarian?
Comment by tet on 18 June 2007 at 12:09 pm:
Well, Smith’s Texas is set up with a government built totally on Libertarian principles–virtually no taxes or government programs whatsoever and a completely armed populace. I disagree with the Texicans’ requirement for a permit enabling a citizen to be exempt from the law requiring them to be armed at all times, but I can see how the existence of such a law could do away with the necessity of a police force, so there are arguments in favor of it.
Smith throws a lot of libertarian theory into Roswell, as he did with his non-graphic novels. For a student of 20th Century history such as myself, there are some outrageously funny references. It’s not preachy for the most part, as some of his later books have been–the visual medium of graphic novel seems to be conducive to Smith showing the results of his theories, rather than shoving them down our throats with prose.
La Muse is less governmental-libertarian and more of a satire showing the various groups (religious, secular, governmental, medial) that are currently working to remove our freedoms and having the lovely heroine fuck with them both literally and figuratively. It’s very, very funny, as satire should be.
Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land did the same sort of thing for America in the early 1960s when it posited a young man with similar godlike powers who was raised by superior aliens–sort of a wolfling in reverse.
La Muse is a Savior. Both her comic and Stranger revolve around the question of whether or not humanity is ready for real freedom and, actually, What WOULD Jesus Do in our present-day society.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 18 June 2007 at 7:15 pm:
How can I put this politely…the first comic Roswell, Texas was it? Was so utterly riddled with assumptions that would be implausible in a “free Texas” world that it made me almost vomit…well that and the happy hour specials I had probably helped. Anyway the Roswell one was interesting, but completely silly considering the assumptions that underlie it (i.e. cars, roads, etc being EXACTLY the same) are implausible at best…
Comment by tet on 18 June 2007 at 9:13 pm:
Politeness is not necessary. I see Roswell, actually both of them as Swiftian in nature.
As far as the cars and roads go, it’s also damn unlikely that Elliot Ness, T.E. Lawrence, John Wayne, Bette Page and Marie Curie’s daughter would all be searching for a Martian, too, now, isn’t it?
Parallel world stories are like that. I would rather that the folks involved did interesting things with Jerry Lewis than completely redesign a car (or motorcycle) from scratch every time one is to be portrayed. I’d call it economy of the fantastic. Stephen King once said that, when writing a fantastic story, eveything that is not part of the fantastic should be kept as mundane as possible.
And remember, everytime someone looks for realism in a Science-fantasy comic book, God kills a catgirl.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 18 June 2007 at 9:42 pm:
Oh and making Malcolm X a Texas Ranger just irked me…
Comment by tet on 19 June 2007 at 8:04 am:
Right, in our Universe at this time he was serving an 8-10 year sentence in the Massachusetts State Prison on a burglary and grand larceny charge. Blacks in that 1940s Texas seem to have a lot better situation than they did in our world–it only seems logical that when the KKK chased his family out of Omaha that they’d emigrate to nearby Texas instead of the USA’s north.
Considering that in our world he’d be dead before 40, looks like a better deal for him.
Tom
Comment by tet on 19 June 2007 at 8:23 am:
You also didn’t mention the other three rangers:
Meir Kahane founded the JDL in our world. It’s not surprising that he’s a Ranger, since he successfully infiltrated the John Birch Society here.
Judah Rockwell is, I believe, supposed to be the father of Lew Rockwell, the founder of the Libertarian Party.
Wild Bill Bear is this world’s version of the two guys who were the detectives in The Probability Broach which I mentioned previously. In that world, Gallatin sided with the farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion and America never moved beyond the Articles of Confederation. That Bear was also in law-enforcement in their version of Denver.
Tom
Comment by Scott on 23 July 2007 at 3:33 pm:
Greetings from one of the perpetrators, and thanks for the kind words about our stories.
Roswell, Texas, is a speculation of what Texas might look like in 1947, had Santa Ana died and Crocket survived at the Alamo, rather than the other way around. We can all speculate differently about how things would be different. This particular one assumes a more virtuous Texas than the one we have, and how some people’s lives can become very different because a better world was available to them.
I would like to correct an error in the comments. Judah Benjamin Rockwell is actually this universe’s analong to George Lincoln Rockwell, the notorious white supremacist who was a contemporary of Malcolm Little’s.
We thought it would be fun to take these three guys, who would have hated each other (and probably did) in our world, and make them friends as a result of the changed history.
Oh, and Lew Rockwell was not a founder of the Libertarian Party. There were about a dozen founders, as such but the guy who usually carries the credit is David Nolan.