Jonathan Hickman's a writer that's been making a splash in the comic book world recently. I've read some of his work, including Pax Romana (the story of a militant Catholic church with access to time travel) and the first part of his run on Fantastic Four (marking the only time I've ever actually cared about the Fantastic Four as a franchise). I didn't think these stories were SPECTACULAR, but I enjoyed them - solid plots, fun twists, good characters...
Then I read Hickman's The Nightly News and understood exactly what all the hype is about.
For those keeping track, The Nightly News is the second shocking, subversive read from my weekend. It's a book chock-full of ideas and heady concepts. Also, there's anger. A LOT of anger.
I get the impression that Jonathan Hickman's a pretty dissatisfied customer (and that's not meant to be derogatory - he also strikes me as intelligent and level-headed). In The Nightly News, he takes out his frustration with the media by telling the story of a cult whose sole purpose is the assassination of prominent newscasters and journalists.
The Nightly News indulges in two of the three "no-nos" I described yesterday - violence and language. And there's a lot of each. Of course, when you're pissed off, violence and language are easy to indulge in.
Just like Lolita which I reported on yesterday, The Nightly News presents characters whose emotions are understandable but whose actions are morally questionable at best. I don't know if we're meant to fully sympathize or root for ANY of the parties involved in the conflict.
What we are meant to do after reading The Nightly News is think - and Hickman provides a lot of information for us to mull over. He includes several charts and graphs full of statistics regarding corruption within large media corporations and America's abuse of Ritalin (usually prefaced with tongue-in-cheek disclaimers like "If you're like me and only care about your own personal entertainment, keep reading on the next page"). Whatever the author's personal stance on the issues is, he makes it abundantly, almost violently, clear that SOMETHING is not right.
Visually, The Nightly News is unlike anything I've seen before - blending traditional comics artwork with graphic-design sensibilities. The result is a pseudo-futuristic look for a war of brands - which is what the whole conflict boils down to, even though one of the brands is more revolutionary than the other.
Summation: The Nightly News is a difficult read emotionally, but it's powerful. It's exactly the kind of comic I've been looking for for a long time.
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