REVIEW: Jenkins, Golan, Rosado — 1/6: The Graphic Novel Issue #1
Professor Alan Jenkins, Gan Golan, and graphic novel illustrator William Rosado concoct what might be one of the most chillingly relevant (obviously so), and evocative creative concoctions since Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, or the implications stirred in Alan Moore and Dave Gibson’s masterwork Watchmen. The trouble is, as the brilliantly realized story and illustrational panels show, the fear isn’t over yet.
While the scenario depicted is obviously an alternate present, with considerable creative liberties based on real-life predictions, observations, informed hypotheses, and strategic analyses by experts in the field, it still is something frighteningly close. Therefore, I can’t recommend their work — 1/6: The Graphic Novel Issue #1: What if the Attack on the U.S. Capitol Succeeded? — lightly. It’s something that I found deeply troubling, not just as a concerned citizen looking at partisan divides, but personally. It takes one of the most alarming chapters in our nation’s history, and expands upon it in lengths never flippantly endorsing escapist tropes, nor shying away from increasingly and appropriately dark considerations, and depictions.
Given Jenkins’ considerable heft as a Harvard Law School professor, New York Times bestseller Gan Golan, and masterclass comic book artist William Rosado’s haunting, colorful visual palette, you feel disturbingly immersed in the immediacies of each scenario playing out in the issue. One of the most potent moments is an image of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where a Confederate Flag is draped behind him. It’s one of the most saddening panels in the entire book, as well as one of the most astute.
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Because of their expertise, integrity, and desire to tell the truth, Jenkins, Golan, and Rosado don’t go balls-out and reveal a cartoonish, V for Vendetta hellscape. They depict what things actually might have looked like in the days that followed a militaristic, political coup. What’s most haunting about the first pages of the book, and the way the story reveals itself, is the wrestling some of the characters do in a world semi-reminiscent of what we know, and frighteningly dystopian concurrently. Like any piece of grounded fiction, it explores the uncanny valley perceptually of what very well could be, with what is, and with what would be a natural extension of what currently is…
In an interview with Washingtonian, Professor Jenkins states: “We find our main characters about nine months after the successful insurrection, so fall of 2021. We see a raid on news operations that have been dubbed enemies of the people. We see armed militias and white-supremacist organizations roaming the streets. One of the things that we learned in the trial of the Oath Keepers is that they were hoping and apparently asking President Trump to deputize them under the Insurrection Act, so they would have become federal troops or federal officers.”
In the same interview, he also discussed the nature of his collaboration with Golan and Rosado. In such a divisive time, on such a divisive issue, Jenkins stated he enjoyed the creative process — even if the implications of the project were more than a little damning. “We’ve picked an artist we admire and trust. We give him our ideas, and they come back in ways that are true to our vision but also that we could not have imagined. It’s a wonderful experience — even when the images themselves are super-chilling.”
Colin Jordan
