Periscope: World’s First Green Leader

The Graphic Future
Set in 2011, Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman's "Shooting War" is a stunning graphic novel that skewers the war on terror, Islamic jihad, the mainstream media and the blogosphere in one fell swoop. Eighteen months after its debut as a serialized Web comic, it hit bookstores this month as a 192-page, hardcover version. Lappé, a documentary producer and freelance writer, began kicking around the idea in 2005 for a fictional project satirizing the war on terror. He toyed with doing a screenplay, and thought about writing a novel, but he knew he didn't have it in him. He had a general story line: young blogger gets sent to Iraq as a big-media war correspondent.

A friend suggested he do it as a graphic novel. Lappé soon hooked up with graphic artist Goldman, and in May 2006 they began serializing the story as a weekly Web comic. It quickly gained a regular audience of more than 100,000 and got the attention of publishers. Lappé's next work will likely go to press much quicker; the market for book-format comics in the United States exploded from $100 million in 2001 to $330 million last year.

—Matthew Philips

© 2007