Saturday, May 06, 2006

Not Really A Review: Earthboy Jacobus

This really isn't a review, just a couple comments.
I just finished reading Earthboy Jacobus by Doug Tennapel. He also wrote Creature Tech that I wrote about earlier.
This one is OK. Not as good as CT, but hey, high bar and all.
Anyhow, its a pretty touching and very patriotic story about an odd boy and his adoptive dad fighting off an alien invasion, sort of.
The only real problem I had was on one page.
A human preacher, who has been transformed into an alien stooge says something like "I now see that all struggle can be broken down into economic terms and I no longer need an imaginary divine entity to act as my drug to keep me in line."
Translation: the aliens are commie bastards.
Personally, I have no real problem with the idea of aliens representing communists. Its a bit out-dated, but thats OK.
The problem is that the scene is, pretty much, talking down to the readers. Telling rather than showing. Its just bad writing.
The other problem I have with alien=marx-toy is this:
the aliens invade planet after planet, gobbling up all the resources to feed the never sated god-monster that leads them.
Really, this isn't communism.
Its American Capitalism.
Its capitalism thats the shark, devouring everything and always needing more.
Its capitalism that consumes resources without leaving anything behind.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Commies make great enemies, and you still obviously have the wiggle room to project your own capitalist perception onto them so I think my depiction is pretty subtle and open.

Further, the Communist must devour all overt leadership to be able to enforce their agenda so they gobble up governments, worlds etc. to prevent the individual from succeeding. Say what you will about Capitalist regimes, but they never took by force anything the way Communist regimes rearrange the landscape...thus, they are the aliens. And it's not old-fashioned, Communism is a contemporary enemy...called the Democratic Party.

Thanks for reading my book and you'll enjoy Iron West...which has NO political message at all.