President Lula of Brazil recently said he felt it was completely unfair that the poorest people in the world were suffering most for the mistakes of wealthy, Western financiers.

This was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of people that are white, blue-eyed, that before the crisis looked like they knew everything about economics,’ he declared. ‘Now they have demonstrated that they don’t know anything about economics.’

Guantánamo Boy, a novel that pulls no punches in its depiction of the torture, isolation and injustices suffered by prisoners at the notorious camp. The book focuses on Khalid, an ordinary 15-year-old from Rochdale who spends his time playing computer games, hanging out with his mates in the park and wishing he had the guts to tell his Irish classmate Niamh that he fancies her. However, within days of arriving in Karachi on a family visit to relatives, Khalid’s life turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare when he is abducted from his aunt’s house and ends up being held for two years, without charge, in the world’s most notorious prison. Continue reading Brilliant subject for a book

I made this drawing “The Gite Set” - over the last couple of days:
It explores the recent phenomenon of English people emigrating to France and running gites. It studies the subject from a number of angles - such as reasons why people want to do this, how dreams can be undone, socio-economic factors driving this, and I mix this with an invented story. These are all superimposed on each other like layers of acetate, to try to reveal a bigger picture and show how things are connected and linked up.

I’m describing this as “Diagram Art” - a mixture of mind maps/ decision diagrams/ flowcharts/ system diagrams/ moodboards/ graphic novels. They engage with social and current issues - but issues which are part of my life - as I have actually considered doing something like this. It’s my attempt to explore quite serious subjects and explain them in depth in a fun accessible way.

Basically I see this as the first one of a series of drawings , exploring subjects from multiple angles.

I think this would work printed big - A0 or A1? More on this later, as I’ve written quite a few notes while this work evolved.

Japanese bookstores are preparing for what they expect to be the publishing phenomenon of the year: Das Kapital – the manga version.

“The comic, which goes on sale early next month, plays into a growing fascination among Japan’s hard-working labour force with socialist literature and joins a collection of increasingly fierce literary critiques of the global capitalist system.

In recent decades, while Japan Inc was still delivering collective prosperity to the nation, public criticism of companies has been muted. Unions were weak and acquiescent. But now, as the country sinks into its second recession in seven year, the sackings begin and the gap widens between rich and poor, a growing number of Japanese believe the problem lies with capitalism itself.
Continue reading Karl Marx goes manga in a Kapital comic strip