A week or two ago, while she sat diligently at her desk attending to her many labours, my wife's gaze passed over an object that instantly made her think of me. What was this strange and captivating artefact? A leather-bound volume of Baudelaire's poems? A misplaced Fabergé egg? A gnarled monkey's paw doubling up as a paperweight?
No (to all three). It was the below…and she brought it home.
Yes folks, it's a Sci-Fi comic about Switzerland.1 A promotional and propagandic Sci-Fi comic about Switzerland. A Sci-Fi comic about Switzerland that incessantly smashes you over the head with the sentiment "Switzerland is simply marvelous!".
The plot is far too laboured and Captain Planet-esque to warrant summarising in much detail here (four ethnically diverse Swiss youths come together to blah, blah, blither etc), but the below image should give you a representative (and slightly tummy-upsetting) taste.2
For those who (like me) spent their teenage years frantically masturbating their way to chronic short-sightedness, some text reproduction might be in order.
To save the Galactic Synchrotron from disintegration, TIMEAGENT I.D. uses the holocom to go back one thousand years in Cyberspace to "21st Century Switzerland". Here she hopes to find the rescuing formula, for the inhabitants of this small country are considered to be "Masters of Time": they manufacture complex instruments called "watches", amazingly precise forerunners of the Synchrotron…
Galactic Synchotron? Holocom? Going back one thousand years in Cyberspace?! Techno-babbling, Sci-Fi gobbledeegook of the highest (i.e. lowest) order. Also, describing someone's watch as an "amazingly precise forerunner of the Synchrotron" is an almost guaranteed way of blowing one's secret cover and exposing oneself as a 31st century Timeagent. Constant references to (for example) "your present time period" and the "5th Interstellar War" have much the same effect.
While In The Land That Invented the Future is essentially just a relentlessy tedious (and willfully banal) piece of thrown-together Sci-Fi muck, it shares the same crippling deficiencies found in most such "edutainment". It's preachy, it's self-satisfied, and it's keen to "improve" its readers' grubby little minds. Three key ingredients for a "shit comic" pie. A pie that any young comic lover, worth her/his salt, would puke into the nearest bin.
Still better than Voyager though…
- Brought to us by Prasenz Schweiz PRS - "an official body of the Swiss Confederation [that] promotes the distribution of information about Switzerland worldwide". To what end, I'm not sure. [back]
- Click to enlarge. [back]
But why, WHY?
Its not like Swiss awesomeness (if such a thing exists) is evangelical in nature, forced to spread the word to others so that they too might become Switzers.
A few years ago the EU produced a similar piece of comicganda called “The Rasberry Ice Cream War”. I even picked up a copy, for its weird value, but never opened the covers, obv. Now I am filled with an urge to read it, but cannot find a copy anywhere on the web. For shame!
November 26th, 2008 at 1:42 pmWhy, indeed. It felt more like a back-slapping reaffirmation of Swiss fabulousness than an attempt to recruit new zealots to the Swiss cause (whatever that actually is).
At the end, after TIMEAGENT I.D. takes her leave and returns to the future, one of the clean cut Swiss teens receives the following (trans dimensional) SMS message from her on his phone:
He says - “I knew it: This is such a wonderful country that everybody wants to come back!”
His pal replies - “Even from the future!!”
Blah.
All we’re missing is a giant chorus of off-screen Swiss citizens chanting - “Sure aren’t we marvelous altogether!”
November 26th, 2008 at 11:32 pmI think my civil service inclined brother had/has “The Rasberry Ice Cream War” - or something very like it.
He was never really into comics that much…possibly as a result of reading said publication. The inner workings and minutiae of European Union beauracracy do not, funnily enough, make for the most chucklesome and funtastic reading.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:49 pmI scoured the web for the Raspberry Ice Cream War, presuming there’d be a pdf of it somewhere, but all I could find were scoffing reports of it from the right-wing english press, which, of course, only whetted my appetite the more.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:09 amAnything that causes the right-wing English press to scoff is inevitably & invariably a good and worthy thing. Now I have to track down a copy. Will get on to the brother.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pmWhat about this? A comic strip based on the exciting adventures of an MEP (it’s not all smoked salmon, expense accounts, and the Lisbon Treaty, y’know!) Check it out here. I love the way that they feel the need to point out that Elisa Correr’s adventures are not representative of the usual MEP routine.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pmYes I do recall having a graphic novel type publication from the European Union. I don’t think it was “The Raspberry Ice Cream War” though (there must be a veritable series of these things out there!).
As far as I recall my one had another Captain Planet-esque plot involving shady industrial polluters. The European Parliament kicked their asses though, through a series of fascinating debates and subsequent parliamentary motions. I also recall the book having massive speech bubbles some 1,500 words in length describing the intricate working of the European Union secretariat. Fascinating stuff…
November 27th, 2008 at 4:35 pmThat’s my favourite bit too.
We’re hit with a double off-putting whammy. Not only, we’re told, do “European Parliamentarians…not generally lead such dangerous lives as Elisa Correr”, but then, by way of “comfort”, we’re promised this as our compensatory “treat” - “nevertheless you can learn about the the work of an MEP, the ALDE political group, the European Parliament and the other European Institutions through this story”. Cor! I can hardly wait to get stuck into it after tea!
One can only imagine the reaction of an unfortunate little child duped into reading it by a zero-fun parent. Also, the grotesquely excessive wordiness of the balloons seems entirely fitting given the bodies involved. 1,500 words, in that world, must seem like a throwaway one-liner. Or an EU version of a punchy Batman “Thwonk!”
November 27th, 2008 at 10:46 pm