My Opinion on Bill Maher's Adulting and how I Used Comic Books to Teach...

Book / Graphic Novel Review Pyongyang a voyage into North Korea. By Guy Delisle

Pyongyang, a Voyage to North Korea  (2003)

By: Guy Delisle

Why I Bought This Book: a while back a coworker of mine started to ask me about North Korea and if the outlandish things that you hear about the country are true. So I asked him why the sudden interest in this hermit country and he explained to me that he had got this graphic novel that explored many of the crazy aspects of the country. So fascinated with the idea of a graphic novel about North Korea so I went to my local book store and got myself a  copy of this fascinating book.

The Story: Well the basic plot of the story is about the experiences of the author/illustrators having to work and live in North Korea, and I don't want to spoil too much talking about some of the absurd situations Guy gets himself into.  

What I liked and  Central Thymes:
•    I loved the simple and cartoonish art of the book, it adds nicely to the story. Each chapter has a full page illustration of important monuments of the country that show off Guy's artistic capabilities.
•    The book is just as insightful as it is funny, a fantastic read. 
•    Guy's culture shock is priceless, and he's pretty honest in showing that at moments he can be a snobbish prick. 
•    It's interesting to see how Guy's views of the country and its people changes as the book progresses.
•    The parallel reality that expats live in,  like the people that work for NGOs, international companies employs and diplomats, is fascinating because they are not allowed to interact with the locals freely, so they only interact amongst each other.
•    Guy seems to be a  music lover  and how he suffers listing to crappy official music that's on all day at his work, is something I can identify with because something similar happened to me working in a small frontier town 2000 km from my home in the middle of nowhere, the terrible music they listened there drove me crazy, jajajaja. 
•    The book is not scientific account and analyses of what's going on in the country, but what is valuable  is that most books and articles about the country tend to have top down perspective centering around the regime and its politics, this book has a bottom up from seeing what it like for a foreigner to actually be there and see for themselves the things that happen in the country.


What I didn't like:
•    The only bad thing about the book is that there isn't an introductory page giving a little bit of context to when the author was in the country and why, or to explain a little more about his job. You get a little bit and pieces, but personally, I want to know more about the author's background but I'm nit picking here.

Overall: 10 out of 10

Political Mash-up Analyses of World War Hulk/Trump

So after a long time I sat down and revisited  "World War Hulk" a Marvel crossover from 2007, that was sort of mixed bag. The story had some interesting aspects, especial the Hulk having a clobber fest but it didn't have much of story or plot, you can finish the Trade Paper Back in less than a half of an hour. Now the thing was when I revisited this comic a couple of weeks ago, I actually found a ton of parallelisms to Donald Trump's rise to political power and how he completely hijacked of United States of America's political system.

 Now to start off I'll give you guys a brief summary of this crossover so you can understand what the hell I'm talking about later. To start off, Hulk has returned to Earth, and he's pist off. But what happened? Where was he? Why is he crazy mad? Well a group of superheroes, that form an elite within the Marvel community, called the Illuminati (Iron Man, Reed Richards, Doctor Strange, and Blackbolt) shot Hulk into out space. ¿Why? well because he had become too much of a problem, every time he flipped out there was a danger of him leveling a city. So Hulk landed on the planet Sakaar and the whole "Planet Hulk"  took place, but seemingly the Illuminati screwed Hulk again blowing up the world that he made his home (or scorching a good part of it) and killing his new wife, Caiera.

At the start of the crossover, the  Hulk and his new buddies the War Bound have arrived on Earth with one thing on their mind, to take vengeance on the Illuminati, to make them pay. Hulk clobbers just about every hero and fights Sentry to a standstill when Hulk discovers that the explosion on Sakaar wasn't the Illuminati's fault but Mek's, one of the Warbound who had his own agenda in manipulating Hulk into his clobber fest.

So now let's start off with the nitty and the gritty, what does the comic have to do with the Trump political phenomena. Well to start off Hulk returns from exile, he had been operating outside of the regular Marvel universe, and when he arrives, he stops everything in its tracks. Now Trump was not in any political exile, but basically, he came out of nowhere redefining American politics and literally rewriting rules to the political game. It felt like the gloves were off when he started to battle it out in the Republican primaries, political correctness was Trump first casualty in his race to the White House, in the same way that Hulk wanted to punish the Illuminati. He entered totally out of the traditional political system and structure, and his arrival much like the Hulk's  establishes a before and after, both becoming the absolute center of everything. Even Trumps brash style of politics, the centers around confrontation, bravado and oversimplifying the problem at hand, much in the same way Hulk basically sets out to resolve his problems punching everything in sight.   

The Illuminati from my point of view play the role of the traditional political establishment and the way they freak out on the arrival of the Hulk is priceless, just in the same way Republicans and Democrats spaz out in how to digest the coming of Trump in the political theater. Hulk is called the World Breaker, Trump from my point of view  Party Breaker, he has left the US political system in shambles.We can only imagine the amount of damage control there was in both parties after trumps victory in last years election.

In the climax of the story, Hulk is about to give retribution to the Illuminati, he has ordinary people they explain that they have the grievances with the superhero community, to explain why they feel that superheroes fail them. They tell the captured that every time they save the day the collateral damage for normal people is terrible, while the heroes fly off to the next crisis, not really caring for ordinary people. So regular people favor Hulk because he's going to put the heroes back in their place, they will not be collateral anymore. Now here is where Trump's genius is found,  his opportunism border on a superhuman level, he understood how the political establishment had failed for large parts of American society and just fanned the flames like no other, he's like a used car salesman from hell. His election is a validation of the discourse to drain the swamp but also a slap on the wrist to traditional political parties.  Even the way the that Hulk supporters in the comic, fit the setreotype of a typical Trumpettir.

Hulk introduced the Warbound as a new elite of heroes, which have little to no experience in this field and their personal agendas start to get in the way, like what happens with the Brood Queen or with Mek. The same thing has happened with most of Trump's administration he  mostly has chosen people with no experience in public administration, with questionable personal interests. Even Hiroim one of Hulk closest allies in his endeavors reminds me of poor Jared Kushner, Mek could be Steve Bannon and the Brood Queen Queen Ivanka Trump. 

In the story Hulk has to go toe to toe against the Sentry, the ultimate superhero, he's Marvel equivalent to Superman, but the character has a ton of issues that he keeps hidden that make him a liability, in many ways just like Hillary Clinton. Democrats couldn't have presented a more fallible candidate to run against Trump, she had a legion of Voids (the evil part of Sentry) in her closet/basement. 

Just like in the story where even though the people favor the Hulk he's actually destroying the city that they live in, but they are all caught up in the spectacle of Hulks vengeance, actually using Madison Square Garden to put on a show. Trump has pretty much the same, he's has created a spectacle out of his political style and his cult of personality, no matter how bad he's screwed over his followers they will stay be his side. His capacity to polarize and divide will keep him running strong,  I lived through something similar here in Argentina. Populism from the both sides of the political spectrum that depend so much on the cult of personality share many of the same of tools, so America gets ready for a bumpy ride.