Dot's Reading Room - What if the Jan. 6 attack had succeeded?

A Harvard professor’s book asks: What if the Jan. 6 attack had succeeded?

Alan Jenkins, writer, activist, educator, and Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School has collaborated with a team of writers and artists to produce this graphic novel, titled simply “1/6.” It is the first of a series of four volumes and is being widely reviewed in the media. Subscribers to Amazon Prime can download the first volume to their kindles immediately. A print version will be released in a few weeks.

Jenkins’s “1/6” co-creators are artist-activist Gan Golan (co-writer of the parody book “Goodnight Trump” and comic book “The Adventures of Unemployed Man”) and veteran comic book artist Will Rosado.

Alan Jenkins Graphic Novel Cover feature a attack on Capital Hill — A panel from 1/6. Art by Will Rosado/Lee Loughridge, written by Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan.

Michael Cavna writes in The Washington Post: “An armed militia fires at will to shut down a TV news network in Washington. A Confederate flag hangs behind the statue in the Lincoln Memorial, while a structure once named for Thurgood Marshall now bears the sign “Clarence and Ginni Thomas Federal Judicial Building.” Just blocks away, passersby behold a new statue: President Donald Trump, in his second term, holding up the Bible. The planned four-issue series, “1/6: The Graphic Novel,” imagines what the American landscape would look like if the Jan. 6 insurrection had succeeded.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/01/06/graphic-novel-jan-6-alan-jenkins/

The release of this graphic novel is being covered widely in the media. Dominic Davies, Senior Lecturer in English, City, University of London, describes volume 1 in the Jan. 6 issue of The Conversation:

“The title of this collaboratively produced graphic novel…refers to 6 January 2021, the day on which a mob of Donald Trump supporters laid siege to the US Capitol Building in Washington D.C., rallied on by the outgoing president.” Davies calls it, “A promising first volume…As of 6 January 2022, only the first of four promised volumes of 1/6 has been released. It’s just under 40 pages, but it manages to convey a layered vision and complex plot in that limited space.

“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the authors’ approach is to center the plot on a resistant movement that has sprung up against the new authoritarian government. 1/6 may present a dystopian future to lure in its readers, but its broader aim is to restore their agency and hope.”

Read the Davies article here: https://theconversation.com/what-if-the-january-6-insurrection-at-the-us-capitol-had-succeeded-a-graphic-novel-is-uniquely-placed-to-answer-197330