Douglas Rushkoff, author of eight books on media and culture, as well as the novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy, marks his graphic novel debut with Club Zero-G. Teaming with Canadian independent comic artist Steph Dumais, Rushkoff has delivered America’s answer to Japan’s animé: a mind-altering journey into a universe where consensus reality is up for grabs.
The story follows Zeke, a gangly, unpopular, 19-year-old college student—a townie who also happens to attend the elite college in his community—who has discovered a terrific new club where he is accepted and popular. There’s only one catch: everyone at the club is dreaming. It only exists in the shared dream consciousness of its participants. If at all.
For there’s the rub: Zeke’s friends think he is simply going crazy. His girlfriend in the club won’t even acknowledge his existence in real life.
As Zeke descends further into the Club Zero-G reality, he learns that this shared dream space is actually a psychic field created by four mutant children from the future—the last of their kind, conceived by human space travelers in zero gravity and exhibiting strange deformities and abilities. Living in a future where independent thinking is considered a threat to “consensus,” they are hunted by the authorities, and seek the help of teens from the 21st century who, they hope, can still alter the course of reality.
But Zeke eventually learns this is all a setup, and he is being used by the militaries of the present and the future as a portal into the psychic field of the Zero-G kids, so they can be destroyed. Unless, of course, he is just going mad.
The battle for Zeke’s mind becomes an interdimensional battle for reality itself, in this daring, adult, American, animé adventure.
Douglas Rushkoff is the author of 9 non-fiction books and 2 novels, as well as numerous television shows. His work has been translated into 20 languages. He appears on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR All Things Considered, and in Time, The New York Times, and periodicals around the world. He also made the PBS Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool. This is his first graphic novel. Steph Dumais is a graphic designer, web developper and comic artist. He is the creator of the Zombie Commandos From Hell! series published by Boneyard Press and has designed a dozen album covers for various bands within the industrial music scene, including a compilation soundtrack for his own comic series.
Product Details
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: The Disinformation Company (May 1, 2004)
Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.
His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today's complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He's now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.
He has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries - The Merchants of Cool looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture, and The Persuaders, about the cluttered landscape of marketing, and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance.
Rushkoff's commentaries air on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR's All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications from The New York Times to Time magazine. He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for The New York Times and Guardian of London, as well as a column on wireless for The Feature and a new column for the music and culture magazine, Arthur.
Rushkoff founded the Narrative Lab at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and lectures about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities around the world.
He is Advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, on the Board of Directors of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and as a founding member of Technorealism. He has been awarded Senior Fellowships by the Markle Foundation and the Center for Global Communications Fellow of the International University of Japan.
He regularly appears on TV shows from NBC Nightly News to Larry King and Bill Maher. He is writing a new monthly comic book for Vertigo, and developed the Electronic Oracle software series for HarperCollins Interactive.
Rushkoff is on the board of several new media non-profits and companies, and regularly consults on new media arts and ethics to museums, governments, synagogues, churches, and universities, as well as Sony, TCI, advertising agencies, and other Fortune 500 companies.
Rushkoff graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received an MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts, a post-graduate fellowship (MFA) from The American Film Institute, and a Director's Grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has worked as a certified stage fight choreographer, and as keyboardist for the industrial band PsychicTV.
He lives in Park Slope Brooklyn with his wife, Barbara, and daughter Mamie.
I am not sure how writing a review for a graphic novel could ever do it justice? Your best bet is to buy this, read it once, then again to make sure you really just read/saw what you did...then, like me...write a glowing review and buy one as a Bar Mitzvah gift (as I just did...).
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Rushkoff is no stranger to taking non-fiction themes and wrapping them into a fictional story. Ecstasy Club is one fine example; however, some writers are quick to learn that the graphic novel format is a completely different monster than the traditional fictional form. Fortunately, Rushkoff takes it slow and easy, keeping with what he knows rather than overextending his imagination to realms he's yet to explore.
Club Zero-G is a cyberian comic book. Anyone familiar with the themes of Rushkoff's non-fictional Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace will have no problem adjusting to the storyline of this 130+ page graphic novel. Rushkoff doesn't break far from the ideas of designer reality, "us" versus "them," and house rave euphoria, and in a sense, this comic could almost be seen as an Invisibles-lite (in fact, at one point, I could almost swear I was looking at a King Mob look-alike getting a Zero-G tattoo), but in many respects this reduction is very much a good thing. Rushkoff streamlines his philosophies allowing the reader to focus on the story of Zeke and his strange travels into an alternate dream dimension consisting of an all-night rave party, but in true Rushkoff-Cyberia fashion, the dance is never just a dance. It's a dance with a purpose, a dance to shape reality as well as the self.
Club Zero-G is a road map to discovering your own personal "secret self," much like Zeke does, and using that to destroy the power that "consensus reality" has over you. This is a true indie comic book and may not be for hardcore comic fan consumption. Rushkoff isn't attempting to bombard us with post-modern philosophies (thought Focault does rear his head), human deconstruction, or super-hero exploits. He's simply trying to built the themes of Cyberia into a workable example for the disenchanted youth. Zeke ultimately passes the torch of designer reality to the reader (one can see Rushkoff's knowledge of reader-response theory sporatically appearing throughout the book), and with it he leaves the future in the reader's hands. What you do with it is up to you.
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Ok first off the art work is actually pretty damn good if you like comic art from 40z comics by Jim Mahfood, Invader Zim, Johnny homiciadal maniac ect..... But, seriously don't buy this flaming turd.... I checked this out from something called the Library which lets you look at books for free! Story plot is very very bad.....Take matrix take bill and teds adventure and spice in some akira rip offs and you have this bland book. The consensus has been slowly taking away our dreams towards making us all mindless slaves in our "awaken" reality. But, our hero Zeke gets to club zero thanks to some akira clones that brought certain people to the club. He's the key for the akira clones to break on through to the other side ie the present awoken world. And also they need him to help stop the consensus from making everyone mindless in either realm. Oi enough of this crap it goes on and on. Zeke gets those at the club to remember it in awaken world dad isnt dad or is he. Consense can offer him everything if he stops and oh boy big confirtation at the end where it's all up to Zeke to deterimine what's going to happen to reality as we know... What does he do?!?!? Oh guess what one makes their own choices and decisions in life cause Zeke choose's YOU!! Yes YOU!! Thats right!!! What the F crap ending is this?!? Why it's something out of choose your own adventure book or some crappy ass lesson brought to you by barny the loveable dinasour! The only way you could give this a 5 star rating is if your brain is rotted out on E bomb cause like matirx 2 half of this book waste pages just showing the kids at rave after rave!
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