Customer Reviews

Triple X

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The Pander Brothers, known among hipsters and cognoscenti as underground artists, filmmakers and DJs from Portland, OR, worked for almost a decade on this graphic novel, a thrilling and inspiring story of the struggle for free expression and individuality in the face of an Orwellian society designed to crush the human spirit. Not to be confused with the recent movie "XXX," and definitely not to be confused with porn, the Pander Brothers achievement has to be one of the greatest graphic novels of the past decade or so.

What's hip & cutting edge at the moment often tends to age badly & all too quickly -- but not in the case of this thoughtful & passionate graphic novel from 1997, set in the very near future. Multi-national corporations pretty much run things, with local government & the mainstream media cozily in bed with them. A wealthy elite lives very comfortably, without a care or concern for the misery of the less fortunate -- and of course Third World peoples don't even qualify as human beings, existing merely as cheap & disposable labor.

Dissidents survive precariously on the margins, struggling to find ways of combating the corporate colossus -- do they resort to violence, or does that simply play into the hands of the powerful? Can they find a voice loud enough & convincing enough to sway the public? Or is the truth nothing more than a quaint relic of an abandoned past?

Set in Amsterdam, we follow American expat Hans as he returns to the home of his dead grandfather, who once published the underground paper Triple X. Hans has seen protests crushed brutally in New York City, and he wants out of that world. But as events unfold around him, he's faced with the ultimate moral choice: does he overcome his fear & rejoin the struggle, even at the cost of his own life, or does he simply give in & go along? While this might seem all too familiar, the Pander Brothers make you care about Hans. His dilemma has real weight, demanding that the reader examine his/her own conscience as well.

Needless to say, the world has been inching closer to this sort of future since the initial publication of this superb graphic novel. Far more than the glut of adolescent power fantasies currently on the stands, this work needs to be kept in print -- highly recommended!