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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brian Wood's Been Watching, November 7, 2000
CHANNEL ZERO is what happens when people pay attention. When Brian Wood eyes the world around him he recognizes something is wrong, and rather than sit back on his arse and watch the rear-inclined, Orwellian propaganda machine gallop and trample the forgotten soul of America he calls us on it. He flips off the holier than thou Right Wingers, and gives a much needed elixir to those inflicted with the fastest growing disease in America: Complacence. Brian Wood's Channel Zero combines a gripping speculative flair with a hard edged present-day social commentary that acts as a mirror for the rotting, backward contemporary culture. And rather than stop there, he dares us to move forward and embrace a different kind of America. It isn't pretty, it isn't flashy, and it most certainly is not sugar coated, feel-good fare; there's too much of that already littering bookshelves everywhere - and CZ is the scolding for it! But if you're looking for a literate, smart, unapologetic graphic novel, look no further, because CHANNEL ZERO is a phenomenal work by the most important comics writer to come along in quite some time. Brian Wood is a pill for the conscience.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great design work draws you into CHANNEL ZERO, September 23, 2001
You don't really read Channel Zero -- you sort of immerse yourself in it and experience it. Brian Wood's book is about New York City in an America that has decided that freedom of speech just isn't worth it anymore -- a law called the Clean Act censors all news and all entertainment in order to preserve an image of America as a noble, Christian nation. Various forms of resistance have cropped up, and Channel Zero follows some of them, particularly the efforts of pirate broadcaster Jennie 2.5.
If you're looking for a straightforward narrative, this is not the book for you. The book jumps around, and often there's only a tangential connection between the narration and the action being drawn on the page. Like I said, though, this is a book you experience -- thematically, it's all tied together. The action, drawn in stark black-and-white with heavy inks and think lines, amplifies the narration. Snippets of broadcasts -- both those from outside American borders and those that have been scrubbed by the Clean Act -- illustrate the depths to which America has sunk. And as the book draws to a close, Wood uses an interview with Jennie, and Jennie's reaction to her notoriety, to demonstrate how easy it is for a revolutionary message to be co-opted by the mainstream.The real genius of this book is in its design. The black-and-white art is blended with black-and-white photo (or at least photo-like) images of cameras, guns, subway signs, traffic signs, bank logos and other objects -- the realism of the images, blended with the more abstracted illustrations, actually creates a surrealism that draws you into the distorted environment Wood has created. (I doubt I'm reading too much into the physical similarity between the camera and the rifle that keep making appearances, but maybe I am.) Small slogans like "Progress backwards" and "Bomb the system" are buried throughout the book -- little snippets of anti-propaganda propaganda. There are pamphlets and ads that you're encouraged to photocopy and distribute, promoting Channel Zero and its fight-the-power message. It's the artistic/visual equivalent of the barrage of ideas Grant Morrison presents in The Invisibles, and it's just really cool.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, July 14, 2006
I've never read a book as ambitious as this before. There was every chance for Brian Wood to totally fall on his face, and he flew instead. This, and its prequel, Jennie One, make a FANTASTIC story. Get this NOW, before it's gone.
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