Kristian Williams

I have an opinion piece in the December 30, 2009 issue of the Portland Observer titled: “No Solidarity with Police Union: Time to Kick Cops Out of Labor Movement.”

I’ve made the argument before: Police are part of the management apparatus of capitalism. Therefore, they are not workers like other workers, and their “unions” serve interests that are diametrically opposed to those of the working class. (I develop on this idea at some length in Our Enemies in Blue: Chapter 6, “Police Autonomy and Blue Power.”)

The occasion for the Observer piece was the Portland Police Association’s defense of one of the most violent cops in the city, right after he appeared on video firing a less-lethal shotgun at a twelve-year-old girl.

You can read the piece here:
http://portlandobserver.com/?p=491

The entirety of my essay, “The Spanish Civil War, Cartooning, and the Cultural Imagination,” is available now at The Comics Journal website:

Part One: A War of Memory and Imagination

Part Two: Art and Propaganda

Part Three: Defeated Idealists, Undefeated Idealism

Part Four: “Perhaps we won.”

In the course of the review I discuss comics about the war, including No Pasaran!, The Black Order Brigade, and select issues of Wolverine. But I also discuss the use of propaganda posters, Robert Capa’s photographs, novels like The Fallen Sparrow and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the movies Casablanca and Pan’s Labyrinth — plus, of course Picasso’s Guernica and Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

Of all the things I’ve written about comics, I think that this is my best work.

Meanwhile, I’ve also written a short review of the Comics Book Legal Defense Fund’s Liberty Comics.

You can see that at Verbicide Magazine.

The Comics Journal is now a (mostly) online publication. I’ll leave it to others to wonder about the larger implications for the future of comics, criticism, the Journal, and print culture. But one immediate result is that my writing on comics will be appearing more regularly.

It’s only been two weeks since the debut of the new online version of the Journal, and already I have three articles there.

Two are short reviews — one of The Simpsons’ Tree House of Horror #15 (the comic, not the tv show); the other of Shaun Tan’s illustrated short story collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia.

More importantly, though, there is also the first installment of a four-part essay on “The Spanish Civil War, Cartooning, and the Cultural Imagination.” (Truth to tell, I’m particularly proud of this piece.)

You can find all my work for the new online Journal archived at:
http://www.tcj.com/?author=15

I have two new articles out now, each in its own way concerned with state violence.

The first is a long essay about Oscar Wilde and prison, describing his experiences in prison, his attitudes about crime and punishment, and his political efforts after his release.

The essay is titled “A Criminal with a Noble Face”: Oscar Wilde’s Encounters with the Victorian Gaol.

I wrote it with support from the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and you can see it at their website.

The other piece is a review of Judith Butler’s latest book, Frames of War.

It’s in the December issue of In These Times, and on their web site.