Comic-Con 2012: Occupy Comics Panel

Matt Pizzolo moderated an Occupy Comics panel earlier tonight at San Diego Comic-Con Internaitonal featuring Tyler Crook, David Lloyd, Zoetica Ebb, Mark L. Miller, Susie Cagel, Patrick Meany, Matt Rosenberg, Brea and Zane Grant, contributors to and commentators on the Occupy Comics anthology.”I’m here because somebody thought it would be an interesting idea to invite me,” said David Lloyd, the artist of V for Vendetta, who says that he “accidentally” created the iconic mask that’s embraced by so many in the Occupy movement.”We’ve always tried to infuse some kind of political idea into our comics without hitting people over the head too much, to varying degrees of success,” admitted Zane Grant.On joining the anthology, Pizzolo said, “In the very beginning people were very nervous about it or ambivalent” but that Frank Miller’s anti-Occupy tirade motivated people to get involved. The inclusion of people like David Lloyd also helped make more people embrace it.”The people who came onboard, I was really happy to be involved alongside,” said Ebb. While she wasn’t activelyi involved herself, she said her friends in New York were involved with the Occupy movement outside of comics from early on.”In England I was contacted by the BBC as soon as the mask became predominant in the Occupy movement. I was being contacted by lots of people about what I thought,” said David Lloyd. “I was in New York at the New York Comic Con last October and I went down to see the Occupy movement when it was still there and the cops hadn’t pushed it out, and I was really impressed by everything that was going on there. All the stuff that the government puts out–that the cops put out about what was happening and the drugs and all that was all rubbish of course. Everybody was looking afte rthings very well. They had a library–they were cooking, they had details, everybody was looking after everybody else. Of course you had some people who were just homeless and seeing the Occupy movement as someplace they could just hang out and maybe get some food in them but it was a great thing that was going on there. He expressed concern that “the impression that the media was giving was just a bunch of people who were rebellious youth, pissed off at authority and just carrying on. It was all crazy because there were people from all kinds of ages there, and it was fantastic, but it was all being suppressed by the authorities.”