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Rees

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David Rees has been producing the mind blowing comic Get Your War On since later 2001 with much success. It started out with a website which gained cult status, and you’ve seen his works in Rolling Stone, an alternative newspaper anywhere in the United States, as well as some very popular books. I’ve been following his works since his start, and I am glad he was able to give us some time.

Your comics are always political driven and very satirical and amusing. How did you come about making a comic that is geared solely on the ups and downs of the American political system?

I started “GET YOUR WAR ON” after 9/11 when we started bombing Afghanistan. I was skeptical of the whole idea of a never-ending “War on Terror”. It sounded expensive and dangerous.

How did you first get into the world of comic making?

I started making comics as a kid. I started using clip art when I was an underemployed college graduate. Thank you, B.A. in Philosophy! You paved the way (in my mind) to make “visual stories” using Bill Gates’ clip art in PowerPoint, the best computer program for graphics. I can feel Aristotle’s hand on my shoulder when I make my comics– have you ever read his book, “The Secret”? It explains how to make the universe do your bidding just by wishing for crap really hard.

How many places can I find Get Your War On?

You can find it in Rolling Stone magazine and in a handful of weekly “alternative newspapers” scattered anemically throughout the Land of the Free.

How did you come about the few clip art characters you use throughout – especially Voltron?

I just chose the boringest, most blandest, most ultra-most-banal-ist clip art I could find. I love such imagery. The Voltron thing was an aberration, obviously, because that image is very EXCITING and BAD-ASS. And, unlike the public domain clip art, we had some “unforeseen legal drama” to work out with the copyright holders of the VOLTRON BRAND.

I own your great book Get Your War On, but never knew that the royalties from this project was donated to landmine clearing efforts! Explain how this idea became such a strong passion for you to pass your earnings towards it.

I thought it made sense to donate the book royalties to land-mine clearance in Afghanistan since that was one of the issues that compelled me to make GYWO in the first place (ie Dropping cluster bombs on Afghans).

How would you describe your work to those that have bad luck and haven’t seen it?

I would describe it like this: “Imagine a world in which your every desire is fulfilled… in which every dream is realized… a place where your deepest secrets spring to life… where imagination and reality waltz together under a harvest moon. An exciting, roller-coaster ride of whimsy, laughter, and good times. OK, now that you have imagined all that, imagine the exact opposite. Congratulations! You have just imagined GET YOUR WAR ON, the most boring, jejune comic of all time– which is somehow, madly, paradoxically, also the GREATEST COMIC of all time! Also, profanity.”

Did you ever catch your the stage adaption of your comic in 2005, and later in 2006?

Yes, when the Rude Mechs (Texas theatre company) toured their adaptation of GET YOUR WAR ON last year, I traveled to Washington, DC to see the show and participate in a Q&A afterwards. Then I saw it again in New York City, which is where they brought it most recently– namely, to New York City. They utilize four overhead transparency projectors simultaneously, which is marvelous and magical and makes me very envious, since I only use one overhead projector at a time. Also, you should know that their overhead transparency projectors used to belong to a little company in Texas known as ENRON. This is not a joke.

So you’re currently living in Brooklyn correct? How do you like it up there?

I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore. I live in a little town north of Manhattan. It takes about 90 minutes to travel to the city now, so I only go in a few times a month. My wife and I started a vegetable garden and I just set up a drumkit in our garage so I am very excited. Also, we have a birdfeeder outside our kitchen window so I can look at birds while I wash the dishes. I don’t miss the city at all, except for seeing freaky weirdo movies from other countries, which is more difficult now. And sometimes I miss my friends. I try to talk to them on the phone but our phone service sucks up here so I usually get frustrated and hang up.

I read one critic a while back that compared your work with that of legendary Doonesbury and The Boondocks, saying it was a fresher critique of the Bush administration. How do you feel about such claims?

Such claims are inaccurate and hurt our troops. Also, the terrorists want to kill your children.

What are you going to do when the Bush administration leave office – will this affect your strip at all? Are you watching the current primary elections at all?

I will stop GET YOUR WAR ON when Bush leaves office. I will never read another newspaper again; I will forget where Afghanistan is on the map; I will stop caring about the death toll in Iraq; I will sleep like a baby every single night. I cannot wait.

Shout outs, yells, hollers?

I would like to give a shout-out to Cannonball Press, the woodcut pirates. And I would like to give a shout-out to my wife and thank her for making all the nice food for our Memorial Day picnic. Also, a shout-out to Fred Kaplan and Dahlia Lithwick of Slate magazine for their fine journalism. And a final, big humongous shout-out to David Brooks, for being a goddamn idiot.

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