Sanitized Graphic Novel to be Published About 'Bill the Bomber' Ayers

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Have you heard about a graphic novel called "Joey the Seminarian?" It is about young Joseph Djugashvili and his adventures in a Tiflis seminary. Joey is quite an excellent student who writes poetry and is an excellent singer who performs in the choir and at weddings. Of course, this graphic novel conveniently leaves out the fact that young Joey Djugashvili grew up to become Joe Stalin the dictator who caused millions to lose their lives in brutal slave labor camps and via starvation as well as through mass liquidations. Yes, I'm just kidding about that graphic novel but it turns out that an equally whitewashed graphic novel is soon to be published about "Bill the Bomber" Ayers. Forget about his acts of cowardly terrorism via bombing. As reported by Calvin Reid in Publishers Weekly  the graphic novel will be based on Ayer's whitewashed memoir  To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher (emphasis mine):

Teachers College Press, a scholarly, professional and trade publisher focused on the theory and practice of teacher education, has reached agreement on a two-book deal with William Ayers, the University of Illinois at Chicago professor, lauded educational theorist and former leader of the radical 1960s Weather Underground. And, yes, Ayers is indeed the same figure dragooned into the 2008 presidential race in a controversial attempt to use his background in radical politics and a minor acquaintance with Barack Obama to undermine Obama’s presidential run.

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Poor widdle Bill. "Dragooned" into the presidential race despite being a "minor acquaintance" with Barack Obama even though the latter's political career was launched in Ayer's living room. Publishers Weekly continues with their whitewashed report about Ayer's sanitized graphic novel:

In spring 2010, TCP will publish a graphic novel adaptation of To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, a much-praised memoir of Ayers’s life as a teacher, tentatively to be called To Teach: The Graphic Memoir with art by Xeric Award-winner Ryan Alexander-Tanner. More than a simple memoir, To Teach is also a peer-reviewed work of scholarship on Ayers’s teaching precepts as well as a vivid recollection of his adventures in the classroom. At the same time, TCP will publish a new and revised third edition of the original prose To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher.  One of TCP’s all-time bestselling titles, To Teach was originally published in 1993 and has sold more than 75,000 copies over three printings, the last one released in 2001.

“For an academic/scholarly press, that’s a major bestseller,” noted TCP acquisitions editor Meg Lemke, who “co-acquired” the book with TCP director Carol Saltz, who will edit the new prose edition. Lemke will oversee the production of the graphic edition. Despite the media hoopla over his radical past, Ayers is a serious and much respected Chicago-based educational activist and theorist who has been with TCP for years and published at least five books at the house. Ayers is also the series editor of TCP's Teaching Social Justice series of titles. (Fugitive Days, Ayers's memoir of his past as a radical political activist, is published by Beacon Press.) The idea to produce a graphic novel version of Ayers’s book came after TCP contacted him about an updated edition of To Teach, which was revised in 2001. “It was a collaborative idea among Carol, myself and Bill,” Lemke said.

The artist for the project, Alexander-Tanner, has won a Xeric Award (a grant presented in support of self-published comics). A former student of Ayers’s brother Rick, Alexander-Tanner had done interviews with William Ayers for a series of cartoons about him and was an easy pick to illustrate the project.  Alexander-Tanner, who lives in Portland, Ore., even moved to Chicago to live in Ayers’s house for five months to fully collaborate on the adaptation.

Lemke called the graphic novel adaptation “well-written and drawn, serious but still funny and inspiring,” and compared it to such graphic nonfiction works as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. She said To Teach is “a popular course adoption text and we think the graphic adaptation will pair with this for courses at the high school as well as college level, and become an even more widely loved 'gift book' for aspiring progressive teachers and anyone working with youth.”

Your humble correspondent, during the course of his checkered career, once wrote comix stories. Gee, I wonder if Teachers College Press would be interested in publishing my own graphic novel idea called "Bill the Bomber?" It would be the biography of a young spoiled rich kid brought up in privileged circumstances. He grows up to become a domestic terrorist. The highlight of his life is when a bomb he plans to be planted at an NCO dance at Fort Dix accidentally blows up killing his girlfriend and two others. The novel would end with Bill the Bomber wailing that he "didn't do enough."

"Bill the Bomber" comix. Somehow I have the feeling that Teachers College Press would be completely uninterested in publishing a true unsanitized graphic novel about Bill Ayers.

—P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.


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Bill the Bomber

I feel so reassured that this piece of human debris is a teacher.  Not only that, but an acclaimed teacher.   What does he specialize in, the writings of Robespierre, Gramsci and Alinsky? How can we tolerate this as a nation?

Responsibility is the price of freedom. - Elbert Hubbard

A too obvious attempt at

A too obvious attempt at re-writing history. The Soviets were great at sanitizing and spinning inconvenient facts, the left here are no different.

75,000 sold and it's a best

75,000 sold and it's a best seller? I'm sure that's a very generous interpretation of "best seller."  Whatever!

I can't help but think that this new book is all part of a orchestrated effort to purify widdle Bill's image.

IMHO, Ayers personifies evil.   

75,000

And I'll bet they all went to public schools!

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason

Bolton/KEYES 2012 

PJ: I loved your comment

PJ:

I loved your comment of:

Gee, I wonder if Teachers College Press would be interested in publishing my own graphic novel idea called "Bill the Bomber?" It would be the biography of a young spoiled rich kid brought up in privileged circumstances. He grows up to become a domestic terrorist. The highlight of his life is when a bomb he plans to be planted at an NCO dance at Fort Dix accidentally blows up killing his girlfriend and two others. The novel would end with Bill the Bomber wailing that he "didn't do enough."

I must say that the graphics associated with his REAL LIFE would beat the hell out of what the sanitized version will have.  In the sanitized version, expect to see plenty of scenes of Billy handing out bowls of soup to poor peaople on the south side of Chicago while Billy attends SDS seminars.  Exciting huh?

WHile his real life story of cars exploding outside judges homes while the families flee for their lives, policemen being executed, and apartments blowing apart has SOOO MUCH MORE graphic appeal.

Perhaps we can develop our own to be airdropped over Chicago ala Psywar leafletting campaigns.  If they can create a comic, we can do the same.

"Bill the Bomber" Comix

I would love to write up a "Bill the Bomber" graphic novel. I used to write lots of comix stories on the Web (thus my frequent screen name, "PJ-Comix"). I even have the perfect cartoonist for this task with whom I worked before---Brian Chin. All I need now is a publisher.

PJ -- Biil The Bombers

PJ -- Biil The Bomber's costume would be, of course:

BOMBER JACKET

BERET

CHE T-SHIRT with identical Obama on the back

And every "Blooper" Hero needs a sidekick. Bill the Bomber's would have to be his ward... fake Indian WARD CHURCHILL aka Talking Bull Boy

"I am NOT a tax crook!"
Thomas Milhous Daschle

Yeah, just think of the

Yeah, just think of the characters you could have in such a comic. 

His girldfriend who was blown to itty-bitty bits while building bomb to blow up people at a dance.

His lawyer who got him off on a technicality.

His wife Bernadine who if anything is a bigger loon than Billy is.

Fellow Fugitive loon Cathy Wilkerson.

And of course, Billy's own personal hero Sirhan-Sirhan.

 

 

You know...

     By omitting his terrorism days the idea of this graphic novel sounds quite boring.  I don't see this selling a whole lot of copies just on that premise alone.  People who are offended by his terrorism and his ideas of America won't spend a dime on this.   While the people who don't know about his terrorism (if that is possible) will not see anything of interest in a graphic novel about a teacher.  Either way, I estimate a sale of about 3,000 copies tops.

"Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." - Francois Guisot

15 minutes

We already know that Ayers is a very good writer of fake autobiographies, why shouldn't he cash in on his newfound fame by writing more? Without Obama he remains a forgotten old fool known only to the corrupt Chicago machine. This is his (second) 15 minutes and he's going to make the most of it.

"Bill the Bomber" - an understatement

"Bill the Bomber" - actually an understatement. 

Bill Ayers? I'd say a call for "guerrilla warfare in the urban areas.." is not the picture the MSM wants out on the street.

A few questions for Ayers could be found within these pages:

 Principles Schminiciples – New Left Notes, Nov. 21, 1969

[pg. 16] Ayers said ..The essence of the SDS strategy is to build a white, para-military organization designed to carry our guerrilla warfare in the urban areas of America – they are totally committed to revolution.

Enter the Rev. Wright principles: 

SDS does not believe that the goal is unity between black and white youth. SDS views the black people of the U.S. as a nation which is colonized by the white oppressor nation. The goal for blacks is revolutionary black nationalist struggle against the white oppressor nation, U.S. imperialism...

And, Ayers' little lady, Bernardine Dorn. The recent read from Bernardine Dohrn on Homeland Imperialism might prove to be an interesting read for those curious about Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) in today's casual friends and associates of folks who have paled around with the new president.

So much information - so few investigative journalists. (;~/ gary

Didn't Alan Moore Already Create A GN About Bill Ayers?

I believe the title was... V For Vendetta?!

Yes, I have a very dark sense of humor. Although, I wonder what it would be like if Ayers had don a Guy Fawkes mask, possessed Hugo Weaving's vocal cords and ran across the rooftops of futuristic London in a cape? It still would have looked bad for Obama's campaign though. And I think Alan Moore would still hate a film version of that, though. He pretty much hates every filmed version of his work, even the new Watchmen movie despite the fact he hasn't even seen it yet.

Maybe we should try the same thing to Ayer's graphic novel that Moore is doing to the Watchmen movie: "I Wish To Curse it With All My Venom!" That would be interesting.