Frezno's Comics Challenge: November 2024 (The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

(TW: Anti-semitism, the recent election.)

Sometimes, like as we saw with From Hell, comics can be a form of magic. At times it can create something wonderful and resonant with that power, but at other times there are some really dark synergies at play. Case in point, this book. It's not even the fault of the book, as it's a very important and powerful text that makes the world better for existing. No, it's just the timing of things. My esteemed comics critic and guide on this journey, Sean Dillon, selected this one for the month of November. They could have given it to me in March, or in May, or in any of the other months, but he picked this one for November. They informed me of this selection on October the 19th. Two and a half weeks later, in the United States Of America, the world plunged backwards into hell once again. We will deal with the horrific synchronicities at play in recent world events in a bit, but first as always we must define the book and its author.

The late Will Eisner's book, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and hereafter we will call Eisner's comic The Plot and the propaganda book his comic is about The Protocols) is the capstone to a historic career in comics. I mean, you don't get a goddamn award named after you without being a bit of a legend. I confess to not knowing much about his history and influence over the comic within his lifetime, but I am here to talk about this. The last comic Will Eisner ever did. The Plot. The Plot is a piece dedicated to the secret history of The Protocols, and those despicable things need to be defined too. I didn't know The Protocols by name, but I know them by reputation. The Protocols are basically just the Jewish conspiracy, that old bigoted chestnut which claims that the Jewish people are secretly in control of the world and running it for their own nefarious ends, which of course justifies every anti-semitic belief and action undertaken by the oh so noble reader in fighting against it for the sake of world peace-- oh let's fucking call a spade a spade, it's fascist horseshit. It is fascist horseshit which people who believe terrible things use to justify doing terrible things. The Plot, then, Will Eisner's last act of art on this mortal coil, is in part an expose of how The Protocols are complete bullshit, an old man dragging fascism by the scruff of the neck out into the sunlight so it can melt away like Count fucking Dracula. The book opens with a foreword by Umberto Eco, for Christ's sakes, this is what it is.

Eisner's style and artistry with the book is interesting, and the way things play out and how they're sketched is a thing to behold. An entire lifetime of honing the skill of the pencil has led to this, a series of incredibly detailed sketches that doesn't need panels or grids to express itself, this free-flowing piece of art which still naturally compartmentalizes itself to draw you to parts of it, reading in sequence before taking it as a whole. It feels like an essay come to life with the added unflattening of the visual comic element, flowing so naturally as to both inform with its text and accentuate with its art. It's a masterful composition, is what I'm saying. Even its dialogue has this strange quality to it that I'm having trouble pinning down, but the best way I can describe it is like talking to a history book. It's like if I were telling you about the Kennedy assassination but instead of saying "Yeah, on the 22nd he was in Dallas in his car and then he got shot", I went "Ah yes, Kennedy, who was in Dallas on Nov. 22nd 1963 and drove by in his motorcar near the Book Depository before Lee Harvey Oswald awaited in the window, aiming his rifle and firing several shots!". It's strange, but compelling. Both of these factors combine to make a very interesting comic that is, in part, about debunking a bunch of anti-semitic horseshit and calling it what it is by looking at history itself. As a history book come to life, The Plot can point to the fact that Mathieu Golovinski was just plagiarizing an old French book that was about criticizing Napoleon (and, indeed, The Plot takes several pages of directly holding the two texts together to show you that Golovinski was a hack copycat fuck), and how history over and over again uses The Protocols whenever making a scapegoat out of Jewish people would be convenient. It thoroughly proves, beyond a shadow of the doubt, that The Protocols are cobbled-together racist vomit from an opportunistic plagiarist.

But that's not enough. Time and time again in the broad history spanned over The Plot, the same sentiment pops up. It is a sentiment similar to the ones that I just shared, in which people look over The Protocols and go "Hey wait a minute! This is bullshit!". Many of these historical people are journalists and scholars who would go on to officially debunk The Protocols with their platforms. They use their evidence and erudition to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that The Protocols are complete fucking horseshit, and one sentiment continues to be shared over the broad course of history in The Plot. "Ah, we've debunked The Protocols so thoroughly, they will never be a problem again!". Yet somehow, The Protocols persist. Racism, anti-semitism, and the sheer horror of fascism persists. Time and time again The Protocols are disproven, and time and time again they are republished and taken as gospel by the types of terrible people who would latch on to them for their own horrific needs and desires. It isn't enough to disprove this shit. You need to bash it over the fucking head. Case in point, the recent events. America is sliding backwards into hell once again, and it is not going to be fucking pretty. Rights will be lost, people will die, and democratic institutions will continue to crumble. (Speaking as someone with the privilege of being on the other side of the border, it always struck me as a little fucked up that the US appoints the nine people with near-absolute power over what laws get passed or rejected for fucking life. What the fuck.) It's not pretty, but it's what the popular public voted for. Debunking the fascism isn't enough. It can't be beaten with just an election. We had four years of (relative?) respite from it, but now it's back. It's a part of the history of the world, it will come for you, and the only thing to do in the face of it is to fight back and survive.

A bit of a downer to end a comics critique on, I know, but such is the state of things. My heart goes out to you all down south. Don't let them win, okay?