This book wins my vote for worst original graphic novel/one-shot of 2012, hands down, no contest… winner. This is literally one of the worst things I have ever read in my life. You may remember this book from the widely publicized announcement that Bill Jemas the co-writer of this… books return to comics. Bill Jemas used to run Marvel Comics in case you were wondering and for some reason left while the company was all but at the top their game. Wake the Fuck Up is about a boy and a girl, but it’s not a fucking love story or maybe it is, who the fuck knows. Instead it spans a decade of time that covers some of our economies roughest times… viewed through the eyes of children… that talk like adults. Also there are only 25 drawings in the entire book, but you’ll get to see each of them twice! The first twenty-five pages are a really bad poem; I guess you would call it a poem. The “poem” is in a way told through the parent’s perspective about their lazy children and each verse ends with “fuck”, but they’re too scared to spell it, so much like on the cover they censor it.
The second set of the same twenty-five pages are from the children’s perspectives and it’s long winded conversations slapped on top of one piece of art and usually has nothing to do with the art. They speak like adults regardless of their age and one of them has an obsession with Dinosaurs that isn’t funny and his dad really hates him for it and I can't blame him. I mean I like dinosaurs, but this kid is just an asshole about it.
Their relationship is never established. Are they friends, separated siblings, neighbors, what the fuck is their relationship? Granted the book isn’t about that, it’s about making social commentary on the economy over the past decade with the gift of foresight attached to it. A little girl who has no access to the mortgage paperwork suddenly knows all of the hidden clauses that will one day cause her mom to lose their house because she’s good at math and can read a newspaper? The boy takes classes to learn how to program phone apps and never creates one of his own, but he’s also bad at math… that’s gotta be the reason right? Then they go to occupy Wall Street after we already know that it’s over and that’s where the story ends. All I could think was "Thank god it's over!"
All I took from this book was that they creators didn’t like the fact that the government bailed out the banks and car companies and may have been fucked over on the housing bubble. And maybe we would have gone through a second depression where everyone pulled their money out of the banks and we would all be driving Toyotas, Hondas and Kias as our only car choice, but what’s done is done. This comic not only fails to tell an actual story, but it also fails to bring anything new to the argument of “What we should have done”, it’s just soured people taking up the only soapbox they have available. This is not only a terrible comic, but it’s just a terrible waste of time as well. I’m all for social commentary in comics, but social commentary is more than just saying “Hey, that thing that happened… I didn’t like it”, I can hear that shit in the line at the grocery store I don’t need to read it in a comic book.
Score: WTF
Writers: Bill Jemas & Eric Dietel Pencils: JJ Dzialowski Publisher: Zenescope Price: $2.99