Reviews: Two cannabis comics
Legalization Nation, published earlier this year, collects Brian Box Brown's ongoing coverage of the chaotic, shifting legal terrain for cannabis. The book is good though the reading experience is a bit fragmented. That’s an inevitable consequence, I think, of Brown's dogged commitment to regular documentation, through weekly comics journalism, of a rapid paradigm shift in how this country treats weed. A book that tried to tell a definitive narrative now, before the dust has settled, would quickly become (as Brown puts it) "horribly outdated."
The unifying principle that holds Legalization Nation together — and makes it interesting — is the book's strong ethical edge: Brown's polemics against corporate control of weed, his support for "legacy" (i.e., illicit) growers, and his desire to dismantle the strong stigma still attached to consuming cannabis are all really powerful and admirable.
It also works well as a sequel to Brown’s earlier book, Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America. This one is a historical look at how weed has been criminalized and demonized.
Cannabis explores in great detail how specific lies and myths about marijuana were spread by powerful people – whether motivated by a desire to advance their own political careers or just straight-up racism. Brown’s stripped down style is also really great for this kind of historical explainer. But the book also has a few moments of complex, beautiful page designs.
Hopefully we're moving closer to an America where people don’t have their lives ruined for getting high. Having read both these books, I can say that I think we're at least making progress in a messy, imperfect way.
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