John Guyton, main character

“The Nightly News” has been getting a lot of press, apparently, and for good reason. Jonathan Hickman’s graphic novel, which I finished over the last couple days, is a bold experiment in both style and content. Its storyline is designed, as much as illustrated, relying on entangled compositions, simple color schemes, and high-impact graphic art; it presents its themes brutally, without flinching or shedding a tear. Parents be warned: there is a lot of wanton murder between its covers.

The story, originally presented as six issues, is about a cult of victims of the modern media who shed their humanity and their propriety in order to kill journalists and news people. The protagonists, who are also the perpetrators, are neither explicitly condoned nor condemned… if there is anything “heroic” about them, it’s simply their brute single-mindedness. The depiction of their crimes has the exhibitionist quality of a forbidden fantasy exposed, like Nabakov’s “Lolita,” or “The Boondock Saints.”

One of the more interesting devices in Hickman’s design is his use of asides, including infographics and obvious references to real people and speeches. The schematic and annotated stylization lends the book a certain authority, even as it’s clearly a work of fiction, with no pretensions of being a manifesto or an instruction manual. It’s not making a specific argument, but the stylization lends some weight to … what?

Ultimately, I do see an argument in “The Nightly News,” and though it’s not an argument I would condemn (i.e. it’s not an incitement to hatred or murder), it’s one that deserves our attention and some caution on our part. This argument is in the story’s framework, its depiction of the news media as a behemoth of corruption and maliciousness. The narrative is built entirely on the assumption that reporters and news outlets are spiteful and morally repugnant, and it’s not science fiction or alternate history. The story is interesting, and even appealing, because part of the reader believes in this sick world of evil corporate news.

And I think, more and more, the citizens of this country do distrust mass media journalism, and everything they hear from it. It’s a perspective characteristic of both the left (”media consolidation”) and the right (”the liberal media”), and in a lot of cases and a lot of ways, it’s justified — as in, for instance, Bernie’s recent post on the fate of the evening news. Ratings and income prompts sensationalism, short-sightedness, laziness, and alarmism, and as often as not, I’m with those who suspect the news media of falling victim to all of these at once.

But in the eyes of “The Nightly News,” reporters and their employers aren’t just lazy or greedy. They’re downright malicious. One reporter in the book claims that “We destroy people without fear of retribution or litigation. It’s what we do.” According to the graphic novel’s extensive end-notes, this quote is related to (and perhaps lifted from) the Page Six scandal of 2006. This is an uncompromising, confrontational portrayal at the heart of a cynically brilliant work of art.

Beyond the compelling story and challenging artwork, there are questions to be answered: are we ready to see our headline pushers as heartless criminals? And if so, are we right about them?