Publisher’s Weekly, or more precisely Publisher’s Weekly Comics Week, has published an interview with me about my upcoming book SILK ROAD TO RUIN: IS CENTRAL ASIA THE NEW MIDDLE EAST? (NBM Publishing, 304 pp., $22.95 Hardback, August 2006).

Some highlights:

Ted Rall’s Central Asian Adventure
By Sarah Feightner

Syndicated cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall has made a career out of a take-no-prisoners brand of political satire, taking shots from the extreme left wing at such controversial targets as the 9/11 widows and Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book legend Art Spiegelman. With his new book, Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?, coming in August from NBM, Rall hopes to convince readers to care about everyday life and politics in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and a handful of former Soviet republics that the average U.S. citizen probably couldn’t find on a map.

“This will either be a disaster, or the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” Rall says with a grin.

Four years in the making and launching with a 10,000-copy hardcover first printing, this new work of comics nonfiction picks up where his acclaimed 2002 war memoir To Afghanistan and Back (NBM) left off, mixing Rall’s political commentary with a comic travelogue pieced together from numerous trips to the region between 1999 and 2002. Silk Road to Ruin is an eye-opening and unexpectedly funny introduction to Central Asia. Each section explores the political and cultural landscape of one of “The Stans,” as Rall flies, drives or bribes his way across the border. Highlights include a tour of Third World cuisine, oil pipeline politics and the ultraviolent regional sport buzkashii—”the bloodiest and most anarchic sport currently played by the human race”—in which men on horseback duke it out, sometimes to the death, over the body of a dead goat.

“It’s very much the book that I wanted to write instead of To Afghanistan and Back,” says Rall. “I wanted to show that this war in Afghanistan was part of a much bigger thing that 9/11 triggered but really wasn’t the cause of it.”

[…]

While there may be more qualified scholars, better artists and more balanced political commentators out there than Rall, no one else has put together an introduction to Central Asia with as much accessibility, humor and guts as Silk Road to Ruin.

And it’s hard to match Rall’s enthusiasm for the subject. “I want to popularize Central Asia,” he says. “I want to do for Central Asia what Julia Child did for cooking.”

Booklist Reviews ATTITUDE 3

The influential book publishing industry magazine BOOKLIST has reviewed ATTITUDE 3: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ONLINE CARTOONISTS:

Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists. Ed. by Ted Rall. Aug. 2006. 128p. illus. NBM, paper, $13.95 (1-56163-465-4). 741.5.
The third set of Rall’s profiles of cartoonists he dubs subversive focuses on artists plying their trade online. Mostly unable to break into alternative weeklies, these new cartoonists use the Internet as their venue. A few get paid for simultaneous print appearances, but most self-publish, which allows them the freedom to be more radical than their dead-tree counterparts. Steven L. Cloud’s webcomics consist solely of a dialogue between a head on a stick and a blank-faced snake. As Rall aptly notes, the visual style of Eric Millikin’s Fetus-X “crosses Edvard Munch with an incipient victim of high school suicide.” Unfortunately, lack of editorial intermediation permits drawing styles including the primitive to the downright crude. The technology doesn’t even require real drawing ability. Several of the represented cartoonists rely on digital cutting and pasting, and Michael Zole’s strips just show two quarter-circles (“1” and “2”) conversing. But the standouts*Mark Fiore’s flash-animated political cartoons and Nicholas Gurewitch’s perversely gentle Perry Bible Fellowship*are unique and personal. **Gordon Flagg

Pick up this essential guide to some of the coolest new cartoonists around at your local bookstore or online.

Muslims 85% More Moral Than Western Leaders

Nearly five years after 9/11, add Great Britain to the list of Western Countries That Still Don’t Get It. Buried amid the pile of usual handwringing over “homegrown” Muslim terrorists in today’s New York Times is this:

An opinion survey published Tuesday in The Times of London, for instance, said 13 percent of British Muslims believed that the bombers should be viewed as “martyrs” and that 7 percent felt suicide attacks on civilians were justifiable.

Another recent survey by the Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 15 percent of British Muslims believed violence against civilian targets could “sometimes” be justified.

We’re supposed to be shocked, right? All I could think about, after I read the above, was how shockingly low those numbers really are. Compare these two factoids:

First: 7 to 15 percent of British Muslims think it’s OK to murder civilians

Second: 100 percent of British prime ministers and American presidents think it’s OK to murder civilians

Why isn’t there an analogous article about that?

Mind Over Food Matter

In the course of doing research for my next trip to Central Asia, I came across this review, complete with photos, of the food served on Tajikistan Airlines. (Apparently this site reviews food on other carriers as well.) You hardly need my testimony to take issue with the rather generous assessment of these, um, “meals.” Just look at the photos!

My favorite quote: “Very not bad for an economy class.”

Second best: “Much better than expected, for a short flight over the mountains on a little 30 seat plane. Nicely done, Tajikistan Airlines!”

Compared to what?

There’s a fairly lengthy interview with me at Econoculture. Because it was a phone interview, and one conducted over an international phone line at that, there are a number of transcription errors—most of which be obvious to intelligent readers. However, I do touch upon enough points of interest that I thought it worth pointing out here. I hope you enjoy it.

Right-wing bloggers owe me one cent for each citation.

America Gone Wild Release Date

Alf wants to know:

Approximately when is America Gone Wild due for release. I can order it through Amazon.com, but they don’t give a date.

Or you can order it from your friendly local bricks-and-mortar bookstore. Either way is fine, though if you have a choice it’s always good to patronize good stores lest they go out of business and you feel all sad and stuff the way I felt when Cody’s went under on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and realized that I had actually never, ever purchased a book there even though I lived nearby for more than a year.

Oh, the release date: Looks like late September or October. Advance orders are extremely helpful as they help bookstores gauge interest in a new title.

Critics can always get an advance galley for review.

You Decide

Elizabeth asks:

Hope this finds you well. The link below is for a parody of “Lola”, called “Coulter”. I don’t know if the author got the idea from your cartoon, but it sure seemed that way to me! I thought I’d pass it along. Enjoy:

http://www.amiright.com/parody/70s/thekinks25.shtml

“Terror Widows”: The Last Word

A number of articles and blogs have compared my March 2002 “terror widows” cartoon about media coverage of opportunistic 9/11 survivors Lisa Beamer, Ted Olsen and Mariane Pearl with Ann Coulter’s remarks about the “Jersey Girls,” 9/11 widows who have pressed the Bush Administration for answers about the terrorist attacks. Interestingly, there’s been some amnesia among right-wing commentators, some of whom posit that Ann is catching hell while I got away scot-free with the same exact remarks.

Well, for one thing, they’re not the same remarks. For another, I received numerous death threats and lost clients as a result of commenting on the commodification of grief. Don’t believe me? Check out my upcoming collection of cartoons AMERICA GONE WILD. It includes a 35,000-word foreword detailing the hate mail, threats of death and dismemberment, client cancellations and the hypocritical behavior that originally inspired my “terror widows” cartoon. Anyone interested in the truth behind the myth should give it a read.

Silk Road to Ruin

I just finished reviewing the page proofs for “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the Middle East?”, and they look great! I can’t wait to see the final books, which will first be shipped directly to me at the Comicon in San Diego. They go on sale at the Comicon on July 19 at the NBM booth. Books will start appearing in stores in August.

Reviewers interested in receiving a review copy or advance PDF should contact me at chet@rall.com

I will be offering my usual signed copies, for cover price plus priority shipping, in August and September.

Bulk Discount on Original Art and Books!

It’s that time again–time to buy something I can’t afford but desperately need. In this case it’s a new laptop. I figure it’ll run $2000, including taxes and software and loading it up so it’ll do everything I need it to do.

Here’s where you come in.

If you have $2000 to send me via PayPal, you will receive an extraordinary amount of Ted Rall artwork, marked two-thirds off the regular price of $500 each. In short, you’ll get ten (10) originals of your choice. Anything is available, including my work for MAD and other publications, provided I still have it and haven’t sold it to someone else. Yes, the vast majority of my work is available. No, “terror widows” isn’t.

To sweeten the pot, I’ll throw in a complete set of my books, signed to your specifications.

E-mail chet@rall.com if you’re interested.