Hacktivist
Created by Alyssa Milano
Written by Jason Lanzig and Colin Kelly
Illustrated by Marcus To
Hacktivist is a comic I enjoyed. At the same time, I have numerous criticisms to offer of this book. It’s a good story, and an entertaining premise, and the view it presents of the hacker lifestyle is edifying. That being said, it’s risky for any comic to try and offer insights into geopolitical realities. Those realities are complicated, and this book simplifies things in pursuit of a good story.
Hacktivist is about continuing social unrest in Tunisia and two American hackers, Nate Graft and Ed Hiccox, who also happen to be social media entrepreneurs. They break down a government firewall in Tunisia shortly before revealing to the world their social media platform, YourLife. Unlike Facebook, YourLife is completely decentralized, meaning that governments could not use YourLife to access user information. Hiccox is a man who studies patterns. He hopes to use YourLife as a means of drawing people together against oppressive governments. Graft, on the other hand, is a showier businessman. At a party, he meets a CIA agent who offers to expunge the duo’s record in exchange for their cooperation in Tunisia.
Hiccox does not want to cooperate with the government, but he goes along with it as part of a greater plan. When Graft and Hiccox support the Tunisians, the CIA handler does an about face and announces that the U.S. government will use this to pressure the Tunisian government for concessions in exchange for leaving the revolutionaries out to dry. Hiccox goes on the run, and from there a collision between Hiccox, Graft and the CIA is inevitable.
There were things that I liked about this comic, and things that I did not. Off the bat, I’m wary of any story in which white people from the first-world come to the rescue of the less fortunate. This story is no exception to that. Sure, Hiccox learns some things from the Tunisians, but at its core, this is a story about a white genius billionaire saving a lot of less fortunate brown people. I can’t help but think this story would have been more interesting if it had focused solely on the Tunisians.
The insights into the life of hackers are certainly interesting, and it’s clear that the creators did their homework in learning the lingo and technical terms. The hardcover includes an interview with Pablos Holman, a hacker and activist who explains some of the techniques Hiccox and Graft use in the comic. Where I think this falls short is again the focus on Hiccox and Graft, because their lives simply aren’t representative of most hackers. I want to see how the ordinary activists are working and living, not a couple of characters who could really only exist in fiction.
The premise of the story is certainly one that people can get behind: stopping oppressive governments from crushing their own people and allowing free information to pass. For the record, I’m on the side of the hacktivists. That being said, this is a pretty black-and-white tale, offering a choice between freedom or oppression, surveillance or openness. The CIA agent is shallow and manipulative, but we’re not even given the chance to hear her motivations before they are implicitly dismissed by the creators.
There’s also a note of simplicity in Hiccox’s and Graft’s motivations. The authors do this by making the Tunisians so easy to support, because all they want is freedom. In the real world, people’s motivations are complex. What we see in other people is usually what we wish to see, and it may bear no relation to reality at all. It’s hard to imagine this comic playing out so simply in reality. Hiccox and Graft might be discovering that the revolutionaries they support do not share Western European ideals regarding civil society, or that governing a free society is often very different from overturning oppression.
Read this comic. It’s an interesting read on a topic that all of us should be thinking about. Just remember to read it skeptically.