What is freedom?

More of Free Planet's bibliography: David Graeber & David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything

This week in Atlantis still sunk:

• Another incredible new Image Comics series: Zander Cannon’s Sleep

• My recent appearance on Matthew Rosenberg’s Ideas Don’t Bleed podcast

• The Shape of Comics to Come in the wild

• But first…

The powerfully talented comics writer Daniel Freedman recently posed a question regarding Free Planet, a book comprising characters and societies fighting over what freedom actually entails. Having read the first two issues, he wondered whether, at any point, I, in light of all my research, put forward an assertion regarding the correct way of organizing a society.

Excitedly, I told him, “No. The work is more complex than that.” Free Planet isn’t a roadmap to freedom, but a rumination on it, one that owes an enormous debt to The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

When Free Planet was picked up by Image (the only place it could have landed), I sent my cocreator Jed Dougherty a pair of books. The first was Hugh Thomas’ The Spanish Civil War, which was incredibly formative with regard to the world of Free Planet, inclusive of the revolution that precedes issue #1, the numerous multiple galactic superpowers and the characters’ obstinate insistence upon liberty on their terms.

The influence of The Dawn of Everything was decidedly different but no less impactful. A dense work of anarchist anthropology, reexamining the entirety of humanity’s view on the entirety of humanity’s history, the tome – to be sure – contains many instances of prehistorical development that made their way into Free Planet. However, The Dawn of Everything’s biggest influence was on the complex thematic ruminations that are the true essence of Free Planet.

I – like many of you reading – adore BEEF BROS. Even among my other work, it holds a special place in my heart for being, not just bombastic and outrageous, but also an earnest expression of cocreator Tyrell Cannon and my views on true heroism. Steadfastly rejecting the Hobbesian view of bellum omnium contra omnes, the belief that humanity’s natural state is a brutish, solitary battle for survival, Huey & Ajax Beef embrace the outlook of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that humanity once lived in a state of blissful innocence, with man at peace with his fellows and the natural world. The problem is that neither of those views are accurate.

This is one of the central points of The Dawn of Everything: Time and time again, Graeber and Wengrow meticulously detail well-researched examples showing how human societies have always been more complex, stranger and more interesting than either Hobbes or Rousseau would have us believe. This was a crucial turning point in my approach, ushering in the realization that, in order to create work of the quality to which I aspire, I had to go beyond straightforward statements of belief, beyond propaganda, beyond direct metaphor. To say something truly meaningful, my message and themes had to be just as complex as the human condition, embracing and reveling in ambiguity and unanswerable questions alike.

As explained by the authors themselves, The Dawn of Everything began with the intent of rooting out the origins of inequality and how we calcified into the current, seemingly immutable world order. However, Graeber and Wengrow quickly came to the conclusion that it’s not a lack of equality that defines and differentiates contemporary human society but a lack of freedom. They enumerate three distinct types of human freedom that were once universal:

1. The freedom to move where you wish

2. The freedom to disobey

3. The freedom to create new social structures

Somewhat ironically, despite these three foundational freedoms being nonexistent in the contemporary world, there remains a deep and abiding love of freedom as a concept. In the US specifically, “freedom” is an animating principle up and down the political spectrum, due in no small part to its role in our founding mythology. At its core, this is what Free Planet is about: Freedom, how to define it, the sacrifices it demands, the discipline it requires, and the authority that must arise in its absence.

My research for Free Planet has sought to determine – among other things – how a truly liberated society would even begin to function. I now believe that my difficulty in even conceptualizing a completely free world is tied up with what Graeber and Wengrow describe as the “stuck” nature of contemporary human society; this lack of imagination is part of the trap that keeps us believing that things are as they must be and have always been.

And this is yet another gift I received from The Dawn of Everything: Graeber and Wengrow blow up the received wisdom that anarchy is synonymous with lawlessness, chaos and savagery. While they do indeed describe small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, they also detail shockingly complex societies that managed to accomplish great things, inclusive of building cities and monuments, maintaining complex societal relationships, and perfecting agricultural practices, all without abandoning the three fundamental freedoms outlined above.

Of course, it would be disingenuous to say that anything remotely similar to contemporary human society could be maintained alongside a freedom of movement, the freedom to disobey and the freedom to create new social relationships. My takeaway from The Dawn of Everything, however, is that it’s not societal complexity that is incompatible with foundational freedoms but structural and hierarchical immensity. Truly, the problem is bigness and all it entails: entrenched bureaucracy, the twin pitfalls of inefficiency or too ruthless efficiency, and the insidious temptation to limit freedom in the interest of safety, security, consistency and profit.

To reiterate: Free Planet does not contain answers or solutions. I’m categorically unable to say how we could build a modern society that maintains these three fundamental freedoms and, what’s more, I’m highly skeptical of anyone who says they have the solution. But that complexity, that ambiguity, that unanswerable question, is the place where actual rumination, actual thought, actual art lives. Free Planet is an effort not to forget a single path but to explore multiple; I’m looking forward to you walking them with us.

As ever: The best way to help make Free Planet a success is to call your local comic shop and preorder the book. Doing so not only ensures you’ll get a copy of the first printing but indicates that there will be wider demand for it. If you don’t have a comics shop in driving distance, my friends at Collector’s Paradise have you covered. And if you are – somehow – still not sold on the Shape of Comics to Come, check out this preview.

Aubrey’s rare comics origin story

I don’t often speak about my early days in comics, working in Marvel Comics editorial. But I recently delved into just that, my editorial background’s influence on my writing and more on Ideas Don’t Bleed, an incredible comics craft podcast hosted by comics writer Matthew Rosenberg (We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us, 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank) and Ethan Smith & Griffin Sheridan, aka, the Supple Boiz.

This is only the first installment of my IDB appearance and you definitely need to tune in for context on the subsequent. Next week on Ideas Don’t Bleed, I make bold claims, discuss my deep-seated comics resentments and chart a course for the Shape of Comics to Come.

Buzzing for days afterward, I suddenly realized why: The good-natured, contemplative banter of Ideas Don’t Bleed reminded me of the glory days of The World’s Smartest Rasslin’ Talk Show, STRAIGHT SHOOT. Chopping it up with Matt and Ethan (Griffin sadly couldn’t make it) was an unmitigated treat. How else could you describe three intelligent people digging into a medium they love from a shared perspective of desperately wanting it to be better?

Preorder Sleep

Free Planet isn’t the only big new launch from Image Comics this May. While pre-ordering the Shape of Comics to Come, tell your comic shop you absolutely must have Sleep by Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Zander Cannon.

In addition to collaborating with Alan Moore and Gene Ha on the exquisite Top 10, Zander has also done multiple volumes of the utterly brilliant Kaijumax. His Kaijumax starts as a seemingly lighthearted riff on Ultraman quickly becomes a complex, heartwrenching look at the prison industrial complex and the carceral state more broadly. Ask your shop for the first volume!

I’ve had the pleasure of reading Sleep #1 and can confirm that, as good as Kaijumax is, Zander’s latest is on another level. While the pitch-perfect cartooning and character acting is still present, Sleep is a more serious, deliberately paced work, with a thoughtful approach to shading and color, all feeding into a sense of creeping dread and horror. Do. Not. Miss. It.

Free Planet in the wild

This past week, comic shops opened up their weekly shipments to a surprise: This incredible Free Planet poster by my cocreator Jed Dougherty! The hope is, naturally, that shops will post it in places of prominence, to help new readers learn about and get excited about the Shape of Comics to Come. Shortly afterward, I opened up my email to a surprise of my own:

The Tinley Park, Illinois location of the incredible Amazing Fantasy Books & Comics chain has proudly installed our Free Planet poster right over their hottest new releases! If you spot our poster in the wild at your local comic shop, please shoot me a photo, so I can share it here.

NEXT WEEK: The brilliance of my Free Planet cocreator Jed Dougherty should be readily apparent to anyone confronted with his work. But in the unlikely event that there’s any doubt, I’ll be detailing why exactly he’s so very good.

Aubrey