Art: Amancay Nahuelpan
Colors: Tyler Boss
Flats: Dee Cunniffe
Maps: Richard Nisa
Letters: Jim Campbell
Flags: Robert Anthony Jr.
Assistant: Philip W. Smith II
Secession has become a regular part of American political discourse because it’s mostly just wishful thinking. The consequences for any state attempting to secede would be disastrous. Without outside intervention or the state's declaration of independence inspiring a much wider popular uprising throughout the country, the U.S. military would face fewer obstacles and easily outmatch any local standing army. And if the federal government does become a truly fascist regime as some well-heeled liberals fear will happen in the near future, it won’t have any compunction operating in the most ruthless manner to suppress even the most nominal opposition. All of these anxieties inform the bleak setting of Calexit, a collaborative effort from writer Matteo Pizzolo and artist Amancay Nahuelpan. The comic doesn’t actually begin with California’s declaration to secede. It shows what happens after the U.S. National Guard has been sent in to keep the upstart state from leaving the Union. This is a story of the resistance being driven underground and seeing no option but to wage asymmetric warfare on the occupying forces and their collaborators.
Calexit is not a subtle work. The comic extrapolates the country’s divisive political climate since the 2016 elections and dials it up to eleven. There’s no doubt who the story's fictional president is meant to resemble, both in physical appearance and his word salad style of oration. A throwaway line about certain retail chains boycotting the first daughter’s fashion line mirrors the real world administration’s all to familiar nepotism. And let’s not forget its flagrant xenophobia. Calexit quickly reveals that the action which triggers California’s defiance is an executive order signed during the president's second term, calling for “the immediate deportation of all immigrant civilians not recognized as U.S. citizens.” To quote the words of a wise man in order to summarize the effects of the process, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering"
The main villain however is Father Rossie, the government’s point man in rounding up California’s immigrant population and squelching the resistance. He’s the kind of over-the-top James Bond villain who loves to watch people squirm while he monologues about how they’re all going to die. He’s also drawn to look like a latter day Steve Jobs when he was finally succumbing to cancer, with a dash of the creepy Mr. Burns for good measure. Playing Princess Leia to Rossie’s Governor Tarkin is the headstrong Zora McNulty, an immigrant on the run and a leading figure in the resistance. We know she’s a big deal because several well-off L.A. residents would sooner die at Rossie’s hands before revealing to him Zora’s whereabouts. And Calexit even has its own Han Solo figure in Jamil, a happy-go-lucky smuggler inadvertently caught in the conflict between the two.
Jamil is the main POV character, and his ability to get along with both sides allows us to witness the terrible conditions of the occupation. He supplies a Guardsman anti-depressants because they’re not exactly legal. Jamil has a friendly conversation about his profession with Rossie. He passes by an entire neighborhood razed to the ground by a pro-government militia without batting an eye. The comic’s main contention is that internal divisions within the state had already doomed California even before the federal government put boots on the ground. Many of its residents would have supported the executive order had it been enacted in real life.
This topicality makes it complicated to assess Calexit as an object. There’s a rawness to the art that imparts an unfinished quality, especially in the flat color palette. There’s also a sense of urgency throughout which transcends the usual objective of producing a comic book. Calexit presents an extreme forecast of the future in the hopes of heading it off. This urgency has only grown since its initial conception. Pizzolo explains in the afterword that when he was writing Calexit, “We didn't know the winning presidential candidate would lose California by nearly 2-to-1, a margin of almost 3.5 million votes. We didn't know the day after that President took power, the largest mass demonstration in history occurred, and the state with the largest turnout was California. We didn't know that California’s two major international airports, LAX and SFO, would be blockaded by furious protesters… I think one thing we can all agree on is that shit’s been hurtling into the fan at an accelerated pace lately.”
Of course, we could still end up being spared a second term.
