Although I no longer have several of them (times got hard), there was a time when I owned every John Lennon solo album...with one exception: Some Time in New York City. I don't know why. I certainly was aware of it. I knew several of the songs. But I never got around to buying it.
This morning I was in a hurry to go online and listen to "Attica State," though. And even though the lyrics suffer a bit from liberal excess ("Free all prisoners everywhere / All they want is truth and justice / All they need is love and care...." I mean...REALly?), I still found it moving, and it made me re-realize how cutting edge (prison riot started September 9, 1971, album recorded December 1971 – 20 March 1972) John Lennon could be. And unless I missed something, there weren't a whole hell of a lot of other songwriters hitting these kinds of notes.
When I first saw Big Black: Stand at Attica by Frank "Big Black" Smith, Jared Reinmuth, and Ameziane on the shelf, I thought it looked interesting and wanted to buy it. The list price was $20, though, and that's an amount I had to think about, so I decided I'd wait and see what ComiXology could do for me. And? Well...it came up and it was $16. So I put it onto my Wish List and waited. Sometimes patience pays off. A few days ago I got it for $6.50. (It's already back up to $13, though, so that's further proof that when it comes to ComiXology, you have to strike the iron before it freezes.)
The art is a bit jarring at times...and not in a good way. To be blunt, some pages look downright amateurish. And even at 165 pages, the story needs more room. We don't really get to know Big Black well enough for what happens to him to have the impact that it should have. And we definitely would have benefitted from more front loading of the story here. Starting at the climax probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but what it gains in shock value it loses in reader identification value.
But despite all of that, I think this is a must read book. I mean, the Attica Prison Riot happened when I was 14, so I was certainly old enough to be aware of it...and I seem to have a memory of black and white pictures in an issue of Life magazine (and, in fact, if you Google "life magazine Attica prison riots," you'll see that at least in this instance my memory was not invented). But it didn't really mean anything to me then...I didn't have any understanding of what happened or the magnitude of the injustice...until I read this comic book.
And now all I can say is...it looks like things were as bad then as they are now when it comes to how Black protestors are viewed by the media and White America. Which was a surprise to me, as I really was starting to think that things were as bad as they could get right now in terms of the media actively working to portray Black protestors as dangerous anarchists.
The short version: Black prisoners were excessively punished for a very minor incident, things escalated and the prisoners, who had had as much abuse as they could stomach, took over the prison. And then police were sent in to massacre the protestors. The police then lied about what happened, said that the prisoners had executed their hostages, and the media repeated this lie...to justify the killing of 33 inmates...and to falsely explain the murder of 10 of the hostages--who were actually shot by the police.
There's more to it than that, but that's a good start.
For all of its faults, this is a must read item. And, of course, it is particularly poignant right now.
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