| Comment | Brought to Light COMIC BOOK AND SPOKEN WORD CD | Brought to Light | Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action is an anthology of two political graphic novels, published originally by Eclipse Comics in 1988. Both are based on material from lawsuits filed by the Christic Institute against the US Government. The two stories are Shadowplay: The Secret Team by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, and Flashpoint: The LA Penca Bombing documented by Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan and adapted by Joyce Brabner and Tom Yeates. Brought to Light was edited overall by Joyce Brabner, Catherine Yronwode acted as executive editor, and Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney was the publication designer. | Shadowplay: The Secret Team - Shadowplay: The Secret Team written by Alan Moore and drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz with an introduction by Daniel Sheehan (general counsel of TCI). It covers the history of the Central Intelligence Agency and its controversial involvement in the Vietnam War, the Iran-Contra affair, and its relationship with figures like Augusto Pinochet and Manuel Noriega. The narrator of Shadowplay is an aging anthropomorphic American Eagle, a bellicose retired CIA agent. It was Moore's first major work which was not superhero oriented, it was highly praised for its storytelling and Sienkiewicz's sometimes brutal art. Moore received praise especially for blending the sometimes overwhelming mass of details into a coherent and effective story. Over the years there have been rumours that Moore was unable to travel to America due to the CIA being annoyed at his story in Brought to Light. However this was proved to be no more than a rumour and the real reason was due to Moore not renewing his passport. The story of "Shadowplay" is of an unseen character (presumably representing the oblivious American public in first-person view of the reader) in a bar, where he is approached by a man-sized, walking, talking eagle. The eagle, from the emblem of the CIA, proceeds to drink alcohol and, in a drunken stupor, divulge all the bloody details of The Agency's sordid past. Early on a reference is made to the number of gallons an olympic swimming pool can hold, and the fact that an adult human body has one gallon of blood; from then on, the victims of CIA activities (directly or indirectly) are quantified in swimming pools filled with blood, each pool representing 20,000 dead. Sienkiewicz's dark, erratic, and blurry images keep the mood of Moore's narration (through the boozing eagle) unnerving, and hazily nightmarish. | Shadowplay CD - Shadowplay was made into an audio CD (ISBN 1-899598-56-1) by Codex Books in 1998. The CD is spoken word with Moore narrating the story himself with music by composer Gary Lloyd. | Flashpoint: The LA Penca Bombing - Flashpoint: The LA Penca Bombing is written by Joyce Brabner, as told to her by Christic Institute clients Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan. It deals with the La Penca bombing which happened during the civil war in Nicaragua in 1984. Credits for “Flashpoint” list Jonathan Marshall on the introduction, Joyce Brabner writing, and Thomas Yeates illustrating, with letters | Thirty Years of Covert War - In the center is a two-page feature by Paul Mavrides, "World Map of 30 Years of Covert Action" detailing election tampering, drug trafficking, assassination, and other crimes committed by the CIA. CD REVIEW - Shadowplay CD: By Alan Moore and Gary Lloyd-In the ten years since Brought to Light was first published, we have become familiar with the idea of a secret government, popularised by Internet conspiracy buffs and, of course, The X-Files, where the obsession with alien cover-ups has been at the expense of the real horrors -- the Contras pulling the tongues of peasants through knife slits in their throats or the bombardment of Laos.This spoken word version of Moore's text is therefore essential listening. Dark electronic backing by Gary Lloyd accompanies Moore's reading of the sinister subject matter. It is only when Moore adopts the character of a grizzled veteran of these campai |
