"In August 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorised the CIA to eliminate Lumumba. CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb personally carried poison to the Congo to place in his food or on his toothbrush.
His closest ally, Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko, became the CIA’s principal agent — paid to betray the very man who trusted him.
On January 17, 1961, Lumumba was tortured, beaten, humiliated, and handed over to a Belgian-backed firing squad.
Belgian officers cut his body into pieces [such a stark reminder of MBS's methods, isn't it!] and dissolved his remains in sulphuric acid. Patrice Lumumba has no grave. No tomb. No resting place.
Before they killed him, they forced him to swallow the paper containing his Independence Day speech — as if they could erase his words by forcing him to eat them.
The CIA then installed Mobutu, who ruled the Congo for 32 years while foreign powers looted its diamonds, gold, copper, and cobalt as millions suffered in poverty.
Years later, CIA Director Allen Dulles admitted: 'I think we overrated the Soviet danger in the Congo.' They destroyed a man. They destroyed a nation. And they did it over a lie.
Patrice Lumumba dreamed of an Africa that controlled its own wealth, wrote its own destiny, and bowed to no empire. They killed the man, but they could not kill the dream."
The Congo is one of the African countries that has been most brutally plundered by the Global North which continues to this very day!
Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich. Not that the rich agreed among themselves—they had disputes over policies—but the purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully, control lower class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system. The arrangement between Democrats and Republicans to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1877 set the tone: whether Democrats or Republicans won, national policy would not change in any important way. When Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, ran for president in 1884, the general impression in the country was that he opposed the power of monopolies and corporations, and that the Republican party, whose candidate was James Blaine, stood for the wealthy. But when Cleveland defeated Blaine, J. Gould wired him: “I feel that the vast business interests of the country will be entirely safe in your hands.” And he was right.
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
Marcel Dorcel is a convicted criminal with three exes, a mind that's keen on identifying political subterfuge, and enough experience surviving the wilds of Zarkass that she makes for the best (worst) tour guide one could hope for. In her own words, "just because I'm ballsy doesn't mean I'm stupid." But then again, if one were not relying on Marcel to ford the wilds during the apparent crumbling of the local human outpost, then who?
TRAPPED ON ZARKASS is exquisitely colorful and richly indecent, what with its focus on an odd-couple pair who is absolutely terrible at doing precisely whatever it is they're supposed to be doing. Marcel is the guide and bodyguard; Louis Doisy is an entomologist sent undercover from the local human government. Louis is supposed to be investigating the wreckage of an unnamed adversary's ship, but as often happens in sci-fi exploits, the woman has her own agenda at hand. En totem, navigating jungle flora, all the while surviving encounters with giant spiders, carnivorous butterflies, and hostile populations of roach-people puts this duo on high alert from cover to cover.
One imagines the task of surviving a mysterious planet of hostile others would be equally exciting and terrifying, and TRAPPED ON ZARKASS delivers on both accounts. Is tracking down and investigating an intergalactic crash site on a wayward Earth colony worth the effort? After dropping into the luscious greenery, all bets are off.
Not to say the story makes it easy for these characters to have a good time. Marcel is crass and butch and doesn't really give a shit, but she's a felon who can't quit digging a deeper grave for herself. If she and her partner can pull off this mission, then she'll sleep in a real bed for the first time in 20 years. Louis is snotty and upper-class, but her ambition tends to outweigh any sense of danger lurking over the next cliff. A person with a secret agenda and with nothing to lose tends to harbor the most gall. Marcel and Louis hate each other from the outset, but if they're going to survive the bush and make it back to civilization before everything turns to crap, then they must swallow the irritation they have for one another, one thorny affront at a time.
TRAPPED ON ZARKASS is a beautiful book and demonstrates the best character art many contemporary European comics have to offer: angular but dimensional character designs that don't take up more space than they need to; brilliant and moody coloring; environmental designs and background artwork with layers of informational detail; compelling character expressions that never give away too much. Cassegrain has a style that offers comfort and order on one level (e.g., balanced page composition, smart character blocking) and desirable anarchy on another (e.g., designing messy and dangerous slums, ruins, battle sequences, caverns).
One finds it difficult to disassociate the comic's superlative design quality from its narrative spectacle. For example, it's one thing for readers to come across a lying and scheming indigenous queen and her chosen warrior, but it's another thing entirely to see the warrior stride into frame while mounting a massive cicada and wielding a war axe. It's one thing for readers to learn the local roach-people use the mucus of large lion-caterpillars to protect their skin, but it's another thing entirely to see the locals grieve the loss of their partner-beasts, then throw themselves to their death, glimpsing the emerald splendor of this far away planet for a final, sharp, and fleeting moment.
The book's flaws are niggling but not imperceptible. Notably, Marcel's attitude vacillates unpredictably between caustic foolery and optimistic thuggery. The woman knows more about the planet Zarkass and its dangers than anyone around, but constantly berates the locals and draws ire from her allies. Her insults are hilarious (e.g., "snotty vagsack," "holy ovum," "deadballs," "bloody vulva"), but the butch woman's intense love-hate relationship with the universe makes for seesaw storytelling. As for Louis, the woman is a good foil, but her apparent knack for having helpful visions of next-step adventuring feels too contrived to be effective. Louis is funny because she's absolutely the last person one would want to rough it with in the bush; but perhaps that's the point. Nevertheless, TRAPPED ON ZARKASS wrings from its pages a tale of otherworldly sci-fi in which suspiciously opportunistic people from very odd, awkward, and asynchronous points of origin strive for survival.
