Comic Crusader

David Rees, a Chapel Hill native, is a thirty-nothing office temp who, through his homemade ClipArt strip "Get Your War On," also happens to be one of the sharpest voices of political commentary in the nation. Senior Editor Greg Bloom caught up with him to talk about his strip, which has exploded from office amusement to national inside joke.

How long does it take you to make a strip?

I don't sit down to make one unless I already have some pretty strong ideas of what it's going to be about. So, usually I come into it knowing what's going to happen, and typing it into a computer comes pretty easily. But then if I want to sit down and work on a theme, it can either come pretty easily or it might take off and on work for a couple of hours. There's not any kind of schedule, so I don't have an editor breathing down my neck saying 'Where's that strip?'--there's no pressure to turn out a crappy comic just to get it out there.

For how much longer do you see yourself doing the strip?

I don't want to be a political cartoonist; I don't like making jokes about unpleasant things. I try to keep it really organic, and if I think of something to do I'll make it, and if not.... Maybe I'll stop and three years will go by and something so f--ked up will happen that I'll break out these two guys again--I don't know.

Do you think of your two guys as characters?

At first I didn't think they were actually characters, I just saw them as templates--these empty vessels--that I could dump these ideas, all my anxieties, into. But seeing it in a book, it looks like it's about these two guys with their own personalities, sitting in their offices talking about the war on terrorism. That was a big shift conceptually, at least for me.

You said before you don't like to joke about unpleasant things, but on the other hand there seems to run through all the strips this sardonic glee.

Especially with those initial strips, a lot of them aren't really jokes at all. A lot of them are just really dark statements about what's going to happen in Afghanistan. They were effective because they were so simple--we're about to start bombing the poorest country on Earth, right before winter sets in. There's six million land mines down there, and we're going to start dropping food into those fields--like, let me just spell it out for you.

What is your memory of the country's various reactions to the last war, in Desert Storm?

I was a freshman in college. My reaction at the time was pretty skeptical about why we were going to war. I went to some rallies to listen to speakers, but I was not that involved with protesting in the streets. It seemed to have to do a lot with natural resources, which at least makes sense. We want stability in the region. We don't give a f--k about freedom in these places.

Anti-war attitudes are stronger now, and probably more justified. Back in the Gulf War, we worked pretty hard to get the international coalition's okay before we went in there. And we were responding to an act of aggression--Iraq invaded another country, which is pretty bold.... I'm not necessarily opposed to a war in Iraq. Actually, I wouldn't feel bad if Saddam's entire regime was shot. I just don't trust the timing and the rhetoric, and that's what my strip is kind of about--it's about language and how people talk about these things.

See "Get Your War On" at www.mnftiu.net.

See Rees at UNC's Manning Hall, room 209, this Friday at 7 p.m.