Page 45 Review by Stephen
"The Jell-O Box was the only piece of material evidence presented by the prosecution, and it, of course, was fabricated."
In 1953 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for conspiring to commit espionage. They confessed to nothing before, after nor during the trial, which must go down as one of the most arduously coached yet unconvincing performances until Jedward's Oops, I Did It Again on X-Factor.* Jedward, it should be noted, weren't actually executed for that crime even though there was plenty of evidence and more than a few eye-witnesses.
The first thing I should make clear is that this isn't comics. This is political agitation illustrated by Nate Powell (SWALLOW ME WHOLE, PLEASE RELEASE and SOUNDS OF YOUR NAME) with the same sort of wit which TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN MAGAZINE mustered when reviewing the Top Ten Wars of all time, effectively reminding you what a lying piece of shit the FBI has been when framing individuals in order to discredit movements or scare the crap out of its citizens. The above was a Cold War Red Scare, whereas the first section exposes the extent to which the Black Panther Party was harassed, undermined and thwarted in its attempts to activate, educate, organise or even feed its fellow citizens by setting up the likes of Fred Hampton then finally throwing in the towel and simply bumping him off. Fred Hampson, you see, didn't have a criminal record. They needed him to have one in order to get him into the system, and so created a scenario whereby he could be imprisoned for stealing $71 worth of ice cream from an ice cream lorry, which isn't that easy while mowing your lawn at the same time.
Further chapters explore the attempts on Fidel Castro's life using milkshakes, a brief history of subliminal messages, mind-control drugs tested by the CIA, and the Coca-Colonization of the world. They're aided by documents original classified but now partially revealed, and the most compelling argument in each of these cases is that their targets have such unlimited resources to sue the authors right out of the water should any of their facts prove wrong. No movement yet…
*There was a recent poster campaign for travel tickets featuring the Jedward twins, one of whom was shown wearing an ear stud. "Identical," it declared. "But this one's cheaper". I'm still rather fond of that.
