Occupy Comics

Occupy Comics
Cover of Occupy Comics #2. Art by David Lloyd.
Publication information
Publisher	Black Mask Studios
Publication date	2012
Editor(s)	Matt Pizzolo

Occupy Comics: Art & Stories Inspired by Occupy Wall Street is a currently-in-production, deluxe comic book anthology funded on Kickstarter and seeking to articulate themes of the Occupy Wall Street movement through comics as well as to fund-raise on behalf of the protesters.

As Bleeding Cool described it:

Some of the biggest names in independent and mainstream comics have come together for a social-networking funded comic book anthology to tell the story of the Occupy Wall Street protest that sidesteps the 24-hour news media’s desire for sensationalism.

The money raised will pay the creators for their work – and they will then donate all that money to the Occupy movement, especially through the coming winter months.

Wired explained the perceived relationship between Occupy Wall Street and art:

Pizzolo said the project makes sense because the Occupy Wall Street movement was launched by a piece of art.

"Adbusters created a really powerful image of a ballerina atop the Wall Street Bull with protesters in the background, and that was enough to set this off,” he said. “Then Anonymous brought in the Guy Fawkes masks, and U.S. Day of Rage created more art challenging the relationship between Wall Street and Washington. So this is an art-inspired movement, and that’s part of what makes it so viral. It’s not intellectual, it doesn’t need a manifesto. People are banding together around an idea, rather than an ideology."

The project was officially announced by organizational spearhead Matt Pizzolo in Wired Magazine on October 13, 2011, several weeks after the occupation of Zuccotti Park began on September 17, 2011.

According to Wired:

Pizzolo's Occupy Comics was originally designed to bring public awareness to the Occupy Wall Street movement. But a combination of growing protests, as well as possibly illegal police pushback, solved the exposure gap. Now Pizzolo is interested in providing illustrative and material support to protesters through a Kickstarter project whose contributors would donate all proceeds to the Wall Street occupiers.