A Drug War Carol
Written by Susan W. Wells
Art direction and production by Scott Bieser
Big Head Press
Cover Price: $5.95; Available Now

It’s not new to hear arguments against the war on drugs. But those arguments don’t usually come in the form of a graphic novel. That alone makes A Drug War Carol by Susan W. Wells and Scott Bieser unique. And though the story provides an interesting new way to share history with a new audience, the story itself is not very creative or interesting.

A blatant parody of the Charles Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol, A Drug War Carol revolves around Scrooge McCzar, the fictional U.S. Drug Czar, being visited by three ghosts in an effort to change his view on medical marijuana. Right off the character’s name made me think of Scrooge McDuck more than the Dickens novel. This is a small detail in comparison to the overall story; but a good example of how the overall work lacked any real literary merit. Aside from Jacob Marley being replaced with Harry Anslinger, the other characters are glorified talking heads with no real purpose other than to embody the message.

The motivation behind this graphic novel is pretty clear considering nearly 40 of the book’s 61 pages are dedicated to the “ghost of Christmas past,” which is essentially a way to communicate the history behind American’s war on drugs to the reader. To the author’s credit, all the claims made in the historical portion of the story are sourced and cited in traditional comic fashion.

The ghosts are mislabeled, as only the ghost of Christmas present — a joint-smoking Jamaican adorned in green Santa garb who is only present for 5 pages — shows McCzar anything that happens on Christmas. But it’s clear from the first page that Wells was less concerned with quality writing as she was with stating her case.

Perhaps the only thing this story succeeds in doing is the one thing it seems determined to do: tell the story of how political corruption, outdated and selective reasoning, pseudo-science, and historic ignorance led to the banning of substances for unsubstantiated reasons. The true tragedy of the whole story is the depressing circumstances that lead to drug prohibition in the U.S., and how unaware most people are of the history behind it.

Learning the history behind drug prohibition is really the only strong reason to take a look at A Drug War Carol. The dialogue not related to the primary history is awkwardly contrived and the artwork is nothing special. Even though the message of this story is a good one, and a very important one to share, there are certainly better ways to do it, even using such a format.

Available at Amazon.com.