Review: Hacktivist
Title: Hacktivist
Created by: Alyssa Milano
Written by: Jackson Lanzing & Colin Kelly
Art by: Marcus To & Ian Herring
Letters by: Deron Bennet
Published by: Archaia Black Label
“What if Mark Zuckerberg and Anonymous joined forces and used their powers for good?” That’s probably the simplest way to describe the premise of this graphic novel from creator Alyssa Milano about a pair of white hat hackers who set out to aid rebels in war torn Tunisa from oppression.
“Alyssa Milano? The actress?” I hear you say, and yes, you’re correct. Alyssa Milano the actress, singer, fashion designer and more importantly, in terms of the story of Hacktivist, the philanthropist and Goodwill Ambassador can now add graphic novelist to her long list of accolades. Inspired by her own time spent in the Arab Spring and the work of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Alyssa has created an amazing commentary on the changing nature of our rights as cyber citizens, government surveillance and the state of politics in the Middle East. These topics are all incredibly relevant to the real world at the moment with things like NSA internet monitoring and social media psychological tests all coming to the forefront in recent months.
Hacktivist tells the story of Edwin Hiccox and Nate Graft, the founders for social networking site “YourLife”, and Sirine, a lead member of a Tunisian revolutionary group, whose aim is to free her people from endless propaganda and a totalitarian communication lockdown with the help of the world’s largest hacker group “.sve_Urs3lf”. In the public eye Ed and Nate are just what they say they are, developers of the YourLife algorithm used to tie people with similar interests on their social network together in the hopes of helping them achieve similar life goals, but behind the scenes, unknown to the rest of the world, they also make up sve_Urs3lf in its entirety and they have much bigger plans for the algorithm. Enter Sirine, sve_Urs3lf’s contact behind the communicatively locked down Tunisian border. Working together remotely they aim to broadcast proof of government crimes and messages of hope from the revolutionary group to the Tunisian people. Sirine does it as a means of freeing her people, Ed and Nate work at it as a means of beta-testing the next stage of the YourLife algorithm with a greater goal of fixing the world as a whole.
As I’ve already mentioned, Ed and Nate are partners in YourLife and have been best friends for a long time, but beyond that they have very little in common personality wise. Ed is the quiet savant, working away in the background, an endless people watcher, looking for small details in behaviour patterns while Nate is all about fame and glory and watching their reactions to larger than life events. They play off each other incredibly well, Ed acting as the solemn Batman-type, Nate doing the part of Bruce Wayne’s playboy escapades.
I won’t go into much more detail on the story because as a 4-issue short run, each tiny spoiler would ruin something that should be experienced page by page. For now, let’s get into the art and style on display. The opening pages of the comic play very much on red/blue contrast with the first few pages of Sirine running from the law and Tunisian cityscapes done in a gorgeous set of bright orange hues before getting interspersed with darker greens and blues as the YourLife server rooms and sve_Urs3lf come into play. This contrast stays in the pages of Hacktivist as it plays out, but to a slightly more toned down degree; news screens in Ed’s office that display Tunisia are in stark orange against everything else, sve_Urs3lf connections in Tunisia stick out in pale greens and blues.
To and Herring’s art does an exceptional job at selling the tension in each scene where sve_Urs3lf are hard at work tacking away at keyboards and can then instantly flow into the whimsy of one of Nate’s huge parties. Even the negative spaces between art boxes are tied together well. Fading gently together akin to smudged chalks for a YourLife press party or connected via the simple but effective use of Matrix-style bash scripts for a hacking scene. I’m not an artist by trade but I could for sure feel every ounce of tension in the room when Ed and Nate were taking down a government firewall for Sirine… all while trading jokes and jargon over coffee and donuts. It’s all put together incredibly well, and while we’re on the note of chatting, the lettering job by Bennet is worth just as much praise as the rest of it. The use of chat boxes and their offsetting each time 
online messages were sent kept me pulled tightly into the world of Hacktivist, something that the jagged bubbles used to show electronic chat so often just couldn’t have done. My favourite touch of Bennet’s by far is his denotation for translated speech. No language angle brackets or italics here, no sir bob, Bennet opts for subscripting each bubble in the language its being spoken.
The final titbit of style I want to bring up is the effort that was put into making YourLife seem like a real part of the world. The pages of the book feature full sized ads for the social network of the type you might see for Pepsi or Harley Davidson in the pages of Marvel issues. Along with these full pages are threads and forums highlighting the people like you or me discussing the events that have unfolded in the world of Hacktivist, but if you check the smaller print and posts surrounding the highlighted ones, there are plenty of references to the real world with nods to One Direction and Bronies all included.
In closing I’ll say that it would be easy for a run this short to suffer from rushed pacing especially considering that the size of the subject matter could easily have been stretched into a run twice its length. I can honestly say I wish it did last twice as long just because I haven’t had my fill of YourLife and sve_Urs3lf yet, but Hacktivist handles itself well with each scene in Tunisia given a great sense of speed and urgency while the high flying lives of Edwin and Nate are clearly taken at a more comfortable pace. Hacktivist is easily my number one comic of the year so far and represents yet another triumph for the guys at Archaia Black Label. It does a great job of highlighting the issues the world is dealing with today without ever becoming preachy. If this is how Alyssa Milano does graphic novels then I seriously hope she gives up the acting to return to the world of Hacktivist before too long.
Hacktivist is available in both Hardcover and Paperback collections from June 17th 2014.
[Words By: Marcus Deehan]
