The Hole: Consumer Culture, Volume 1

by Damian Duffy, John Jennings

The Consumer Culture is a science fiction horror story about the buying and selling of race in America, the simultaneous worship and degradation of African Americans in popular culture, and the tearing down of physical and psychological boundaries. CEO Carla Bonte’ wants voodoo to be a national religion—a hyperbolic “hyper voodoo” that uses an advanced technology marketed through a multinational corporation. Papa Legba, voodoo spirit of the crossroads, stands in opposition to “hyper voodoo” and the consumer culture that propels it. Complete with biting postmodern satire, a visual hip-hop aesthetic, an annotated bibliography, and essays on the academic theory behind the story, The Hole stands at the crossroads of interdisciplinary education—fearlessly combining African American studies, media and comparative scholarship, horror, science fiction, comedy, and iconic teaching tools.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics

176 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2008

About the author

Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and Glyph Comics Award-winning graphic novelist. He holds a MS and PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His many publications include academic essays (in comics form) on new media & learning and art books about underrepresentation in comics culture.

On his off hours he teaches classes on cultural politics of computers and/or wrestles his children.

A co-founder of Eye Trauma Studios, Damian has given talks and lead workshops about comics, art, and education internationally.

Reviews

[Artnoose McMoose · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read a lot of graphic novels and picked this one up from the library because of the words "consumer culture" on the cover. The premise seemed good enough: an critique of consumer culture in the form of an Elegba story (Vodou god of the crossroads).

Although I really wanted to like it, I only made it through about a quarter of the way through. I feel bad about giving a novel with a good premise only one star, but it's really hard to get me to stop reading a novel, particularly a graphic novel. It's rare that I don't finish a book. I understand that it's an immense amount of work to draw a 150 page graphic novel. However, these are the reasons I stopped reading:

1. The drawing style was okay, but some of the figures seemed stilted. It was distracting.
2. What I would call post-production (because I can't think of another term for it)seemed hastily done. There were places where I could tell where one part of the drawing had had another element expanded in size and pasted in, because the line quality was different. Some parts were even pixelated because of this. With the amount of work that it must have been to make this, I think the post-production (layout, etc.) should have been higher quality. It does the artwork and story a disservice to skimp on post-production. Also, having a random 4 pages oriented vertically is distracting. I don't want to have to turn the book while reading unless there's a really good reason to do so.
3. The story itself was hard to follow. I get that there were dream sequences and alternate realities, but I couldn't figure out what was going on a lot of the time.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a work of cultural genius. The metaphor of the hero "the hole" and his back story are amazing. There is so much to be said in the art work alone and its attention to detail but the way the story evolves around the God of Crossroads really puts things into a metaphysical perspective. What I liked the most was the written word in the background of scenes. They added layers to an already complex story. I also enjoyed the role that the perception of time played in the story. Characters will often repeat themselves or scenes will be replayed over as the story goes on. It made me reexamine scenes for importance or lack thereof. This graphic novel was made to entertain as well as enlighten and it certainly hit its mark with me.

[Rick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story was written well...I liked the characters, and I liked the direction of the storytelling, but the graphics left me dissatisfied. The visual style is already so full of punch that adding tricks and breaking the traditional box (all of the time!) made it all so chaotic that it overly complicated a complicated story, thus rendering it toothless. Add this to the jumpy timeline, and you just don't really care by the end of the storytelling.

[Ron Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story wasn't really my cup of tea. But I liked the idea behind it and the background information on voodoo.

[Nyashia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems as though ‘The Hole’ can be read on various different levels. For someone that never really read comic books and only delved into the short strips in a newspaper, I expected that the content within this graphic novel would be a new and inviting experience for me. I quickly learned that I couldn’t read this as a simple novel. The leaps back and forth through time and the different character storylines offered more than a basic novel. Plus as a novice comic reader, I had to adjust to taking in the imagery especially of artwork so detailed and graphic. The commonality of the different characters from the very loose and hoe-ish Trina, to the aggressive and angry Curtis though dark and sinister were all representatives of the realities of African American culture and the things we see throughout our communities. Within ‘The Hole’ were representations of the images that we are bombarded with daily and their subliminal messages including the portrayal of the Black Man as violent thugs on tv and in video games (unfortunately barraging our youth), the over sexualized images of Black Women and the references to her defined by her body or demeaned as a bitch or hoe. It’s easy to be drawn the details of each image both visually and literally in what the characters are saying or doing, as well as the meaning behind various depiction as in the representation of ‘Allmart’, the Nazi symbol tattooed on Curtis, and the depiction of Voodoo in comparison to Christianity or Islam within our culture. I found myself reading ‘The Hole’ in different modes…at times studying and seeking meaning behind the story as when Trina was swallowed up into Curtis chest and the relevance of drug use. Still at times (as when reading a basic novel) empathizing and just feeling the emotion of the story and anticipating what would happen next like in the case of young Trina wanting to spend quality time with her father and his shopping spree not being a substitute for him being there. When she walked in on seeing her father smoked up/on fire, you couldn’t help but wonder about her character but still relate to the reality of how our young girls are impacted by the lack of affection or presence by their fathers and what results when they become adults. This book addresses so many issues from religion to war, the pushing of pharmaceutical drugs to medicate so-called human illnesses (ADA, etc), sex, and race. In reading this book, you can’t help but complete it with a feeling that you have to re-read it to find the next level of meaning to what you just read. I don’t think you can read this book just for the comic story, or you won’t like it and will miss a lot and yet still the book at times can be overwhelming making you wonder did I really understand. Overall, ‘The Hole’ can take you out of your comfort zone with the dark, sexual, and complexity of images and substance and it challenges you to delve deeper, which to me is a pleasant surprise from graphic novel.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing book exploring the world we live in and our need for crap. as well as voicing all our fears by craeting all mart wich is cvs Wal mart and walgreens all rolled into one. I actully had the pleasure of meeting Damian Duffy and my love for his creative book strengthend my opinon of it. If you can read it please do.