The Black Monday Murders #1-2 (review)
Image Comics, September/ October 2016
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
If this title disturbs, it is because one of the most talented writers in American comic book industry, Jonathan Hickman, does a spectacular job of convincing the reader that he has kicked away at the topsoil of the falsehood of capitalism, humanity’s real and dirty habitat. Underneath lies a mouldy and parasitic truth to economics vastly terrible, and despite the black mystical elements of the story somehow it makes the world make perfect sense.
The methods by which the global capital markets work are a mystery to most. The idea of making money by moving money from one asset type to another by way of investment seems straightforward enough. But terms such as arbitrage, Libor, derivatives, hedge funds, short selling and, famously, sub-prime could just as easily be a foreign language to most people. The language itself does not mystify. The concepts themselves are alien.