Angola in the Comics #13: Insiders vol.1: Chechen Guerrilla

I consider myself pretty hep to what is out there in the comic book industry - but principally I'm aware of what's out there in the English language and from North America. As I've been looking for comics about Angola, I probably should have looked more closely at European comic books from the start. Europeans do, in general, have a better sense of the international community than Americans and are therefore better able to view Africa as a continent of many nations, rather than the 'generic Africa' of so many American comics.

All of which brings me to Insiders Vol.1: Chechan Guerrilla by Jean-Claude Bartoll & Renaud Garetta.

Originally published in 2002 in French by Dargaud, Insiders wasn't translated into English until 2009. The series concerns Najah Cruz, an undercover agent who infiltrates an international corporation which, left unregulated, has begun fomenting regime changes which are beneficial to their executives. It's a very 21st century kind of threat - this idea that corporations seem to be above the law and hold influence beyond that of any governments. This first volume is engaged with what were current events back in 2002 - namely, the end of the Angolcan Civil War.

Basically, in the wake of the civil war's end, this corporation decides it's a great opportunity to drive Angola out of Cabinda and give Cabinda independence so their corporation can assume control of their oil & gas industry (it is seldom brought up in the media, but Cabinda does supply a significant amount of oil & gas to North America). Now, I would have thought a better time to drive Angola out of Cabinda would have been during the civil war when their attention was divided, but that's why I'm not a corrupt international businessman.

Although everything is drawn from current events, Insiders is pretty timid when it comes to real world political references. As you can see above. they don't refer to any of the actual Angolan (or Cabindan) political parties or political figures. But Insiders does track with what I've read about the death of Savimbi back in 2002 - at the time, people weren't sure if his death meant the end of the civil war or not (in the end, his death did conclude the war). Watching from the outside, the world was ready for the fighting to start up at any time. However, for all that Insiders is very savvy about international politics, the takeover of Cabinda seems laughably easy - I mean, in this comic, Angola dispatches only two MIGs to fight the private army who are driving out their ground forces. Considering how valuable Cabinda was/is to Angola, I imagine such a conflict would take considerably longer than one day and involve more than just two jets. In the real world, Cabinda actually helped the peace process post-war because the continued conflict in Cabinda gave the government somewhere to deploy their soldiers while the war cooled down.

But that minor criticism stated, Insiders is immensely well-researched and well-informed about Angola; I've never been to Cabinda, but there are scenes in Luanda which are clearly photo-referenced and seem quite accurate, showing the contrast from the skyscrapers to the shanties. Visually, it's the best representation of Angola I've seen in any comic book thus far.