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Here's a free book review for labor editors and anyone else who would like to reprint it!

'What were these guys thinking?'

Two-Headed Space Alien Shrinks Labor Movement
by Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki
Capitalism Sucks Press, 112 pages, $14.95

A book review of sorts by Kathy Wilkes

For many of us who've had the pleasure and pain of working for a union, cartoonists Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki are like old friends: always there when you need them. Their cartoons are a boon to busy labor editors, the bane of bad employers, and a boost to beleaguered working stiffs everywhere.

No, this is not an objective review by a long shot.

Spoofing supermarket tabloids, their fifth and newest book, Two-Headed Space Alien Shrinks Labor Movement, gets its name from the fact that people often confuse these self-labeled "hirsute, four-eyed cheese heads" from Wisconsin who, since forming Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons in 1983, have documented with their art the shock and awe of a labor movement under siege.

In typical tabloid-ese, the book charges H/K with using extraterrestrial powers to single-handedly shrink union membership in the US by over seven percent. "Lies, lies!" they respond. "We are NOT from the AFL-UFO. Our only crime was working for a lost cause!"

Gary and Mike do, however, admit they had havoc in mind when they put their heads together twenty years ago. Syndicating a monthly package of labor cartoons, they vowed to "use humor and acerbic workingclass wit to subvert the capitalist conspiracy against worker solidarity and creativity."

Apparently they never heard of Murphy's Law. It comes as no surprise, then, that Pete Mueller, whose own cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, The Progressive and other national publications, begins his foreword to Two-Headed Space Alien with the question: "What were these guys thinking?"

The answer is in their art.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, H/K cartoons speak volumes about the stuff that really matters to working people, the stuff the mainstream media usually ignores. Stuff like decent wages and working conditions; safety in the workplace and healthcare for our families; the right and the inevitable fight to support a union; a future for our kids through a good education; a future for ourselves through retirement with dignity; employment, unemployment and underemployment; free trade vs. fair trade; America's eroding manufacturing base; the "invisible hand of the marketplace" that pumps up corporate piggery and slashes our social safety net.

Despite labor's decline there's still plenty of move in the movement, and it's those movers and shakers who are H/K's most avid fans. Whatever the issue, nothing revs up the ranks like a swift kick in the seat of power, and nothing accomplishes that better than labor cartoons plastered on picket signs, lockers, bulletin boards and all over the union newspaper. Bosses really hate that.

And then there's politics. The 2000 Florida election coup; 9/11, war and peace, blood and oil; the Bill of Rights and the USA PATRIOT Act; the twisted brain of our "Pretzel Prez"; our two-faced, one-party system; those ever-present, well-heeled, high-rolling, back-stabbing, hoodwinking, double-dealing, anti-worker, money-grubbing, democracy-destroying corporate criminals--and the politicians they own.

Thank your lucky stars, H/K's got it covered. Otherwise, pass the Prozac, please.

H/K Labor Cartoons aren't just about sorely needed comic relief, though. They make us think, and that's the last thing the powers-that-be want us to do. Masters at emasculating the high and mighty, H/K's enterprise boldly goes where no one has gone before, which is precisely why the "kept press" won't touch them with a two-foot light saber. Maybe that space alien thing isn't so far off the mark after all.

Celebrating Huck/Konopacki's twenty-year collaboration, Two-Headed Space Alien also features other works by the artists, including Gary's hilarious gag cartoons, "Oddservations," and moving tributes to John Lennon, Malcolm X and Lenny Bruce, along with Mike's occasional zine, Wage Slave World News, and thought-provoking political comics for Amnesty International and others.

Priced for the working class Gary and Mike love and work for, the book is a bargain and can be purchased online at: http://www.solidarity.com/hkcartoons/newbook.html. Even if you don't buy the book, check out the website for cartoons, animations, political comics, and more. It's fun, it's funny, it's...out of this world.

$14.95 - Just in time for the holidays! - $14.95
Postage: One to three books $5.00 postage and handling.

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Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

P.O. Box 1917

Madison, WI 53701-1917

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