Comic crusaders set sights on a new breed of villain

Graphic novels have traditionally seen crusaders fighting against injustices, but a new anthology of comic book stories published this week by activist group Ctrl.Alt.Shift - along with an accompanying exhibition at London's Lazarides Gallery - will see the usual collection of slightly camp, oddball vigilantes dragged into the 21st century.

'Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption' features original strips by artists and activists from around the world, including South Africa, India, Serbia, America and Britain. There are stories from musicians VV Brown and Lightspeed Champion, as well as a strip about the son of an Iranian ayatollah based on a real-life experience which is created by Judge Dredd writer Pat Mills.

"We are all about politicising a new generation, and comic strips, with their rich, subversive history, seemed a perfect match for us," said Ctrl.Alt.Delete's director, Katrin Owusu. "The subject absolutely struck a chord with writers and artists I think and we got so much material, we couldn't get it all in a book."

The agency, which was set up last year by Christian Aid to act as a creative forum where activists could work together to organise themselves and to wage campaigns through the use of art, film and music, will be selling the anthology for £4.99 through their website and in comic book stores. The book was co-edited by Paul Gravett, whose annual Comica festival begins at London's ICA on Thursday.

Gravett said that a slew of comic books taking on big issues at the moment, including Robert Crumb's take on the first book of the Old Testament and Joe Sacco's forthcoming Footnotes in Gaza, was a sign of a renaissance in the medium. "Comics can grapple with these big questions very provocatively and they lodge in people's minds better, somehow, than the constant images we see on TV and on the internet," he said.

"Comic books went through something of a dip in the 90s when there was a hope that the graphic novel was going to make it big and somehow it didn't quite click," Gravett continued. "It's taken a while for it to come round again."

Alongside work from the collection, the Lazarides show will also feature curios from comic history where real world politics have bisected with the format. In 1986 a Superman comic showed the man of steel visited Ethiopia during the famine, while his erstwhile lover Lois Lane once became a black woman for 24 hours in an exploration of racial issues. More questionably, Ronald Reagan's face was transposed with that of Captain America for the 'Reagan's Heroes' patriotic comic series.

'Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption' is an exhibition hosted by the Lazarides Gallery, 8 Greek Street, London W1, November 6-30. The comic book can be bought from Ctrl.Alt.Shift's website