"Remastered" graphic novel One Model Nation is an intriguing and humorous historical fiction set in '70s Berlin, as seen through an imaginary German art-noise band. But the fake musicians in the book aren't as important as their fates, which are intertwined with all-too-real terror group Red Army Faction.
The hardcover, written by The Dandy Warhols singer/guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor, serves as a timely critique of the now-disbanded German guerrilla group's violent tactics and politics in general. He's got a few takeaways.
"Politics are a mess," Taylor-Taylor told Wired.com in an e-mail chat. "If you get involved, you had better have a real plan and a fuxton of money and power, otherwise you're just gonna make things worse for you and your friends. And if you really fuck things up, you just might make it worse for everyone."
One Model Nation, originally published by Image Comics in 2009 and reissued with juicy extras this week by Titan Books, isn't the only comic book to take a stab at the mythology and sexy terrorism of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof gang. When writer Grant Morrison guest-DJ'd at KCRW last month, he played "Mogadishu" from Luke Haines' Baader-Meinhof, citing the violent German political group as inspiration for the subcultural insurgents of his psychedelic comic book series The Invisibles.
"One Model Nation came out on Image two years ago after Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex film, so there just seems to be a lot of it out there," Taylor-Taylor said of the Red Army Faction's resurgence in pop culture. "I've noticed that things like this tend to come all over the world at one time. The cosmic subconscious, I guess. But it's a very interesting era. The music and style were both übercool."
The Red Army Faction might have complicated Germany's post-war evolution, but One Model Nation evokes the nation's vibrant experimental music scene, whose mash of prog rock, free jazz, classical music and robotic programming gave birth to ambient, electronica and more on either side of the Berlin Wall.
Taylor-Taylor says he's fond of krautrock pioneers like Kraftwerk, Can, and Neu as well as Nina Hagen and Klaus Nomi. And Madman and Red Rocket 7 artist Michael Allred, who wrote One Model Nation's foreword, says he's partial to that era's musical output from Iggy Pop, Brian Eno and krautrock's most popular disciple, David Bowie (who he illustrated for Taylor-Taylor's graphic novel).
"They'd enjoyed significant pioneering moments prior, but they were all about progression and changing things up," Allred told Wired.com in an e-mail. "In comics, this was when Métal Hurlant was taking off and becoming Heavy Metal magazine, with Moebius at the forefront. He remains one of my biggest influences."
Taylor-Taylor was partially inspired to create One Model Nation – which features bold art by Jim Rugg (Afrodisiac, The Guild) that's previewed in the gallery above – to communicate what it's like to be in a well-regarded band such as The Dandy Warhols. The group, whose "guitar-centric" ninth full-length This Machine arrives in April, has mixed the sonic signatures of most of these artists at one time or another into its music, which ranges from the druggy anthems of The Dandy Warhols Come Down and the beat pop of Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia to the digital funk of its most recent full-length, 2008's Earth to The Dandy Warhols.
But Taylor-Taylor was careful to differentiate The Dandy Warhols' hip psychology from the affable, harried jokers of One Model Nation.
"Well, if it's good, it's fun, and if it's bad, it's funny: That is how we tend to deal with adversity," he said. "But I wouldn't say that humor and hijinks have much or anything to do with our music. The world is a really hard place filled with mostly awful people, so music has a higher purpose in my mind than humor."
One Model Nation's impressive story could shine strangely if Taylor-Taylor's initial plans to turn it into a film come to fruition. The book's strange but cool juxtapositions make sense for the leader of a band whose home base is called The Odditorium.
"A friend of mine has begun fully animating the One Model Nation animatic," Taylor-Taylor said (see a clip below). "When it's done, I'd like to try and find or build a production crew around him, and see if we can't get this thing accomplished."
Images courtesy Titan Books
