All week long, we’re featuring books by current and former alt-weekly writers to kick off the summer.
Current and former Columbia Free Times writers are teaming up to produce a black-and-white graphic novel on the bizarre rise and fall of South Carolina’s Alvin Greene.
Last year the unemployed Greene unexpectedly won the South Carolina Democratic Primary for the U.S. Senate, giving him the chance to face off against — and eventually lose to — incumbent Tea Partier Jim DeMint. Greene’s primary victory came despite the fact that he didn’t campaign, didn’t have a website, and was virtually unknown to the voting public.
“What happened in the summer of 2010 was the strangest American political story in modern times,” says Free Times staff writer Corey Hutchins, who gained national attention by exposing Greene. “It’s no wonder that it came out of South Carolina, the state that James Petigru famously called ‘too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum’ more than 100 years ago.”
Hutchins is teaming up with former Free Times staff writer David Axe and artist Ryan Alexander-Tanner to serialize the comic online beginning in early 2012, following with a print edition in the spring.
In order to secure funding for the project, they’re using the crowd-funding site Kickstarter to attract backers. As of this writing, the team is halfway towards reaching their goal of $1,000.
Pointing out the Greene is considering a 2012 Presidential run, Hutchins says that the Alvin Greene saga is far from over.
“While it might be fun for the rest of the nation to laugh about, it’s important to understand that what happened with Alvin Greene has implications far beyond the padded walls of the Palmetto State,” he warns.
Previously: Crit – A Spicy Novel Set in Sin City, U.S.A.
