American Terrorist

Embedded with an eco-terrorist group hellbent on explosive direct action, investigative journalist Owen Graham is enmeshed in a dangerous culture on the political fringe. Ordinary citizens, frustrated by inequality and oppression and a bureaucracy's resistance to change, are starting to go off the grid and disrupt the status quo. But the fringe is poised to go mainstream, and Owen's days as a passive observer are running short.

While a series of escalating misunderstandings land an idealistic public school teacher in the middle of a hostage situation and the sights of an overeager federal agent who has been trailing Owen for months, he intervenes in a desperate split-second decision. Owen's old life is gone forever. Now he's on the run with a trio of fellow crusaders, all fighting for a better world but now labeled as terrorists by the government. Disparate people on all sides, each convinced they're right - and doing the right thing -- are now spinning towards each other in an inexorable spiral of violence.

AMERICAN TERRORIST is a high-speed chase across the country in search of radical solutions to injustice, inspiring a movement that may be snuffed out before it starts.

• TIMELY POLITICAL THRILLER: Originally written during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement, AMERICAN TERRORIST is a classic-style action-packed political thriller set in our current moment, with today’s concerns about affordable healthcare and housing, climate change, and racial equality. The story has only grown more timely today as the government increasingly falls sway to authoritarianism. Its politics are not based on conspiracies or wish fulfillment, but a realistic depiction of where we are now as a society.

• GROUNDED IN RESEARCH: Co-Author Wendy Chin-Tanner, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, is also a trained sociologist specializing in cultural studies, identity, discourse analysis, and cultural production. Many of her contributions to AMERICAN TERRORIST stem from her doctoral research in post-9/11 culture, media discourse, and anti-terrorism strategies.

• RELENTLESS PLOT: Briskly paced like a season of 24 or Homeland, Owen’s violent road trip through American political theories is never bogged down in dialogue or lofty speeches. Each action leads to a reaction and the next action, bringing the cat-and-mouse players closer together in increasing tension as they move from small private lives to huge public ones.

• BALANCED THEMES: The characters aren’t action movie archetypes, but real people (journalists, lawyers, schoolteachers) debating the feasibility of political change and the morality of direct action. The counterpoint perspectives of the authorities presented as antagonists are given equal time and emotional weight. It’s a surprisingly balanced story in which questions are explored, and no one ideology is presented as the solution.

• STYLISH YET REALISTIC ARTWORK: Andy MacDonald’s stylized artwork is appealing and welcoming in a way that more hyper-realistic look couldn’t pull off. His world is soft and lived-in, and each scene, whether it’s a library or a gas station or a busy Chinatown street, feels like a place you’ve been before. Subdued color work brings this home and sets it apart from more “blockbuster cinema” approaches to political thriller graphic novels.--ComicWatcher.com

Author Bios:
From his early careers in teaching and humanitarian aid work, Tyler Chin-Tanner took the leap into his lifelong passion for comics attending The Kubert School from 2003 to 2006 and co-founding A Wave Blue World with his wife Wendy in 2005. Publishing through AWBW, Tyler wrote a number of graphic novels including New York Times featured American Terrorist and edited several anthologies such as All We Ever Wanted, art books like Punkrock* Jazz, and creator-owned projects including Kismet, Man of Fate.

Wendy Chin-Tanner is the co-publisher and executive director of A Wave Blue World. She is the author of the poetry collections Turn (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards, and Anyone Will Tell You (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). Wendy also serves as a poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown. A trained sociologist specializing in cultural studies, identity, discourse analysis, and cultural production, she was educated at Cambridge University, UK. Her essays and poems have been published at such venues as Gay Magazine, xoJane, The Huffington Post, Alternet, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and The Rumpus. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Andy MacDonald is a veteran comic book artist who has worked with virtually every major comic book publishing house and was one of the co-creators of the series NYC Mech. Recently, he's been working on graphic novel adaptations of novels including James Patterson’s Zoo and Brent Weeks' The Way of the Shadow.