Everyman vol 1 came out in the run-up to the US election, but I'm just getting round to it now.  Caution: this review gives away the ending, because it's kind of hard to discuss parts of the story without doing so.

I mention the timing because it's kind of important.  It's the 2004 US presidential election and incumbent Henry R Birch is planning huge electoral fraud through the use of automatic voting machines in order to stay in power.  Birch is a particuarly thinly disguised George Bush, even as such characters go - his dad was president too.

Fortunately, novelist Thomas Womack and think-tank member Dita Orozco, together with disaffected civil servant Manolo Perez, are striking back with their political movement OneLove.  Quite what OneLove actually stands for is obscure - other than the fact that they have a "bipartisan" platform and don't support the welfare state, their only defining belief seems to be that they don't like George Bush, more because of his methods than his stated policies.  They come across as a vaguely libertarian anti-corruption crusade.  I suspect they're meant to be getting power back in the hands of the people rather than the class of party politicians who wield it in practice, but since the Democrats (and, indeed, the rest of the Republicans) are virtually invisible, that doesn't quite come over.

This is labelled as volume 1 and it's presumably intended to lead into a series of books where - and here's the spoiler I warned you about - having won the recall election, Womack and Orozco rule America as non-party politicians trying to bring government closer to the people.  Actually, that's quite a good idea for a series, and it's one that I wouldn't mind reading.

But it has an obvious problem, which is how to credibly get the characters into power in the first place.  That's the bit which this story is devoted to, which might have been a mistake - if they'd started with the characters already in power and built up some goodwill, I might be more willing to make the tremendous leaps of credibility that are needed to make this story work.  Unfortunately, it's just too easy - they do a bit of high-profile culture jamming which, quite implausibly, can't be traced back to them despite advertising their website, and they get to address the nation on TV a couple of times, after which they win by write-in vote. 

Basically, the story seems to work on the basis that OneLove are so self-evidently right that everyone will immediately agree the moment that they hear them articulated properly.  But the story only really involves the present leadership of the Republicans being corrupt, and I don't buy that leading to such a sudden collapse in the American political parties.  It didn't happen with Nixon, after all.  Even the characters regard the result as astonishing, which really should have set off alarm bells.  When the lead characters get to win an election by write-in vote, without seriously trying to do so, simply by publicly explaining what they believe in... well, there's a bit of wish fulfilment going on here.

Which is a shame, because the wider premise isn't bad at all, and the story is well paced, if a little overearnest.  Joe Bucco's art is impressive, giving the characters some life and loosening up what could easily have been a very dry and talky story.  Ultimately, though, the plot just asks too much of my suspension of disbelief. 

Rating: C

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