Emily Steinberg
WAR AND PEACE 2.0

WAR AND PEACE 2.0 by Emily Steinberg - Title

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Writer, driving: We grew up in the last gasp of the Cold War… We mocked it… thought it was funny. Fast forward, thirty years ago. And the events in Europe are mind-blowing. Radio: Back in the USSR…You don’t know how lucky you are… boy… Writer: Is Europe… the world,, on the brink of WWIII?

Writer, driving: A newly aggressive Russia eating its neighbors. Suddenly… trust backwards into Cold War 2.0. Radio: London calling. Writer imagines the cover of MAD Magazine with two cartoon spies holding bombs: The spy vs. spy ‘toons that live in the pages of MAD Magazine, over 50 years ago, suddenly regain resonance. Radio: A nuclear era, but I have no fear…

Writer imagines a grouping of framed, black-and-white old-world photos of people in 19th and early 20th century Eastern European garb: For me, the conflict is also personal… and has echos of an older time.

Writer driving in car, talking to dog: My family came from these parts over 100 years ago. Dog thinks: Transinistria Odessa… Kiev… so familiar. Writer: In early March, Russia bombed Babi Yar, a ravine just outside Kiev where 33,771 Ukrainian Jews were shot by Nazis in 1941. Dog thinks: Assisted by Ukrainian guards. Writer: Sorry to be a downer. Dog: But that was then.

Black and white drawing of Putin sitting on a stool naked with legs crossed demurely: Now… Ukraine stands alone against a 1960’s comic movie villain with Empire on his mind.

Writer: As we slip into the sweetness of summer… CNN: Russia pushes deeper into Donbass. Ukrainian casualties very high. Dog thinks: The cataclysmic struggle of good and evil rages in Europe. David and Goliath 2.0! CNN: Zelinsky warns E.U. Dog: But it has slipped from 24/7 Breaking News. Sign: 499, 599, 699. Radio: Alles Klar Herr Commissar?

Dog thinking: Replaced by a steady feed of new and more heinous events…CNN: 18-year-old gunman. Used AR 15. Parents devastated. Writer looks down from steering wheel sadly. CNN: Breaking News. School Shooting. 19 children killed. Dog imagined writer turning off TV. Writer: So… I turn off the TV and poof! The war and all the bad things disappear.

Writer: And go about my business… grooving to old songs in the car. Radio: Games without frontiers… Dog thinks: Screw 5 bucks a gallon! Writer: Windows down, radio blasting. Radio: War without tears. Dog thinks: How is an AR 15 even legal? Radio: Herr Kommissar’s in town, oh, oh….

WAR AND PEACE 2.0 by Emily Steinberg - End Card
Emily Steinberg is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on painting and visual narrative and her work has been shown across the United States and Europe. Most recently, her first cartoon and Daily Shouts story were published by The New Yorker. Since 2013, her visual narratives have been regularly published in Cleaver Magazine. In 2019 she became Visual Narrative Editor at Cleaver and now curates submissions. Her memoir, Graphic Therapy, was published serially in Smith Magazine. Steinberg teaches visual narrative at Penn State University, Abington College, and Drexel College of Medicine, where she is Artist-in-Residence. She did her undergraduate and graduate work at The University of Pennsylvania where she received an MFA in painting and lives just outside Philadelphia. View her bio page here.

To submit graphic narratives for consideration in Cleaver, contact Emily at [email protected].

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