Gallery: *Discordia'*s Gonzo Journos Analyze, Illustrate Greece's Deep Debt Crisis
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Instead of investigating fear and loathing in Las Vegas, artist [Molly Crabapple](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Crabapple) and journalist [Laurie Penny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Penny) tripped off to Greece, where global bond-and-currency vigilantes have brought austerity to the homeland of democracy. The result? The e-book-only anti-joyride [Discordia](http://www.amazon.com/Discordia-ebook/dp/B009HVQ1JW), out now from Vintage Digital. "I've been a fan of [Molly's art](http://mollycrabapple.com) for years, and was excited when we properly got to know each other at [Occupy Wall Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street)," Penny told Wired. "After a few months of mutual fangirling and working together on small reporting projects, we realized we had to knuckle down and collaborate for real." Penny and Crabapple spent their summer soaking up [Greece's economic and political instability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010-2011_Greek_protests#The_.22Indignant_Citizens_Movement.22_.28May.E2.80.93August.29), conducting interviews and sketching blowback from the rise of the nation's disturbing right-wing political group, [Golden Dawn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(Greece)). Months later, they distilled Penny's 24,000-word essay, Crabapple's 36 illustrations and a foreword from [Paul Mason](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mason_(journalist)) into Discordia's digital-only [gonzo journalism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism). "We stuck together during the trip, taking notes right through, and discussed the images and text with each other first," Penny said. "But otherwise, we worked fairly independently. Molly finished the drawings first so I could shape my text around them, which was an interesting exercise." Click through Wired's preview gallery above, in which Crabapple and Penny discuss Discordia, Greece and more. But what would [Socrates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates) say? "[I only know that I know nothing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing)."
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*Greek Policeman* ----------------- "Greek police look like [Rob Liefeld](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Liefeld) characters," said Crabapple. "Standing on the street corners in the anarchist neighborhood of Exarcheia, they bulge with gas masks, batons, guns, shields and tear-gas canisters. It's not that I think all cops are grotesque. It's that when they put on the uniform of a deeply corrupt police force — and the Greek police force is an organization in which the [majority of members voted for literal Nazis](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/are-greek-policemen-really-voting-in-droves-for-greeces-neo-nazi-party/258767) — they're subsuming themselves into a grotesque whole."
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*Boy Less* ---------- "[Norman Rockwell's *The Problem We All Live With*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The-problem-we-all-live-with-norman-rockwell.jpg) shows a little black girl being escorted by U.S. Marshals to one of the first desegregated schools in the South," said Crabapple. "Behind her, there are tomatoes and the wall is scribbled with racist graffiti. It's a classic picture of innocence, bravery and determination juxtaposed with the adult world's evil. My portrait of a young Pakistani boy walking in front of a Golden Dawn swastika, through the bloody streets of Nikea after an antifascist demonstration, is a direct reference to Rockwell."
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*Fuck Heroes Fight Now* ----------------------- "Athens is the [Weimar Berlin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_culture) of our time," said Crabapple. "It's this space where, in Europe, the future is being decided. The future might be poverty, debt peonage and violent fascism. But the protest movements seem to give us a sliver of hope it might be something else." Added Penny: "We'd both been following social movements and youth and worker uprisings around the world for over a year, and Greece is Ground Zero for the neoliberal consensus, for the idea that the young, the poor and immigrants can and should be made to pay for the financial fuckups of the super-rich."
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*Grave of Alexandros* --------------------- "The [Alexandros Grigoropoulos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Greek_riots#The_shooting_incident) memorial is encrusted with graffiti," said Crabapple. "Murals of gas-mask-wearing anarchists. *ACAB*, the international acronym for 'All Cops Are Bastards,' written over and over. This was a place where a kid was shot in the back of the head. And people kept returning, laying down flowers, drawing murals, etching the memory over and over again, making sure it could never be forgotten."
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*Cantina Social* ---------------- "The illustrated e-book format is an experiment in form for both of us," said Penny. "We're both pushing our boundaries and trying to do something unexpected and original with a medium that is still relatively untested. Why not? Why shouldn't young women be ambitious, and serious, and try to work on a large canvas, or reshape the canvas to suit ourselves?
