Let’s talk copaganda and U.S. comic books. A good place to start is in 1971, when a seminal anti-drug Spider-Man storyline was created at the request of the Richard Nixon administration as part of the War on Crime. Crucially, 1971 is the year Richard Nixon declared "The War on Drugs" as central to his "War on Crime." By no coincidence, this is also the year where the U.S. begins a dramatic rise in mass incarceration, from approx 300,000 incarcerated in 1971 to 2.3 million by the mid-1990s.

To make “I’m a Cop,” I spent over two years reading every statement I could find from U.S. police union leaders--reading transcripts of press conferences, Twitter accounts, and Facebook posts. Here’s some of what I found. A 🧵. 1) The police want us to be afraid. This justifies their existence and excuses their violence.

The text in this comic is from the Twitter account of the New York City Sergeants Benevolent Association.