Comics and Columbine

THE SCHOOL SHOOTER WHO DIDN’T SHOOT Growing up an autistic loner, Thomas Campbell’s schooldays were a living nightmare of bullying and abuse that saw him in psychiatric care by age 8. The target of entire classrooms, he developed a lifelong hatred of all things educational. This hatred – the shared thinking of the school shooter – has gifted him with a unique insight into the slaughter we are witnessing in our schools now. Written from the perspective of the classroom avenger, it explores their distorted thinking and reveals the ‘socially acceptable’ evils that provoke such a lethal response. ‘In this angry, tender, and extraordinary work, Thomas Campbell writes with fierce immediacy from the cultural ultra-violet of the Asperger spectrum, allowing us a crucial glimpse into the emotional gulag to which we thoughtlessly sentence thousands daily, and perhaps moderating our disingenuous surprise when another awkward loner takes an assault rifle to class for Show and Tell. Written with a lucid honesty, unafraid of its own unavoidable subjectivity. Comics and Columbine is the slap in the face that we badly needed and deserved, delivered in a clear and ringing voice from the white-hot heart of the experience. It is a voice that we ignore to our considerable loss, and at our considerable peril. Campbell has written what in my opinion is a beautiful narrative about an irredeemably ugly subject. I really cannot recommend this vital and necessary book too strongly.’ Alan Moore, Author of Watchmen/V for Vendetta/ From Hell