Code Green: Environmental Cartoons about the Environmental Emergency

by Stephanie McMillan

During its three-year run, "Code Green" was the only editorial cartoon in the US to focus solely on ecological issues. In an effort to alert as many people as possible to the global environmental emergency, it covered topics like deforestation, heavy metal pollution, the Keystone XL tarsands oil pipeline, GMOs, species extinction, the BP oil spill, Fukushima, and (of course) global warming.

These cartoons have been reprinted all over the world, from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia, Iceland to Australia. Protesters at demonstrations have added them to signs. Organizers have put them on leaflets and in their newsletters. Readers share them on social media. The series won the RFK Journalism Award.

Unfortunately, as of this printing, the problems have only intensified, making many of these cartoons more topical than ever.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Stephanie McMillan, a lifelong resident of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been a political cartoonist since 1992. She is the creator of the editorial cartoon Code Green, and the comic strip Minimum Security, syndicated through Universal Uclick.

Her cartoons have earned several major awards, including the RFK Journalism Award (2012) and the Sigma Delta Chi from the Society for Professional Journalists (2010). They have appeared in hundreds of print and online publications worldwide including the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Daily Beast, Yes! magazine, Climate Progress, Funny Times, Yahoo.com, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and The Occupied Wall Street Journal (of Occupy Wall Street).

She has seven books, including The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide (graphic novel, 2013, Seven Stories Press), The Beginning of the American Fall (comics journalism, 2012, Seven Stories Press); and The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad (a novel, 2012, PM Press), plus another graphic novel, comic strip collection, and a children’s book. Her latest book, Capitalism Must Die! (2014, INIP), combines comics with political theory.

A solo show of her work was exhibited in October 2013 at the West Gallery, California State University, Northridge. In addition, her cartoons have been included in numerous group exhibits, including at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (New York), the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC).

An organizer all her life, Stephanie is a founding member of the anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist group One Struggle. She also contributes political theory to the publishing project Idées Nouvelles, Idées Prolétariennes.

McMillan is a dynamic public speaker on cartoons, political art, and social change. She has given presentations at political conferences such as the Left Forum and Sierra Summit, on radio programs such as Terra Verde and Air America’s Ring of Fire, and at many other venues..

Testimonials:

“McMillan’s expressive style, pared down to the basics and intensified over the years, allows for instant communication of thoughtful rage.”
— Comics Journal

“Very talented.”
— Washington Post

“This is social satire at its wittiest and most engaging.”
— Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“Her politics are perfect, her drawings sly and subtle, and her dialog funny as hell.”
– Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame

“Visionary and honest.”
— Ted Rall, past president of Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, author of Anti-American Manifesto and To Afghanistan and Back

“Minimum Security is like oxygen for our suffocating times.”
— Vandana Shiva, author of Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

” Razor-sharp critique packaged as cute-kid-and-funny-animal cartoon.”
— Booklist

“Provocative, insightful, and entertaining.”
— Jeff Monson (“The Snowman”), MMA championship fighter