John Boyer: Plaid Educator

Academia enters the world of frames, bubbles, and bad color schemes.

John Boyer, creator of 'The Plaid Avenger's World', sits down over drinks with Flash Clark and River Mill tots, and pontificates the agenda of his unseemly hero:

[16B's] So, is the Plaid Avenger an alternate personality, you during a full moon, or is it a character completely unrelated to you?

[Boyer] I just know the guy—it's a very similar situation to the Clark Kent thing, I just work for the newspaper- I know the guy. I can transmit messages to him and send him on certain missions.

Because he is writing a blog for my class, I can say, "Hey my students want to know about this," then he goes out and finds out about it and writes a blog about it. I'm just a college professor, man.

A lowly college professor?

It's beyond lowly. The Plaid Avenger is a professor himself—I think he is a freelance educator because I don't know where he actually works.

You seem to have the inside scoop on the hero, where did he come from and what is his agenda?

I don't know where he came from but his agenda is without any question—it's for global justice. He explained it to me once over a beer. Basically what we have in the 21st century is, all the economies are globalized, transportations systems are globalized, communications are certainly globalized and we have bodies like the U.N. which are global legislative systems but we have no global justice. We have no global judicial system and that is what he is fighting for.

If you believe in the tenets of democracy and true justice, which everybody in the U.S. claims they do, we claim all men are created equal and what people in this country and others are going to have to come to grips with is that if you actually believe that, then don't you believe that for all the f*cking people of the world. Aren't all men created equal, all of them? Even the African, Chinese and Asian ones?

And if you do believe that and you are a promoter of democracy and justice which, most people would say they are, then why don't we have a global justice system?

The U.N. has passed lots of [resolutions] that most countries and most people on the planet would totally agree with. Say, "landmines are really bad. Everybody should agree that land mines are bad, we should have a resolution that says that we are going to ban landmines—

"Better yet, genocide. That's the hot one. That's what set all this into motion; that people after World War II and even up to the modern day like in Rwanda people say, "Wow! Genocide really sucks! We can all agree that genocide is f*cking horrible! Let's pass a resolution that says we will not condone or allow genocide on our planet, and if it's happening we will all work together to make sure that it doesn't happen."

They passed that resolution, with an act of an UN statute on genocide. It's illegal on the planet, however...when it happens, who goes and f*ckin stops it?

[Laughs] There's no judicial system in place!

Whether economically or politically or whatever other way you want to look at it, there is no check on the international system. In other avenues of the international system [things] are growing rapidly or already there and are embraced, like economics. But there's no global justice system in place to check any of these things yet.

It's only a matter of time, but the Plaid Avenger got sick of waiting for it. It's like the UN is largely ineffective because countries have political agendas and argue with each other and don't get the shit done and so he said," F*ck this man! I'm, tired of waiting around."

Justice is for everyone. Everyone on the planet deserves justice, so he goes out and fights for it.

Here, have some tots if you want 'em, man.

Thanks. You wrote a textbook with the Plaid Avenger as the central figure—tell us more about the book.

I've never seen anybody do a comic book or graphic novel that is actually educational and thought, "how f*cking awesome would that be?" So I started talking to Klaus Schmidheiser, and he said immediately, "Wow, my whole life I wanted to do a comic book." We talked about it over beers and then I had this textbook representative approach me about writing a textbook for world regions [geography]. Then I was talking to this book rep guy that I'm friends with and I said,

"I had this idea for a graphic novel based on this character the Plaid Avenger," and he was like, "That sounds pretty interesting, too." Then a light bulb went off and I was like, "Dude, why not put two and two together; I'll write the textbook like a graphic novel and I'll have this cartoon character host the damn book." Of course everybody thought it was hilarious, they didn't know how racy it was going to be, so everyone embraced it immediately.

The idea started as a graphic novel comic book, then the textbook got introduced, and then the end product was the textbook hosted by the graphic novel character.

Now that you are independently wealthy from being a writer are you going to get a subterranean limestone lair or is the wife a little iffy on it.

[Laughs] Yeah, I'm working on all of that.

No, it's totally a labor of love. With Klaus the love is the art, and he's wicked at it. And with me, it's about education. I always have had a flair for it for one, which, is why people like the classes, but I just have a passion for it, people understanding what the living hell is going on in the world. That's why I do all this stuff.

The human race and particularly America, since I'm American and I live here, we are going to remain desperately backwards, behind, isolationist, and probably f*cked until enough of the next generation whatever generation that is, understands the way the world works. That's just the way it's going to be.

John Boyer is an instructor of geography and wine drinking at VA Tech. He and his trusty sidekick and integral illustrator, Klaus Schmidheiser, are in their second edition of the Plaid Avenger's World and are soon releasing the stand alone comic Artic Adventures of the Plaid Avenger. Klaus Schmidheiser, a graduate of VA Tech graphic design program now studies 3D Animation and Visual Effects at Vancouver Film School while illustrating the Plaid Avenger's adventures.