FROM LITTLE BOY TO BIG BROTHER IN 180 DAYS:

NEW YORK-I began working on a graphic-novel update and parody of "1984" a few years ago. An awful lot had changed since Orwell posited his dystopian vision of the future from his late-1940s deathbed, and I accounted for those differences in my own version, 2001's "2024." In order to acknowledge the collapse of Soviet Communism and the failure of fascism to reemerge as a potent political force, I ditched Orwell's oppressive totalitarian state in favor of an entertainment-fueled nihilism in which dimwitted citizens frittered away their lives watching web TV and working at slightly overpaid jobs to buy worthless junk...on web TV, natch. Where Orwell envisioned endless rows of soldiers marching in perfect unison to the strains of the Two-Minute Hate, I saw a world where nations had been replaced by trading blocs and the objects of hatred were the immigrants in our midst.