Can policing be reformed? How do cops view themselves and their work? To tackle these questions, “I’m a Cop”: Real-Life Horror Comics examines the words of police leaders themselves. Damm’s innovative comics combine statements made by the heads of U.S. police unions and visual elements of 1950’s horror comic books. “I’m a Cop” showcases the ghoulish psychology of policing and challenges readers to see the real-life horror in what the police have been telling us all along.
Damm’s combinatorial work recontextualizes and reactivates familiar genre tropes and twice-seen images; the results have a needling urgency. At once politically necessary and formally cool, “I’m a Cop” offers visual poetry with teeth.
—Charles Hatfield, The Comics Journal, “The Best Comics of 2022”
[A] powerful indictment of one of the most prevalent wrongs in contemporary society… Damm’s direct approach does more to condemn the brutality and corruption of modern law enforcement than academic tomes ten times its length.
—Leonard Pierce, The Comics Journal, “The Best of 2023”
“I’m a Cop” has been featured in The Washington Post, Boing Boing, and In These Times and named one of The Comics Journal’s Best Comics of 2022 and 2023.
8.25″ by 5.85″; Vol. 1: 28 pages, Vol. 2: 32 pages; full color; signed. Available for purchase in webstore.
Vol. 1 includes Afterword by cultural criminologist Travis Linnemann. Read the Afterword from Vol. 2, “U.S. Comics and the Police-Imaginary Complex.”
Sample Pages of “I’m a Cop” Vol. 2
