How would a real person feel about becoming a comic book hero?

If you asked Rev. Bill Breeden that question right now, you'd probably find he's quite pleased.

Bill is definitely a real person. And, to most of us who know him, he was already a hero before he turned up in this big, new $30 "comic book" titled A People's History of American Empire.

The book is the latest manifestation of the great influence of historian and peacemonger Howard Zinn.

The idea of a Howard Zinn comic book is mind-boggling. The man is serious, all guts and gravitas, an inspiration to all of us who care enough about our country to dissent when America disgraces herself. But here he is, with his shock of white hair, narrating a comic book.

The term they use now isn't "comic book," it's "graphic adaptation." But it's the familiar comic book form: successions of panel drawings with dialogue floating in balloons, telling stories. Many of these stories first appeared in powerful, scholarly text in Dr. Zinn's 1980 book, A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present, 1492-Present, which quickly became a classic.

The historical events in this new graphic volume are those that deal specifically with the United States as an empire in the making: as aggressive grabber of territory, resources and power in the world. Despite what they teach us in U.S. history courses, this country has a long and violent history of empire-building, ranging from the taking of American Indian lands to the invasion of Mexico in 1846, from attacks on Cuba and the Philippines in the 1890s to the present invasion and occupation of Iraq, with almost constant banana wars and international meddling in between.

It was one just such a meddling that brought Bill Breeden into the book. It was during the Reagan years, after what we remember as the "Iran-Contra affair" when the administration broke laws, tricked Congress and sold missile weaponry to Iran to make millions of dollars which were then secretly funneled into illegal support for a counterrevolutionary force in Nicaragua.

One of the culprits, Admiral John Poindexter, was a native of Odon, Ind., also Bill Breeden's hometown. When the town honored Poindexter by naming a street after him, young Breeden was outraged. So he kidnapped the street sign, demanding a ransom of $30 million, the amount paid to Iran in the arms deal. It was a righteous but dangerous prank.

In his great history book, Howard Zinn told of that caper, which ended with Breeden being the only person who was ever locked up over the government's skullduggery. Zinn wrote the tale out of admiration for Breeden. They met and a friendship developed.

In this new graphic history book, Zinn gives a full page to Breeden's story, framing it as a parody of the famous Ripley "Believe It Or Not."

Bill Breeden is pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church here in Bloomington, and still a dissenter, against war, capital punishment and other forms of government violence. He is a brilliant and funny orator. The late Kurt Vonnegut once praised him as a "holy clown" -- which, as we know, was a good description of Vonnegut himself.

Dr. Zinn, a World War II veteran, now in his 80s, lives in Massachusetts and from there writes cogent articles against the Iraq War and for impeachment of the guys who started it. In the new book, he appears frequently with his pithy facts quoted in speech balloons.

In other words, the cartoonist, Mike Konopacki, has made Dr. Zinn, as well as Bill Breeden, a comic book hero, along with many other heroic dissenters.

The book is published by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt & Co. It is a clever refresher course in American Imperialism, and I would like the book even if it didn't make comic book heroes of two of my most esteemed friends.

I never cared for Superman or Captain Marvel or Spiderman. My first comic book hero was Pogo the Possum. I miss him. Now maybe his comic book hero shoes can be filled by Breeden and Zinn.

(Oops, I forgot: Pogo didn't wear shoes.)

James Alexander Thom can be reached at editor@BloomingtonAlternative.com.