‘Cablegate Chronicles’ Turns Wikileaks Documents into Comics

We like to joke around here that in these early days of the 21st century, any story, song or any other sort of narrative transmitted in any medium can and will eventually be adapted to the comics format. In the case of the confidential U.S. State Department correspondences released last month by Wikileaks, the translation to comics is both welcome and crucial. As The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal astutely observed, there are many foreign service officers who are plainly wannabe novelists, filling their diplomatic cables with the kind of colorful dialogue and overwrought descriptions usually found in the best kinds of airport novels.

Inspired by The Atlantic's Cablegate Chronicles, cartoonist Joe Alterio has set forth on a mission to adapt into mini-comics the most dramatically compelling of the leaked State Department cables. Also called Cablegate Chronicles, two are completed so far, and they're genuinely great. The first is based on a cable from a U.S. operative in Kazakhstan (a nation already unhappy with the U.S. for financing a vicious and unfair [although hilarious] depiction of itself in Borat), in which the country's Prime Minister Karim Massimov steps out for a night of seemingly euphoric clubbing.

Check it out after the jump.