It's a sure sign that any

industry has "come of age" when

the dissenters from within its

ranks pull together to assemble

kamikaze tattletale rags.

Considering the depths to which

advertising has successfully

colonized our mental real

estate, it comes as no surprise

that the mere existence of a

magazine like Adbusters is

enough to make us Sucksters sire

walloping woodies.

Unfortunately, we've always been

a tad more impressed by

Adbusters' concept than its

execution. While making an

impressively hip coffee table

item, at $6 per (irregular) pop

it's often difficult to

sustain our enthusiasm for

what amounts to a sporadically

clever (though highly relevant)

zine. What kind of words, then,

could adequately convey our

pleasure to be able to announce

that Adbusters has hit the Web,

with a home page that can

truly be called home?

Ad spoofs, media deconstruction,

corporate analysis, and

subversive "events" - just as in

the print mag, they're all to be

found on the site. Amazingly

enough, though, the Cassandras

behind the operation have managed to

use the Web to breathe life into

the very conceits that were most

wanting in its paper

incarnation. The design is

impeccable and highly

appropriate - at least as slick

as the Madison Ave. fodder

Adbusters regularly skewers.

And the much-touted capacity for

websites to house comprehensive

archives is not just a promise

for the future at the Culture

Jammer's Headquarters. Not only

has Adbusters managed to pack in

quite the back catalog of media

hacks, but they've also been

able to deftly position their

works in just the right places

(and we thought only

anarcho-capitalists still read

Understanding Media.)

Adbusters deserves an award

for the most insidious use

of hyperlinks yet: the Bolt into

Action! segments follow many

Adbuster features, linking

readers directly into feedback

pages of corporate sites such as CBC and

Coca-Cola. Their call to

activism, "Good Luck, Jammers!,"

is rapidly becoming the farewell

of choice for phone

conversations and email missives

at Suck Central.

"We will uncool their billion

dollar images with uncommercials

on TV..." proclaims their Media

Manifesto, heralding the kind of

intent cheered more by

featherweights like Suck than

knotty-necked muscleheads such

as ABC (oops...Disney/ABC), NBC,

CBS and the Canadian

Broadcasting Company, all of

which the magazine is taking to

court to dispute their

unflinching refusal to sell

airtime for Adbusters'

"uncommercials."

If we weren't such brainwashed

idiots we might quit this Suck

crap and go work for them. As it

is, their favorite targets

(McDonald's, and the cigarette and

alcohol industries) sadly

coincide with some of our most

deeply-held passions. While we

can't help but thrill to their

struggles to place distorted

"Got Milk?" and Absolut Vodka ad

parodies in the Dirty Dozen of

mainstream magazines, we're

ashamed to admit that huge gobs

of barely-chewed Big Mac usually

project forth from our mouths

right along with the sympathetic

laughter and outrage. But our

status as Media Tools is hardly

"breaking news."

It's axiomatic that a sucker is

born while another dies every

minute, but the real action lies

in the media goons' baptizing of

"born-again suckers," a title

awarded on a mass scale many

times every moment. The question

is, when it comes time for your

next sacramental dunk - who're

you gonna call?