Jamba Juice, megalithic processed-fruit overlord, is apparently not above "taking creative license" with the well-established work of indie artists in order to hawk juice.

We recently learned from one of our favorite cartoonists, David Reese, creator of the watershed comic Get Your War On, that Jamba Juice was biting his style in a recent ad campaign. The brilliance of Get Your War On is the use of a coupla Everydudes or Everydudettes from clip art central, talking smack about, say, the then-impending Iraq War and the heights of vitriol and absurdity that their conversations reached. Apparently, Jamba uice thought GYWO was brilliant, too.

Sure, everyone's jumped on the antiwar bandwagon, and it's not much of a risk to question the war anymore. What remains sacred to me about Get Your War On is that before Jon Stewart found Stephen Colbert, and before the two of them found their own weapons of mass destruction and unleashed them on the Bush Administration, there was Get Your War On. In late 2001, the country was largely stunned. Few were saying shit about the invasion of Afghanistan with the full-throated, venomous sarcasm that it deserved, and even when The Daily Show did hit its stride questioning the Bush Admin in 2003 or so, Stewart never quite vocalized sheer, acidic outrage the way Reese did in Get Your War On.

So finding out that Jamba Juice pimps Get Your War On in its advertising is a little like hearing that union-busting Whole Foods is using Woody Guthrie's song "Union Made" to sell Whole Trade coffee. No, it's worse than that. Whole Foods has heft and substance, misguided as it sometimes is. Jamba Juice, on the other hand, serves no purpose.  It's just meaningless fluff, and it's getting its meaninglessness all over my Get Your War On.

Boycott Jamba Juice, says David. Sure. Whatever. But I say buycott David Reese. NOW.

Cross posted from Fair Food Fight.