There are no larger truths to be found in this brief graphic narrative, and perhaps there will never be. These comics do not...
A series of journalistic vignettes from the war that threatens to last forever.
As America’s involvement in Afghanistan extends toward (and past?) two decades, the challenge of coming to terms with it grows tougher than ever. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, some wondered whether it would ever inspire great literature, as the two world wars had, or whether we were too close to it to see it clearly. With Afghanistan, it is even harder to find meaning or significance while the U.S. remains entrenched, despite promises from presidents and candidates for a deadline on such involvement. As a former war correspondent and author of a previous graphic novel about his experiences (War Is Boring, 2010), Axe admits to mixed feelings over the possibility of America’s troop removal. “In my selfishness, I feared losing my easy access—via the U.S. Military—to Afghanistan’s most dangerous districts,” he writes. “The war had defined my young adulthood. The closer it came to killing me, the deeper my connection with the conflict. For better or worse, the Afghanistan war had made me who I was and am. I treasured that.” Such profound ambivalence runs through these stories, presented in collaboration with journalist Knodell and artist Delliquanti (O Human Star Volume Two, 2017), whose bold colors bring a vividness reminiscent of pop art to the murkiness of the conflict. Reportage and reflections from a variety of perspectives suggest that the American soldiers have no idea of what they’re doing there or how best to fight an enemy that is indistinguishable by uniform. Those who live in Afghanistan fear the Americans and the Taliban alike while knowing that war will persist and nothing significant will change even if America withdraws its troops.
There are no larger truths to be found in this brief graphic narrative, and perhaps there will never be. These comics do not depict a faceless enemy, but they suggest compassion, bravery, and even heroism despite the absurdities of a war with no purpose and seemingly no end.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68247-098-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Dead Reckoning/Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
All dissertations should be this much fun. (35 photos and illustrations)
An amusing compilation of deceptions dating from the Middle Ages to the aftermath of September 11, morphed into print from a Web site initially created to store the author’s thesis research.
Boese, a grad student at UC San Diego, defines a hoax as a “deliberately deceptive act that has succeeded in capturing the attention (and, ideally, the imagination) of the public.” Included under this broad heading are the Jackalope, a species of antlered rabbit able to mimic human voices; a South African crop circle made by extraterrestrials that featured the BMW logo; and Snowball, the 87-pound kitten whose size was due to its mother having been callously abandoned near a nuclear lab. Actually, Snowball wasn’t intended as a hoax; the cat’s owner manipulated the photo and sent a few friends the image, which eventually made its way around the world with an accompanying narrative. (Boese similarly stretches his own definition to include Orson Welles’s radio broadcast The War of the Worlds, even though the program wasn’t meant to trick listeners.) The author believes that while folks have always been gullible, the form and function of hoaxes change over time. For example, during the 1990s, people began to feel anxious about how technology and the Internet were affecting their daily lives. This anxiety fueled the success of a 1994 hoax in PC Computing magazine, which published an article “reporting” that Congress would soon make it illegal to drive drunk on “the information highway.” When a 1998 Internet posting by a New Mexico physicist claimed that the Alabama legislature had voted to change the mathematical value of pi from 3.14159 . . . to “the Biblical value” of 3.0, a bewildered legislature was swamped with calls from angry citizens. Despite its origin as thesis material, the work is not meant to be academic, and there is no analysis of any kind.
All dissertations should be this much fun. (35 photos and illustrations)Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-94678-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smart, sweet graphic memoir. Schrag’s work should resonate with anyone—female or male, gay or straight—who has survived...
Schrag (Awkward and Definition, 2008, etc.) explores her junior year of high school, a period of self-discovery amid social minefields, all the more complicated for a gay student.
The second volume of the “High School Comic Chronicles” finds the author dealing with all sorts of personal challenges, both at home and at school. Her constantly bickering parents appear headed for divorce; she feels the pressure to realize her potential as a student; she confronts countless questions regarding her sexuality: Does bisexuality exist, or is it a cop-out? Is it necessary to have sex with a boy to lose one’s virginity? What does it mean when your girlfriend doesn’t desire you as much as you desire her? Since the author wrote the book during the summer following her junior year, Schrag’s fellow students were aware that she was chronicling their life as a graphic narrative. As such, the book becomes a kind of meta-comic, in which there are plenty of comments about what is and is not included. As the title suggests, identities are fluid rather than fixed, and the characters are in a state of becoming rather than being. Though Schrag’s classmates at California’s Berkeley High School may have been a little hipper than many throughout the country, most were equally clueless when it comes to figuring out who they really are and what they really want. There is plenty of sex here, somehow as innocent as it is explicit. This should be a breakout year for Schrag, with both a film based on this book and a third graphic volume documenting her senior year (Likewise) due within months.
A smart, sweet graphic memoir. Schrag’s work should resonate with anyone—female or male, gay or straight—who has survived high school.Pub Date: May 6, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5235-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
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