Microreview [Comic] The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song

Young, Frank M. and David Lasky. The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song [Abrams ComicArt, 2012]

Sometimes, I think they make books for me. Frank M. Young and David Lasky, for example, decided I needed a comic book about the Carter Family. And I did.

The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song is simply a wonderful book. Part domestic drama, part historical narrative, Young and Lasky’s graphic novel is a perfect primer not only on the Carter Family—often identified among the founders of country music—but also on the early development of recording industry, in which A.P. and his wife and musical partner Sara found themselves ensnared. Their relationship is not only central to the Carter Family’s history, but their divorce was a result, in many ways, a product of the group’s success. Writer Frank M. Young weaves these two narratives together in a subtle, almost superficial manner, which I always appreciated. This is a delightfully bare story. David Lasky’s art aptly complements Young’s sparse narrative, his simple, sometimes rushed cartooning augmented considerably by full color. Full color. That’s an extra point right there.

Don’t Forget This Song moves through decades of the Carter Family’s career rather briskly, but it works. This episodic structure, which drives me crazy in biopics, was perhaps better suited to the Carter Family given the relatively undramatic nature of the group. There is never a sense that we’re missing much in the months or years that pass between chapters. Much of the book is devoted to the mundane aspects of the music industry and music-making, as well as the rural life the Carters enjoyed back home in Virginia. We really don't need that much information on A.P.'s sawmill. 

A.P. Carter, the patriarch (of sorts) of the Carter Family, is the center of Don’t Forget This Song, especially in terms of his relationship to Sara, his onetime wife and lifelong musical partner. To some extent, A.P. is typical of many musicians—head in the clouds, domestically inept, secretly mercenary. Fortunately for A.P., there was no script  for him to follow back in the thirties, not yet a Bob Dylan or even a Hank Williams, no trailblazers show him how pop stars are supposed to act. So he pretty much moped about as his marriage collapsed. A.P. was, furthermore, from another era in rural Virginia. He was a family man and a farmer. A miserable failure at both, but that was what he thought he was. Though music, or rather music collecting, was his passion, the Carter Family itself was a venture, a way to make money. Frank M. Young doesn’t necessarily treat A.P. Carter with kid gloves—he’s definitely left on the hook for the breakup of his marriage—but the reader is nevertheless left with a lot of sympathy for the old fool.

If there’s one more reason to recommend this book, it’s the actual book itself—hardbound, full color, CD included. (CD!) People judge you on the books you own. So own this, and you’ll look cultured.

I’m probably a bit biased. I like nonfiction comics. I like country music. I got Don’t Forget This Song as a gift. (And in turn bought another copy as a gift for a buddy.) All these things may have colored my reading of this, but I doubt it. Young and Lasky have simply produced a wonderful book.

The Math

Objective Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for color

Penalties: Not a one.

Nerd Co-efficient: 9/10 very high quality/standout in its category

Read about our scoring system here. And remember, we categorically reject grade inflation!

Summer Reading List: Philippe

Philippe plans to read comics this summer. That's about it.


I never read the books on my summer reading list. As a rule. If I tell someone that I am planning to read this or that novel this summer, I will not read the book. Not that summer, probably not ever. So I’m changing my game plan: I plan on reading a shit-ton of comics this summer. I might actually get through a third of the following list.

1. Crime Comics (but actually Stray Bullets): In my adulthood, I have phased in and out of regular comic reading. One of my ebbs coincided with a brief renaissance of crime comics in the late ‘00s: Vertigo Crime, Brubaker’s Criminal, and…Screw it. I’m rereading Stray Bullets. To catch up. David Lapham’s remarkable Stray Bullets is perhaps the most underrated comic of all time. Or maybe it isn’t. Since I haven't ever reread the entire series, I really can’t say. So this summer, I’ll figure it out. And get caught up.





2. Marvel, but old Marvel: Every three years, I decide that I am going to read some Marvel Comics. (I didn’t like DC as a kid, so…) I ask buddies about what’s going on in the universe, they tell me about all the changes, recommend some of the recent crossover events. I go back to where I left off—Secret Invasion, as of now. And every three years, I’m thoroughly disappointed. So this time around, I’m going to read old school Marvel Comics, the classic runs. Specifically, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four, Walt Simonson’s Thor, and picking up where I left off in 2012 on Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men. I think Storm had a Mohawk.



3. Nonfiction comics: In my humble opinion, this is the future. Of course, nonfiction comics have been around forever. And books like Maus, Palestine, and Persepolis drew an audience that never read, or likely will ever again read comic books. I would perhaps have more to say about nonfiction comics if I had read more of them. So this summer, I dive in. I’ll start with the political: Harvey Pekar’s Students For A Democratic Society: A Graphic History and The Beats: A Graphic History; A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld; and J.P. Stessen’s Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda. No autobiographical comic, please. I got enough of those in the ‘90s.


4. Peanuts: Particularly the early years. This one is a bit of a cheat, since I’ve been reading the first decade of Charles Schultz’s strip for the last few months. This is the most perfect comic ever, beautifully drawn and crafted, as well as thoroughly sweet. Plus, Schultz snuck in enough gender politics to make you feel like a better human being—or at least a person who has read a great piece of America.

5. New comics from the comic store: I will walk into the store. I will browse. I will patiently browse. I will select a new book. I will buy it. Maybe I will enjoy it. Or I’ll just buy…






6. Lone Wolf and Cub: This is ambitious. There are 28 volumes in Dark Horse’s omnibus collection. Over 8,700 pages. I’ve loved Lone Wolf and Cub since I was a kid. I tried to track down every issue of the original translations from First and then began buying Dark Horse’s re-releases as they came out. But at some point—volume 12, to be exact—I got bored with the story. After all, it’s 80% increasingly implausible hits. But this time, I am confident that I can finish the whole thing. Though it is 8,700+ pages. But a lot of that is nature shots or people jumping in the air. Four volumes in. This will be a good summer.

Microreview [Comics] Anarchy Comics

Kinney, Jay (ed.). Anarchy Comics [PM Press]

The Meat

I’m not sure when I first heard of Anarchy Comics, but I’m guessing it was sometime between 1994 and 1996—that is, during the period when I was reading a lot of comics and books on anarchism and during the period when there was no internet. Had I had internet access, I would have tracked down an issue or two, or at least have learned something more of its existence. It was anarchism in comic book form, after all. The 17-year old me would not only have loved reading such a book, he would have needed to read it. But alas, I never got my hands on a single copy. And then I graduated from a fascination with anarchism into ironic political detachment. That is, I became a political sociologist.

But things get collected and reprinted. Many months back, I was at the store to buy our beloved editor a birthday gift when I saw the Anarchy Comics trade. I read it immediately. I planned to review it immediately. And then I procrastinated and got out of blogging for a few weeks—or something along those lines. Here it is, six or so months later and I've finally got around to it.

The review: It’s worth your money. Yes, yes. Irony.

Editor Jay Kinney came up with the idea of Anarchy Comics in the late seventies, in part to join his passion for comics with his passion for anarchist philosophy, in part as a way to make sense of the unceremonious demise of the New Left on the world stage. And it reads like the late seventies, full of punk vigor and utter disdain for the right and the left. Though it’s a relic of its time, it is nonetheless a very important and very entertaining piece of comics history. It’s often pretty funny too.

Kinney deserves praise not merely for corralling an international gang of cartoonists into contributing to the book, but for his own contributions. He and Paul Mavrides created some of the best and funniest strips in Anarchy. “Kultur Documents,” a bizarre mélange of a pictogram workers rebellion and a punk spoof on Archie Comics—seriously—is perhaps the best piece in the collection, sardonic and bizarre. “Armageddon Outtahere” may also possibly be the best piece in the collection for the very same reasons, with the added bonus of pondering competing claims to ownership of the apocalypse. These two alone may be worth the price of the book.

Among Anarchy Comics’ better entries are its historical strips. The French duo Épistoloer and Volny provide a number of historical sketches of anarchism, examining the Kronstadt Mutiny following the Bolshevik Revolution and the Rustauds’ Revolt in 16^th Century Alsace. Another piece Steve Stiles’s “Wobblies!”, meshes the history of the American IWW union with his own experience of questioning at the hands of US military intelligence. Unsurprisingly, Spain Rodriguez provides the best of the historical strips with his pair of entries on the Spanish Civil War, “Blood and Sky” and “Durruti”; a brief biographical sketch fn Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, and “1871,” a look at the failed Paris Commune. (His “Roman Spring,” exploring the generational conflicts of the Italian “Years of Lead” during the 1970s, unfortunately, is rather superficial and romanticized story, heavy on melodrama.) Reading these made me wish he’d have continued with such historical work on anarchism—and maybe I should finally buy Che.

But as with most anthologies of any kind, some of the material in Anarchy Comics is forgettable. Much of this reads like the writings of unfocused youthful agitators: willfully naïve and childishly hostile, overflowing with equal parts optimism and anger. And ultimately pointless—as editor Kinney admits, to an extent, in his introduction. From a pedagogical perspective, more thoughtful pieces on anarchist philosophy and its development would have improved the book considerably. Though Anarchy Comics was designed to specifically avoid long-winded exegeses on obscure tracts and sterile debates over irrelevant minutiae of good theory—a hallmark of leftism—such materials would have been beneficial for the novice militant. The collection does include a handful of terse theoretical pieces—Harry S. Robins’s “Anarchy Panarchy” being the best, as well as funniest—though I would have preferred more. I suppose I’ll have to make a trip to the library.

Part of anarchism’s allure—and part of the reason for why it has historically been seen as such a threat—stems from its association with violence, i.e. the propaganda by the deed. Marx derided his anarchist adversaries as “alchemists of revolution”: they believed, he argued, that they could jumpstart revolution through daring acts of violence and assassination, thus avoiding all the work of raising consciousnesses and patient mobilization. Anarchy Comics certainly has its fair share of appeals to violence, often adolescently expressed. While violence in comics may be commonplace, enjoining readers to perpetrate the mayhem themselves is often frowned upon. And it’s hard to imagine anyone getting away with a fictional account of the president’s assassination in this post-9/11 world. But it was a simpler time.

Well, it’s late and I have class to teach early in the morning. Plus, I’d like to get in a few pages of Bakunin before bed. Maybe there’s something to this anarchist business after all.

The Math

Objective score: 8/10

Penalties: -1 for the bad strips

Bonuses: +1 for sending me to the library; +1 for "free kittens" (p. 145)

Nerd coefficient: 9/10

Microreview [comics]: Los Tejanos and Lost Cause

The Meat

It's perhaps unfair to write a single review Fantagraphics' collection Los Tejanos & Lost Cause by the late Jack "Jaxon" Jackson, underground comix initiator and comic historian of Texas. The two works, though superficially similar, are subtly different in terms of storytelling and overall quality. It's perhaps unfair to write a single review for the two, but it's getting late, I'm tired, and I teach in the morning.

Jackson will probably always been most well-known for co-founding Rip Of Press in 1969 and for perhaps authoring the first underground comic, 1964's God Nose. But he deserves credit for his contribution to non-fiction and quasi-academic comics. Los Tejanos (1981) and Lost Cause (1998) stem from Jackson's lifelong study of Texas history, research that he published both as graphic novels and as scholarly books. This is not to say that his comic histories are not scholarly. Indeed, Los Tejanos and Lost Cause are the products of serious historical research, and as such they are clear exhibitions of comics' potential as a viable media for academic and journalistic work.

I am serious.

Now, to the review. Of the two works, I enjoyed Los Tejanos more than its companion. Though I found the historical content of Lost Cause fascinating, Jackson's treatment of Juan Seguin -- Tejano and militant for Texas's independence from Mexico -- is far more focused and coherent. Lost Cause tends to meander, lingering on the events of a Taylor clan get-together for a dozen pages, then jumping from event to event haphazardly, leaving the reader a bit confused as to how occurrences relate to one another and to the story's broader historical narrative. Los Tejanos  is a much clearer and measured work -- and therefore much more enjoyable of a read.

If there is a drawback to Los Tejanos, it is Jackson's unwillingness to explore the psychology of Juan Seguin, a man of militant conviction forced by circumstances to switch allegiance from his beloved Texas to his former enemy, Mexico. Jackson's failure to engage fully with Seguin's contradictory motivations and personal struggles may be simply a product of the author's seriousness as a historian: Seguin, after all, left no journal or other documentation that could provide insight into his private turmoil and troubles. But, as an artist and a scholar Jackson was well within his rights to speculate and informed enough to do so. Drama would have lightened the story somewhat, offsetting the often overwhelming historical detail Jackson presents.

(Keeping track of names was difficult in both stories. Perhaps comic creators wanting to explore complex nonfiction subject matters may want to consider using some kind of graphic index. Readers forget many important things. Throw us a bone.)

Now, I am obliged to address the following. I don’t want to be accusatory, but some of Johnson’s characterizations of African-Americans made me uncomfortable. Jackson attempts to disarm his critics by appealing to historical accuracy. His job as a historian is to provide insight into the social world of those he studies, to familiarize these figures so that we can empathize with and ultimately understand why they acted the way they did.

There is something to this. This is why uproar surrounding Django Unchained’s use of…let’s call it “colorful” terminology fell flat. Most of us understand that historical fiction entails a certain degree of suspended offense. Texas in the 1860’s was not a tolerant place -- though, as Jackson shows is Los Tejanos, it didn't have to be this way. The heroes of Lost Cause are people whose morality is alien to ours -- and not only in terms of their views of other races.

But a measure of sensitivity is nevertheless required of an artist and a historian when depicting stigmatized racial groups in an evenhanded manner. There are many panels and a few gags in Lost Cause that I found questionable. I imagine many of you would as well.

I’m not going to get any further into this.

I appreciate that Johnson sticks with the perspective of the “losers” -- Juan Seguin's struggles against racism following Texas’ rebellion and Texan Confederates' struggle to regain a sense of honor following the defeat of their cause. Los Tejanos and Lost Cause demonstrate -- as did much of Jack Jackson's work -- that scholarly concerns and serious research are not beyond the reach of comic books. And for that alone, I am obliged to recommend this collection.

The Math

Objective Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for serious comic book scholarship

Penalties: -1 for potential cultural insensitivity; -1 for doing so after the release of Birth of a Nation

Nerd coefficient: 7/10

Microreview [comic]: Hip Hop Family Tree

The Meat

Full disclosure: I don't like hip hop. Time and again, people have tried their damnedest to get me listening to hip hop. Buddies, girlfriends, enemies. I have been given mixtapes and forwarded playlists, all to no avail. This isn't to say that I don't respect hip hop. This isn't to say that I cannot recognize the genius of Straight Outta Compton or The Low End Theory.

But Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree did something that none of my people have ever before managed: it got me to actually sit down and listen to the music.

Hip Hop Family Tree is, of course, not a history of rap alone. As those familiar with the genre can attest, it's difficult to separate the music from other elements of the "culture" -- b-boying, graffiti, lingo, style. Piskor demonstrates an affectionate respect for the interrelations between these phenomenon, telling a story of a culture, rather than a musical genre. He begins with Cool Herc's parties and, as of this writing, has reached the point in which downtown punk and uptown hip hop first come into contact. For one fleeting moment, American music was poised to go into an odd direction.

Like a good social historian, Piskor focuses on the human relationships that drove hip hop's development -- from antagonistic competition to opportunistic collaboration -- giving the reader an insight into the haphazardness of cultural development. Of course, history is made by people, but not always under the conditions of their own choosing. And events are random on a level that human interaction can never attain. That's why a city-wide blackout lead to the expansion of DJ culture throughout New York, allowing kids to emulate their heroes and, eventually, one-upping them.

This is history, nonfiction. But Piskor manages to tell the story dynamically, moving between events quickly. Sometime, almost haphazardly. On some pages, events are jumbled together. On others, the transition from one event to another happens too abruptly -- the first event either left unresolved or its significance to the page's second event is unclear. This, however, is just an occasional nuisance that takes nothing away from the overall reading experience.

Though the writing -- and the very idea of a comic history of hip hop -- is great, the art is remarkable. Piskor's style has often been compared to underground luminaries like Crumb, but Hip Hop Family Tree seems to draw as well on Marvel's house style from the seventies. Piskor's art is nostalgic without being derivative. The coloring complements the old school pencil-and-ink, demonstrating how comic art can itself evoke history.

There's more. Hip Hop Family Tree doesn't read like a web comic. It is rather a comic book on the internet. Which means Ed Piskor has drawn pages. This isn't four panels on Tumblr, but actual pages from a comic book, pages that an artist spent time on. Yellowed pages that look like old comic book pages looked. There's thought at work here.

Oh, but I have a gripe. Not an insignificant one, either. Fortunately I can lay this one entirely at BoingBoing's feet. Hip Hop Family Tree isn't easy to read. To begin at the beginning, you'll need to go to the fairly useless index and scroll down -- and down -- until you get to the first installment. Which, of course, is not clearly identified as such on the website. How about a "start with part one" button?

Or we can simply wait until September when Fantagraphics will release a trade of Hip Hop Family Tree and we can read Ed Piskor's pages as it was meant to be read. Pages.

Here's the link once more: http://boingboing.net/tag/hip-hop-family-tree


The Math
Objective Score: F*ck it, 10/10

Bonuses: +1 for pages

Penalties: -1 for BoingBoing dropping the ball on reader-friendliness

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

Microreviw [comics]: Footnotes in Gaza

The Meat

"What you're doing doesn't fit into the category of real-time news."

This was how journalist-cartoonist Joe Sacco's application for a press pass to visit Gaza got rejected. And there's a good deal of truth to this statement. Sacco spent five years working on Footnotes in Gaza -- far too long for those of us who waited for new work from the most underrated of all modern comic book creators. Granted other artists and writers may have had more influence over the medium, but few can be credited with creating a genre almost single-handedly. Of course, comic book journalism is hardly popular, though its credibility slowly creeps forward. Sure it will probably not save journalism. But in a world in which fiction is far too dominant -- I need not even comment on "reality" TV -- attempts to uncover the truth are inherently worthy. And when done in comic book form, efforts become valiant. In my view, at least.

Footnotes in Gaza is in some way an accidental sequel to Sacco's monumental Palestine series. But the differences between the two works are considerable. Whereas Palestine was largely journalistic, Footnotes is almost scholarly. Sacco is not engaged in mere reportage in the book, but with historical investigation, with uncovering events that have been overshadowed by more important events.

Here's where our man encounters some predictable criticism. First, there's the simple fact that any investigative work undertaken in Palestine based largely from the Palestinian perspectives is by definition controversial. Sacco is doing much more than this. His work focuses on massacres committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians in 1956. Good luck with that.

But Sacco -- who I suspect is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause -- strikes a remarkably objective tone. Due to the lack of documentary evidence of the events that occurred in Rafah and Khan Younis, Sacco must rely entirely on the memories of Palestinians who witnessed the incidents. Sacco does not naively accept the credibility of these recollections. Rather, he delights in presenting the often contradictory memories of the residents of Khan Younis and Rafah, or pondering the reliability of memory and even of history itself. Footnotes in fact demonstrates more critical distance, skepticism, and wariness in the face of memory than do many works by social scientist who all too often privilege the subaltern for the sake of being pomo.

That's enough about the politics of it all.

Sacco's art is at its finest in Footnotes. His characterizations remain purposely ugly. People in Sacco's pages grimace and frown, they look uncomfortable, angry, and frightened. Then again, Sacco's protagonists live in the kinds of places that will piss a person off and make them grimace all too often. Beyond his exaggerated cartooning of the human form, Sacco's minimalist photorealistic landscapes deserve immense praise. Clean, sparse lines and precise perspective accentuate the griminess and hopelessness of life in southern Gaza.

I do have one criticism: Sacco's disjointed storytelling. I claimed above that Footnotes in Gaza is more an academic than a journalistic endeavor. Well, that's only partly true. Much of the book details Sacco's experience researching the incidents, thus it reads at time like a memoir. Overall, the back-and-forth transitioning between these experience and the reconstruction of the 1956 events is effective. It provides the reader with a stark understanding of the deeply entrenched nature of the Palestinian conflicts. But at other times, particular in the Rafah chapters, these transition impede the narrative telling of the incident.

This is a minuscule criticism, one made for the sake of criticism itself. Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza is quite simply an important work, an indication of the heights to which comic books can aspire.

Yeah, I actually wrote that.


The Math

I don't feel like beating around the bush: 10/10

Cross-posted at Bullets and Ballots.

The Top 6 Books of Our First 6 Months!

[We nerds of a feather like things that come in sixes. So in celebration of our first six months of operation, we're presenting you with a retrospective series that looks at the best stuff we've covered in our short lifetime. In multiples of six, of course! First up, books. As you know by now, we like books, and we've had the fortune of reviewing some really good ones. Here are the six highest scoring books reviewed to date by our in-house bloggers. Given that we don't dish out 9s and 10s like some others, you can count every single one of these as a "must-read." Enjoy!]

6. War is Boring by David Axe [NAL, 2010]

Philippe's Score: 8/10, "well worth your time and attention"

"War is Boring.. has considerably dashed my dreams. It’s not the violence, the disturbing imagery that a war reporter must bear witness to. It’s not the lies, the cynicism, and the amoral opportunism that thrives in war zones. It isn’t even the brushes with death. No, it’s exactly what the title warns: War is often boring. But, what’s worse is that returning from war, reinserting oneself in the normal world, into peacetime, is even more boring, according to David Axe, war reporter turned comic author."

5. The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham [Orbit, 2011] 8/10

The G's Score: 8/10, "well worth your time and attention"

"There’s a lot to recommend in The Dragon's Path. To begin, it’s a really fun story, presented in crisp, engaging prose, and full of memorable moments. The narrative voices...constitute a particular strong point. Geder, Dawson, Marcus and Cithrin are all fully realized, complex characters who act and speak like real human beings. You can easy relate to them and understand their general motivations, but--like real human beings--they often make key decisions in an arbitrary, ad hoc fashion that can be surprising, but feels very authentic."

4. Pavane by Keith Roberts [Old Earth Books, 1968] 8/10

Vance's Score: 8/10, "well worth your time and attention"

"We have come to expect narrative conventions of stories being finished, but that's not at all how real life works. Even in death, nobody's story is ever really finished (that is, until an individual's third death -- seriously, read this, and try to not get chills). And in Pavane, Roberts is telling the story of an empire that has stretched from the Holy Roman Empire into an alternate 1980s that cannot possibly conceive of synth-pop. It is fitting, then, that a narrative tapestry woven from such material should eschew such 'endings.'"

3. Rachel Rising by Terry Moore [Abstract Studios, 2012]

Philippe's Score: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category"

"The book is creepy, Vincent Price creepy. But Moore does not let eeriness take over the book. The dark, gothic themes are balanced by lightheartedness and actual human emotion. The book's undead aren’t zombies, but human with a dying problem.. Rachel isn’t a morose, brooding Lestat, but a confused young woman who’s trying to get on with her life -- even though it has apparently ended, at least in the conventional "we got a pulse" sort of way."

2. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski [Orbit] 9/10

The G's Score: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category"

"If this all sounds a bit familiar to you, it's probably because you've played or heard of the video games these books inspired. The Last Wish is a must-read for fans of the games, as well as anyone who likes character-driven sword & sorcery. As it happens, after only reading one installment in the series, I'm ready to pronounce Geralt as one of the great fantasy characters of all-time. He's a cynic with a moral compass, a killer with standards and has a way with the ladies, who are themselves similarly complex and interesting characters."

1. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks [Orbit]

The G's Score: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category"

"Clearly the Culture is Banks' utopia, a place without the problems that dog our own world. If that was all there was to it, though, these novels would be really boring. Thankfully, Banks has situated the Culture within a galaxy full of other societies, and his novels largely explore the interactions between the Culture and its neighbors, most of which can be described as "not good." Utopia though it may be, when the Culture gets involved in foreign entanglements, it looks awfully neo-colonial and paternalistic."

Microreview [comics]: War is Boring

The Meat

Like most Americans, I want the dream job. But there’s a problem for me: I fantasize about being a war reporter. Maybe it’s the enduring effect of watching The Killing Fields and Salvador at a very young age. Maybe it’s my lifelong fascination with war and violence. Whatever the cause, when I see Michael Ware’s jacked up nose on the TV screen I think to myself, “He’s the effing man.”

War is Boring: Bored Stiff, Scared to Death in the World’s Worst War Zones has considerably dashed my dreams. It’s not the violence, the disturbing imagery that a war reporter must bear witness to. It’s not the lies, the cynicism, and the amoral opportunism that thrives in war zones. It isn’t even the brushes with death. No, it’s exactly what the title warns: War is often boring. But, what’s worse is that returning from war, reinserting oneself in the normal world, into peacetime, is even more boring, according to David Axe, war reporter turned comic author.

First off, War is Boring isn’t reportage in comic form. Rather it’s a comic book about being a war reporter and the difficulties experienced coming back from war. 

The story is comprised of a series of vignettes tracing Axe’s experiences in East Timor, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Chad counterbalanced against his returns home to South Carolina and Detroit. Stateside, Axe experiences a deep ennui and impatience with normal life: parties, girlfriends, having a burger, going to weapons trade shows. A war junky, he’s drawn time and again back to war. It doesn’t matter which war, so long as people are shooting one another (or throwing spears in East Timor). The problem Axe finds is that war can be almost as boring as life back home. His time in the field is spent waiting for something to happen. He often  arrives too late: the war’s over, all that’s left is the scars and memories. Axe’s life seems to be one of chasing after something he only rarely finds -- and fending off the pleas of local fixers seeking a American visa.

The comparisons between War is Boring and Joe Sacco’s work is pretty much unavoidable. Axe is an accidental comic writer -- journalism is his main gig -- whereas Sacco is a comic artist doing journalism. But, both have an abiding fascination with war and conflict. War is Boring isn't as expertly crafted as Palestine or Safe Area Gorazde, but it’s a good read nonetheless. The similarities with Sacco’s oeuvre extend to Matt Bors artwork, at least at first glance. Upon closer inspection, Bors work is rather subdued in comparison to Sacco's. Bors favors clean lines and routine angles, excentuating the theme of the banality of war reporting, even of war itself.

If there’s a drawback to this book, it’s that Axe doesn’t seem to go deep enough into exploring his “war fix.” Indeed, Ted Rall’s introduction offers much more of an actual analysis of this condition. But Axe’s limited exploration of his war addiction is perhaps the point: there’s nothing much to it, it simply is the way things are for the author. The extremes of boredom in war and boredom in peace require no further explanation or elaboration. This is something that only a war correspondent would understand. 

Maybe the war fix is like jazz. I’ll probably never get it.

The Math

Objective score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for being an autobiographical comic about someone interesting

Penalties: -1 for looking a bit too much like a Joe Sacco comic

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, "An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

[Read about our non-inflated scoring system, where anything above a 5 is more good than bad, here]