Broken Frontier

During the weekend of April 19, 2003, four lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo. The cats were among the few remaining animals at the zoo not stolen by looters during the early days of the latest Iraq war. Their holding pen was seriously damaged by an errant US missile attack so the lions, hungry from not being fed for days, decided to wander the streets of Baghdad to search for food.

They roamed the streets for several days until they came face to face with a group of US troops on April 21st. Two of the animals charged the soldiers, who opened fire. As a result, the four escapees were shot dead.

When first hearing of the story, many of you probably thought of it merely as a tragic side effect of the War in Iraq. Many more of you might not have heard of the story at all, it being lost in the barrage of news coming from the region. But writer Brian K. Vaughan heard it and was inspired to write the hardcover graphic novel Pride of Baghdad , which should arrive in stores tomorrow.

Pride of Baghdad is written from the perspective of the lions themselves. Approaching the story from this viewpoint is an interesting concept with the possibility of providing a tale with many interesting facets. The book is advertised as a study of freedom: what is the true cost of it, what cost is too high, and is it better to die free than to live in captivity?

Many of these ideas could also be applied to the Iraq War itself, but using the lions as the main characters adds another dimension to it. Who better to look at the inhumanity of man against man than an animal? Who better to question the vicious nature of war than a savage beast?

And who better to handle these concepts than Brian K. Vaughan?  He is skilled at taking tried and true concepts and giving them a little tweak to make them original and fresh. Tales of viruses killing a majority of the world’s population has been done before (most notably in Stephen King’s novel The Stand), but Vaughan made it so all the men in the world died except one and created Y: The Last Man .

Youthful rebellion is another, even more popular theme. Vaughan turned it around so the youths were rebelling against their evil parents and called it Runaways. Stories of political intrigue are a staple of multiplexes and the television networks. Make the story about a former super-hero who has become mayor, like Vaughan did, and you have Ex Machina .

And certainly using anthropomorphized animals as a way to comment on real life events is nothing new. Art Spiegelman did so in his excellent Maus: A Survivor’s Tale series. But Vaughan attacks it from a different angle. Instead of applying animal characteristics to human beings, he applies human characteristics to animals, yet still making them quite different from human beings.

Vaughan has never shied away from controversy. His Mitchell Hundred character in Ex Machina has become mayor partly on residual goodwill in saving one of the Twin Towers on 9/11. When other media presentations of that day are greeted with articles asking “is it too soon?”,  it takes a certain amount of courage to make a re-interpretation of that day such a major plot point.

And Pride of Baghdad should be no different. Vaughan has stated in interviews that he will be using the graphic novel to talk about “his conflicted feelings about the Iraq War.” The War in Iraq is an extremely divisive topic, both in America and abroad. Judging by his take on politics in Ex Machina , Vaughan’s approach to the war will probably be complex and look at the subject from all angles, but still liable to irritate someone who has conflicting views.

At $19.99, the hardcover might not have made it onto many pull lists. But if you have an extra twenty bucks in your pocket tomorrow, you might want to pick up this thought-provoking graphic novel.

Also out this week:

• Civil War Files: There’s a saying in baseball that you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Marvel is taking this maxim to heart with Civil War Files . The issue, written as if it was taken directly from the database of the President’s Super Hero Task Force, lists all the players in Marvel’s Civil War event.

It should be a unique way to give readers a guide to who’s who in the crossover, especially since the Civil War was promoted as a way to bring new readers into the comics fold. Even as a long-time Marvel reader, I was a little shaky on who exactly all the characters were. This comic should make the crossover more accessible to the uninitiated.

• Green Lantern #13: This issue serves two purposes: to wrap up the “Revenge of the Green Lanterns” storyline and to remind fans that yes, DC is still currently publishing a Green Lantern comic book.

GL #13 was originally solicited in the April edition of Diamond’s Previews catalogue and had a release date of June 28th, which means the issue is two and a half months late hitting the stands. I’ve grown to accept late books as a fact of life. Still, nothing takes a reader out of a serialized story than having to wait a long time between issues.

• Captain America #21: The current story arc, “21st Century Blitz”, concludes here. The storyline culminates by bring Cap face- to-face with the Winter Soldier (who was once Cap’s sidekick, Bucky) for the first time since the Winter Soldier arc of the series.

Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting have done an excellent job merging all the different aspects of the different Captain America volumes together and making it work. From fantastic ideas such as the Cosmic Cube, the espionage aspect of Cap working with S.H.I.E.L.D. and fighting A.I.M. to pure superhero fun of Cap teaming with the Invaders, Brubaker has melded these various piece together to make a story so realistic that it seems like it is all taking place right outside our windows.

• 52 #19: is being released tomorrow and features the recently deceased Booster Gold on the cover. The only information DC gives us about the issue is one sentence: “What if I told you I could—using Booster’s DNA—bioengineer a superhero identity for you?”

Unless there was a retcon that I missed somewhere along the line, using Booster’s DNA to create a superhero identity would be as useless as using Paris Hilton’s DNA to turn someone into a veritable actress or pop star. After all, didn’t Booster’s “powers” come from artifacts from the future (i.e. a Legion flight ring, Brainiac 5’s Force Field Generator, etc.)? I any case, it will be interesting to see how this is explained in the issue.

• Wolverine: Origins #6: This issue starts the second arc on the series, one called “Savior,” as Logan continues his quest to straighten out fact from fiction in his newly recalled memory.

Many fans and critics have taken issue with the glacial pace the title is taking with revealing Wolvie’s secrets. They want the mystery solved and solved now. And while I’ll agree that the story telling is very much decompressed, I prefer to have Logan’s history revealed more slowly. His mysterious past is what made the character unique. The longer it takes to reveal it, the better.

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William Gatevackes is a professional writer living in Mamaroneck, NY with his wife Jennifer and writes periodic comic reviews for PopMatters. He also writes title descriptions for Human Computing’s Comicbase collection management software.