Broken Frontier

In recent months, comics have been exceedingly war-minded, taking in everything from World War 2 to superhero registration. Coming up from Vertigo is a look at one of the more controversial wars in the Vietnam War. With a tilt towards to horrific, The Other Side looks to gives the comic book landscape a completely original take on the harsh reality of war. BF had a chance to sit down with the writer Jason Aaron and discuss the upcoming book.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Can you describe your book for us?

JASON AARON: It’s an epic war tale and psychological horror story set during the Vietnam War that looks at the conflict from both sides.  The two main characters are both infantrymen, but one’s an American Marine and the other a soldier in the North Vietnamese Army.  The book compares and contrasts their experiences, as they’re both forced to drag themselves through hell, merely for the chance to kill one another.

BF: When during the Vietnam War does the story take place?

JA: From September 1967 to April 1968.  In other words, when the shit was really hitting the fan, with the Tet Offensive and the siege of Khe Sanh.  Both events kind of sum up the war as a whole.  While neither one was a true military victory for the NVA, they were definite victories in the overall “war of attrition.”

BF: What was the decision to make Vietnam the setting?

JA: My late cousin, Gustav Hasford, has been a huge influence on me.  Gus was a Marine combat correspondent in 1968 and went on to write The Short-Timers, which was hailed in 1979 as the best work of fiction ever written about the Vietnam War.  In 1987, Stanley Kubrick turned The Short-Timers into Full Metal Jacket, and my cousin was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the screenplay.  Gus also wrote a sequel to The Short-Timers titled The Phantom Blooper, which details Private Joker’s experience as a POW.  Unfortunately, both of those books are currently out of print.  Several years ago, I put together a website devoted to Gus at www.gustavhasford.com.  And through that site, I’ve been lucky enough to meet several of his friends and fellow Vietnam vets.  Knowing those guys gave me the courage to tackle the Vietnam War in comics.

BF: With the abundance of World War II books throughout the history of comics, do you feel that Vietnam is an untapped resource in the realm of comics?  Why?

JA: I think Vietnam kind of killed the war comic genre, because it changed the way we think about war.  All of a sudden, things didn’t seem so black and white anymore.  As much as some people at the time may have wanted to portray the “Communist insurgents” in Vietnam as the next great evil, they were clearly not on par with the Nazis.  So there could never be a Vietnam War equivalent of a war comic hero like Sgt. Rock.  People still tried though.  Back in 1966, DC’s Captain Hunter “smashed through the blazing Viet Cong battlefield” in the pages of Our Fighting Forces.  In 1967, Lightning Comics gave us Tod Holton, Super Green Beret, who used his magic beret to make monkeys appear to throw coconuts at the Viet Cong (for real).  But those were both short-lived flops. 

The good Vietnam War comics have been few and far between.  My favorites include Warren’s Blazing Combat magazine in 1967, the Epic graphic novel Hearts and Minds by Doug Murray and Russ Heath and Don Lomax’s amazing series Vietnam Journal.  Marvel’s The ‘Nam was of course a huge hit, but I think it just hit at exactly the right time, at the height of that whole Vietnam War zeitgeist in the late 80s, after Platoon made Vietnam a bankable commodity.  That’s all long gone though.  I think the Vietnam War is most definitely an untapped resource for stories, but I seriously doubt we’ll ever see it fully explored.

BF: Having a war title for Vertigo seems a bit out of place. Was it difficult getting this book green-lighted?

JA: Yes, it was.  Nobody wanted to do a war book, not just Vertigo.  The traditional wisdom is that war books don’t sell.  But The Other Side isn’t your typical war story.  I think the key to getting the book green-lighted was just finding the right editor, and I definitely did in Will Dennis.  He was the editor on the Garth Ennis' War Stories books, as well as 100 Bullets, Y-The Last Man and DMZ.  And he’s made working with Vertigo a terrific experience.

BF: The story takes place from two different perspectives - an American soldier and a Vietnamese soldier - how difficult was it to write the two different voices?

JA: It took a lot of research, but I think it came pretty natural.  Both characters are experiencing and feeling a lot of the same things, even though their motives are drastically different.  That’s what was most exciting for me, figuring out how much alike these two guys were, despite the fact that they’re from opposite ends of the earth.  They’re both young men of simple pleasures, both raised on family farms and schooled in religion from an early age.  They’re both descended from long lines of soldiers.  And they’re both lied to and taken advantage of by their governments.

BF: The story is meant to stay ambiguous throughout, not really leaning in favor of either soldier. How difficult was it to keep the book in the middle?

JA: I don’t know that I really did that.  Sure, I felt equal sympathy for both characters, but not for both their causes.  If the United States hadn’t stopped free elections from being held in South Vietnam in 1956, as required by the Geneva Accords, then there most likely would’ve never been a war.  That’s a simple fact.  The whole domino theory, about how Vietnam’s fall to Communism would endanger the free world, was a ridiculous lie.  That said, The Other Side is not a book about Vietnam War policy makers.  It’s about the grunts on the ground, the common soldiers.  And you have to separate their story from that of the decision makers in Hanoi and the Pentagon.  “It’s not our war,” one soldier points out in The Other Side #3, “We’re just the ones who have to fight it.”

BF: How did the series artist Cameron Stewart get involved with this project?  What's your take on his work?

JA: Cameron came on board once the book got green-lighted at Vertigo.  I was already a huge fan of his work, but honestly, I think he’s doing the best work of his career on The Other Side.  He spent a couple of weeks in Vietnam last year, and I’m sure that went a long way toward helping him capture the details of the landscape and the look of the people.  I just couldn’t ask for a more enthusiastic collaborator.  Cameron’s really been pushing himself, wanting to give this book his all, and I think it shows on every page.  We’re also getting some amazing colors courtesy of Dave McCaig. 

BF: Are more war stories in your future?

JA: Not as of yet, but you never know.

BF: With the state of current affairs, do you fear any backlash by having your comics set during war time?

JA: I don’t think so.  This book wasn’t written as a response to the war in Iraq.  If The Other Side seems more relevant because of the situation in the Middle East, I think that’s only because the horrors of war are universal, no matter the date or location of the battlefield.

BF: You won the Marvel Talent Search, then saw your fist work published in 2002. How have you evolved as a writer in the past four years?

JA: Gotten a lot better, hopefully.  The experience at Marvel was a lot of fun, and it gave me the confidence to keep plugging away, but this is really where I wanted to be all along.  I’ve been a Vertigo fan since the get-go, and it’s an amazing thrill to now be a Vertigo writer.

BF: A war has such an emotional overtone, what devices did you use to capture this raw emotion?

JA: We used horror.  A lot of surreal and fantastic elements.  Cameron and I both agreed from the beginning that this was as much a psychological horror story as it was a war book.  And I think the two elements work together nicely.

BF: What were some of the biggest sources of research while you worked on this title?

JA: Mostly books, non-fiction and novels.  Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War are two of my favorites.  And my cousin’s books, of course.  Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is probably the best book written about the Vietnamese perspective.  In terms of movies, the documentary Hearts and Minds is great.  And the French-made documentary In the Year of the Pig has some amazing footage. 

I’ve also been reading a lot of Vietnam War comics, most of them bad, like Superman #216 (Clark Kent parachutes into Vietnam) and Sgt. Fury’s King Size Special #3 (the Howling Commandoes laugh while detonating a hydrogen bomb in a Vietnamese city).  But there were also cool gems like the manga Apocalypse Meow, which portrays the combatants as anthropomorphic characters.  The Other Side is also influenced by a weird selection of stuff like William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the Sex Pistols song “Belsen Was a Gas,” Beowulf, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

BF: Finally, is there any other upcoming work that you'd like to mention?

JA: Scalped is a new ongoing series I’m doing for Vertigo.  It’s a Native American crime drama that starts in January, and it’s being drawn by the amazing European artist R.M. Guéra.  His work is not to be missed, trust me. 

Check out The Other Side when it ambushes the shelves this October 4th.