WGTB Reviews Army of God: Joseph Kony's War in Central Africa

You may remember the #Kony2012 campaign that exploded onto social media in March 2012. Launched by an organization called Invisible Children, it centred around an online video by Jason Russell and told the story of Joseph Kony, a ruthless and quasi-religious warlord who has been a marauding through Africa for almost two decades. Since the #Kony2012 campaign galvanized political will around the world, Kony's forces have been reduced to a rump of a couple hundred in central Africa. But one must never discount or forget the massive damage he and his followers wrought on that continent, and Army of God: Joseph Kony's War in Central Africa by David Axe and Tim Hamilton is an excellent graphic-story introduction to the evil Kony perpetrated and the multitude of damage he has caused in the lives of thousands of Africans.

Army of God: Joseph Kony's War in Central Africa, David Axe (script) & Tim Hamilton (art),  PublicAffairs, 2013, pp. 111, $14.99

Born sometime in 1961 to a Roman Catholic father and Anglican mother, Joseph Kony is the founder of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group that when left on the losing side of the 1986 Ugandan civil war, became a murderous group of religiously motivated terrorists. When forming his group, Kony drew upon his own personal history, infusing the LRA with a bizarre pastiche of Christianity, and both recruited and enslaved young Ugandans and other Africans as he did. When encountered with resistance, the LRA would use a favourite tactic -- rape -- to keep Africans in-line and for much of the past twenty years moved from Uganda to Sudan to Congo, eventually settling in the Central African Republic where they have evaded capture (albeit in much reduced numbers) since the late 2000s. 

Army of God: Joseph Kony's War in Central Africa's art dipicts a stark and horror-filled life for many Africans. 

Army of God itself is divided into eight chapters (ten if you include the prologue and postscript), each being four to six pages long and dealing with a different aspect of the tragic story of Kony and his victims. Starting with mid 19th century colonialism and ending with recent political developments, each chapter is a manageable and pictorially described precis of the LRA's crimes in Africa, doing so by focusing on particular protagonists (or in the case of the chapter on Kony, the antagonist). The chapters are also comprehensive enough for sophisticated readers to get an understanding of a complicated subject, while at the same time would be a solid introduction for a teenaged reader wanting to start a project on the topic. This would not be a good book for children.

Sexually based crimes, so often a tactic used by the LRA, is depicted as the horror it is in Army of God: Joseph Kony's War in Central Africa

Ably written, the script is crisp and concise and the tragedy of Kony's victims is brought to life in a combination of first person narration and character word bubbles. The art is also very good and its black and white yet life-like quality shows the horror of this chapter in African history well by both capturing the humanity of the subject, while not forcing the reader to look away in disgust. That this could happen to our fellow human beings is an absolute monstrosity and the co-creators of this book have done us a service in bringing this story to graphic print. 

The political implications of Kony and his terror are also discussed with characters such as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton making an appearance.

So if you need a break from mainstream comics; want to explain to someone that comics are so much more than Superman or Captain America; or are just looking to learn about what is happening in central Africa and the events around #Kony2012, I highly recommend you read this graphic book. It is a credit to our medium and something that will help western readers understand a terrible tragedy that has and will continue to occur in central Africa until Joseph Kony is brought to justice. 4.5/5 STARS

WGTB Reviews Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

Hello, friends. First off, my sincere apologies for not writing in the last little while -- it has been a very busy winter for me. But while taking a brief sabbatical from WGTB, I did manage to read a book that was released in the latter half of 2012 called Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by journalist and former editor of Entertainment Weekly, Sean Howe.  

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Sean Howe, Harper, 2012, 485 pp, $26.99

Beginning with Timely Comics, the first incarnation of the company, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story takes its reader on the journey of Marvel from its conception to its current incarnation as one of the jewels in the crown of the Disney empire. The book itself is divided into five parts, each with their own manageable chapters. These parts, logically divided, cover the company’s origins; its renaissance during the 60s rebirth of the superhero genre; the mostly dreary and sometimes incomprehensible 70s; the sometimes acrimonious but always interesting period of Jim Shooter as Editor-in-Chief; the boom and bust period of the 90s and finally, the modern period of corporate restructuring and Marvel’s apotheosis in the cinematic world.   

The book itself is compulsively readable and does not seem the nearly five hundred pages it is. It is meticulously well researched and especially good at detailing the complex and often vitriolic drama that has dominated much of Marvel’s history. Of course, most of us know of the intellectual property disputes that still dominate Jack Kirby’s estate, but Untold also does a great job at explaining the many similar conflicts that occurred in the 70s and 80s that are much less well known. Further to that, it takes careful attention to document the fascinating history of the Editor-in-chief tenure of Jim Shooter. I knew much less about this but was absolutely enthralled while reading about it. 

But for me, by far the most interesting section of the book was Howe’s examination into the boom and bust period of the 90s when, after selling millions of comic books, Marvel nearly collapsed upon itself in a fury of corporate overreaching and greed. Readers of this blog will note that this has long been of particular interest to this blogger, but even with that background, I was impressed by Howe's research and the considerable depth of his explanations. Naturally, with Marvel's top books now selling a fraction of what they did in the early 90s, there’s an instinct to think that a comic book bubble will never happen again and therefore a warning is not necessary. But exposés of any boom and bust are always important and always serve as a warning to any industry or business -- especially those were demand is rooted in the ebb and flow of what is popular. 

In a couple places the book it could use more dates or year descriptions to assist the reader who is not as well versed in 70s or 80s comic book lore. Likewise, with so many names, it was helpful to have a tablet computer close just to periodically check when another unknown artist, writer or inker’s name surfaces. But these small matters aside, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is a great work of comics journalism and fascinating survey of an area of pop culture and creative genius that has left an indelible print on the modern world. It is not to be missed. 4.5/5 STARS.