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Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1: Haunted House (2009)

by Joshua Dysart(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1401223117 (ISBN13: 9781401223113)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Vertigo

series

Unknown Soldier

review 1: This was actually really good. I say that with some surprise because, although it came highly recommended, almost nothing set in Africa is anything other than horrendously reductive, patronising or stereotyped. This is the first comic I've seen give a sense of time and place, and not actually just use the term 'Africa' as though it was one amorphous blob of suffering (see American Virgin for some of the most ghastly examples of that). This story is set in the Acholiland region of Uganda during the 2002 upsurge in violence by the Lord's Resistance Army. The book gives good space to showing, not just the beautiful landscape, but the internal ethnic divisions, the complex political situation and a country where the weight of history, generations upon generations of injustice,... more weighs heavy. This is a place in which the soldiers are children and the godly commit atrocities and the enemy is sometimes the protectorate.So what is one to do? That seems to be the question being asked by the main character of himself. A Ugandan ex-pat who returns from refuge in America as a doctor to help his people. He begins as a pacifist, maintaining the belief that to meet violence with violence only perpetuates violence, to no end. However, the things he sees forces him to confront the limits of those beliefs, although I would say without completely extinguishing their logic, for it does indeed only create yet more violence.One of the reasons I was reticent about this book at first was that the blurb on that back was pretty abysmal. It billed the story inside as Bourne Identity-esque and full of intrigue. I thought, Oh God, not a Bourne-meets-Rambo-in-Africa story. God, that'd be awful. And although the story does have hints towards the CIA and possible nefarious sleeper training, from what I took from this story is simply the conflict of a righteous man in unrighteous times. It is the story of what we are to do if we wish to end horror.I'm not going to lie to you, this is hella violent. But as explicit as the violence is, I didn't get the feeling of it being gratuitous. The fact that the LRA is made up of ranks of unwilling child soldiers means any 'valiant' battle against them just looks like the massacre of so many children, as much victims of the war as the people they harm. The explicitness of the violence also robs much of the 'hero' status from the main character. People are shown with their lips and ears cut off, with their feet chopped off, with all the horror and none of the slick 'red badge of courage' nonsense.I have high hopes for this series. Let's hope they don't fuck it up.
review 2: This had to be, easily, one of the most visceral, bleak, depressing tales I've read in a good long while, and I've only just started. But when the plot revolves around the (seemingly) never ending Uganda war, particularly the child soldiers, it's not really trying to be anything else.It also features mentions of good 'ol Joseph Kony before he was "famous", in that our intrepid hero plans to kill him. Making all that 2012 kerfuffle quite pointless, really. No doubt the organisers feel all silly now. less

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