After reading the third and final issue of The Guild comic (written by Felicia Day and art by Jim Rugg) I have to say that the comic adaptation of this cult web series is impressive. I feared that the comic would try to tell the same story– which can very well lead to disaster in trying to recreate an already well-loved story.

Instead, Felicia takes it from the top and explores Codex’s first interest in World of Warcraft. Here, she appeals to many of the motives that gamers have for playing. Like, when you find out you’re boyfriend is a huge asshole, is stealing your music, and is possibly gay. Yeah… I think that would do it. It’s a new complimentary twist on the television series, because you’re seeing their avatars. Sure, she takes some liberties regarding the boundaries of the game (like how she manages to be the same level as her “will-be” guild mates) but it still works, and works well.

Given the comic platform, Day was able to explore the landscape of her virtual game much more successfully than in television. Although Day may have been nervous to expand into this medium, she did it by breaking through the television box and playing to the strengths. Being able to separate the avatar from the person behind the screen, gave rise to new plot lines and a more of a virtual-based comic, which is an obvious obstacle when creating the television show.

But there can be no doubt that although these characters live in World of Warcraft, there is an authentic story being told about the people who play. This relation is what keeps you engaged.

When Blizzard decided to release their own comic, I found it impossible to get into it. Although I love playing my level 80 Discipline Priest (nerd-dip?), I’m not as interested in their story lines as I am with the people behind the avatars. I mean, even in-game those repeat story lines where you wait 5 minutes to attack, gets old.

The Guild bridges this gap, both in comic and television form… oh and music video form. If you haven’t checked out the release of Felicia Day’s new music video (announced at Comicon) starring the cast of the Guild, we’ve embedded it right here for you.

If you’re a World of Warcraft fan, then this comic blasts Leeroy Jenkins and ROFLMAO out of the water. I am sure we will be seeing much more from Felicia Day in the future.

At the Unseen Eye,  we have so far reviewed fiction. Be it comics or novels, all of the reviews and critiques have been for fictional stories.

In Harms Way is not one of those stories. It is based on the real life sinking of the U.SS Indianapolis in July 29, 1945. This was 5 days after the Indianapolis had dropped off the uranium of the bomb that would be detonated on Hiroshima a mere three weeks later.

That’s just the beginning of what became a horrific tragedy. 1100 soldiers served on the Indianapolis. Only 300 soldiers would survive the sinking of the ship, and the trials they endured while they were lost at sea for 5 days.

In Harms Way tells the story of the trials they endured, as well as the descents of madness that various members of the crew fell under while being besieged by tiger sharks and starvation in the Pacific Ocean.

The book also brings to plight the tragedy of the ships captain, Charles Mcvway. Mcvay would be haunted by these events for the rest of his life. For over 50 years, he would be the only US Naval captain that was court martialed for military actions in the event of a war patrol.

Mcway would later commit suicide in 1968. For years he would receive threatening letters from family survivors about his actions during the horrific night of the Indianapolis explosion.

Here is where the true events of In Harms Way comes to light.  It redeems Captain Mcvay, and tells the story of a man who refused to give in to starvation or madness.

Mcvay held the survivors together, and also didn’t have the right intelligence for his ships patrols into the Phillipines. If he had been made  aware of the right intelligence, he would have known that Japanese submarines were known to be patrolling his ships routes near the Phillipines and the ships port of call.

Without the right intelligence, the USS Indianapolis was doomed to failure.

Doug Stanton humanizes a national tragedy and also brings to light the heroics that were made during severe hardship. Its truly inspiring to note how the crew members survived, and lived to tell there story.

Shortly after publication of this book in 2002, the Navy rescinded their condemnation of Mcvay and restored his reputation in Naval history. It took a combined 50 years of protest from ALL the survivors, the author of the book, and a concerned high school student.

We give this book our highest recommendation.

In our third and final installment of the Unknown Soldier interview series, Josh Dysart talks  about brainwashing, the character of Paul, and the kind of confusion we can expect at the end of this series. Prepare to be confused– in an authentic, self-reflecting,  satisfactory kind of way.

Unseen Eye: What obstacles presented themselves while writing this graphic novel?

Josh: I think that we are still constantly dealing with the limits of representation, which I touch on in Issue 20.  I think what had the biggest impact on the book, but also probably increased my doubt and fears to go back to the other question– is that we intellectualize that we are culturally different from other people.

I traveled a lot before writing this book. While my other friends were in college, I was spending time in the Middle East, Central Asia, South America and Europe. I know what cultural differences are. But it wasn’t until I went to Africa with the intention of collecting data that I really began to emotionally experience  how different we are culturally between Africa and the Western mind. Literally, it comes down to  the way we cognitively perceive the world. Also,  I understood that there was  no way I could write an intrinsically African book. And by the way, that’s where the creative decision to make Moses educated in the states came from was this realization. I knew I was absolutely incapable of writing something intrinsically African.

My protagonist was going to have to be American. There was just no way I could breach my western mind. And that was also a celebratory moment for me as a world traveler; to finally have that really sync in. But it also had tremendous impact on the book  and my approach to it.

UE: You meditate on the theme of brainwashing in many different ways: the children are made to kill by the adults, the soldier made to kill by some unidentified government body. What is your  thematic intention between these types of brainwashing? Or are they intrinsically the same?

Josh: Well first of all, let me just state that you guys are the first people to ever mention that parallel in an interview.  I really really appreciate that because it’s something my editor and I talk about a lot. So that’s awesome. Secondly, to answer the question- do I see any differences in it? The brainwashing that goes on with Moses is essentially a fictional kind of brainwashing. It’s a metaphor for how we live in our culturally isolated society of North America. And it’s an extreme metaphor. I do not believe that currently the CIA has people running around…

On the hand other hand, and you can see where I’m going with this, it’s a very real brainwashing that’s occuring in East Africa and also in West Africa and on the Eastern coast. The area we’re discussing uses religion. However, I do think it is relevant. The reason why my editor and I discuss it so much is that I do think we are all, to one degree or another, brainwashed by culture, media and family. I think that the book is indirectly about that.

In a lot of ways, its about the things that make us culturally different and the things that make us universally human. Hopefully its about the latter more than the former. My ultimate attempt is to discuss what’s universally human.

But part of that, is being brainwashed; cognitively appropriated into culture one way or another. Either by a crazy maniacal ego-driven bastard like Joseph Kony or by a crazy maniacal ego-driven culture like North American culture.  There are purposeful parallels in the narrative about that.

UE: So your plot line is trying to resolve the question: can this abuse can be overcome? The ritual Paul experiences meditates on this… although we know Moses didn’t stay on the path but for Paul, he may have.

Josh: Exactly. Like every other question we raise in this book, the answer is not cut and dry. The answer is, there are people who cannot and there are people who can. And that is the beauty and the diversity of humanity and I really hoped that the book is perceived by people as a humanist book, despite all of it’s violence.

I’m saying right here and now– officially, because you’ll never see it in the book; Paul does stay on the straight and narrow path. It does work for him. But it’s interesting; why does this ritual that is essentially a superstition work for Paul? Because he is culturally appropriated into the Acholi mind-set. And he’s going to be a really interesting Acholi when he grows up. He’ll probably have less faith in religion and culture. Yet he escapes from the darkest aspects. It’s an amazing moment for him.

And to do it with this weird antagonistic paternal character (Moses) who is the only person he’s felt safe around. Despite that he’s wounded him and berated him and  pushed him away again, and again. But he didn’t try to poison, corrupt or change him. For Moses it doesn’t really mean a lot. He wants it to work, wants it to be different, but he’s not culturally Acholi and he cannot invest in it the way Paul does.

It’s about people breaking out of their programming and being something greater and finding the universal behind this cultural programming.  When the book’s over, it’s going to very much complicate your view of who Moses was and is; but also complicate your view of  the Unknown Soldier and your view of his programming. Ultimately, it’s going to make the discussion we’re having right now a lot more complicated.

UE: Would you view this at all as an existential sequel to the mid-90s series written by Garth Ennis?

Josh: Well we’re definitely in continuity. There are some creative decisions that Garth made that we’re riffing on, but  that’s about as far as I would go. I don’t want to say too much because we’re working on the last thing now, and going to essentially reveal  the DNA of our series. But we’re call and responding to that Ennis series. An existential sequel gives us a lot of heft, so I don’t know if I’d go that far.

UE: Curiosity question: the toy guns. Why? I mean, it makes psychological sense that these kids are bringing to surface their issues, but… something felt ‘off’. Was it just us?

Josh: You’re not the first person to bring this up, actually. There was a wave of comments on the Standard Attrition board when that issue came out. People saw it as straining believability, but the truth of the matter is, that’s one of the few things I actually witnessed. It’s one of the most real things in the book.

And in general, Paul’s experience at the school for war affected children…those experience are in book because I saw this when I spent several days visiting the school outside of Gulu town. That is legitimately a form of therapy that they use with these kids.

I was extremely impressed with the case workers who work with these kids to re-socialize them. The schools for war affected youth in that region are complicated places. To some kids they are a prison, to others they are a way to a better life. Like everything else in this book, it’s about how complicated we are as people. Some of these kids embrace the path of violence, some are terrified by it and some are absolutely repulsed by the actions they’ve taken in their lives.

I cannot think of a more stressful psychological position for someone to be in when working with these kids. Having said that, it has become the dominant theory in psychology to face fears.  You face it, you don’t run from it or keep it submerged. You drag it up to the surface. And it does fuck with these kids. But that’s the point. Hopefully over time they are either past their fears or at least capable of overcoming them.

Also, they take the guns away after the exercise– let me stress that. From what I observed, anyway. It also lets the psychologists observe them; you get a different read from each of these kids which helps them understand where they’re at in therapy. It also helps them see what these kids went through; the bush is a nebulous place. When they come out it’s really hard to get at the truth of what’s going on out there.

Paul doesn’t open up to anyone until he tells Moses his story. And that’s not unusual, for them to be mute or silent and not address their issues. And through action, you see what they really were involved in.

Back at the states at a comic convention, I had this amazing conversation when someone came up to me and said he had been working with war affected youth on the West African coast. There’s a whole different approach that these psychologists would take as opposed to psychologists in the west. Which again, took me back to my realization that we are so cognitively different; culture creates cognitive schisms and cultural specifics that you have to deal with.

On a side note, this book has allowed me to have the most amazing conversations with people. That’s definitely a gift.

And that concludes our interview series with Josh Dysart. We expect big things from the end of this graphic novel  and are  confident in saying that Dysart will continue to deliver.

And although Dysart didn’t reveal his plan for the ending (as he shouldn’t), we do have a hunch in where this may be heading. If you do too, leave a comment!

"...the reality is we couldn't have done this the way we have, in any other medium." - Dysart

Here is part two of our interview with Josh Dysart on the Unknown Soldier, in which he talks about his future with Vertigo and a few noted insecurities about his highly acclaimed graphic novel.

the Unseen Eye: What I definitely want to say is that your comic should have won over Invincible Iron Man.

Josh: You know, I never read Invincible Iron Man; it could be an absolute work of genius.

UE: I thought it was good… but it was standard. I thought your comic was more innovative in it’s approach, and as you pointed out, very different in regards to what comics can do and what comics can be.

Josh: I will say this in defense of comics: I’ve received a lot of emails since the cancellation about ‘what’s wrong with comic book readers?’ that they can’t support this book or ‘what’s wrong with the market?’ … but the reality is, we couldn’t have done this the way we have in any other medium. A film wouldn’t support this, Hollywood certainly or even the low budget films aren’t going to be successful they tell a 90 minute story about a guy running around in bandages and killing children. And their certainly not going to get a T.V show out of it. You could possibly pull off a novel but nobody would read it because… nobody reads anymore. I really feel like comics is the only place this could have existed. And the fact that we pulled this off for two years, I think it’s a victory.

UE: In many  interviews prior to this, you are very concerned with ‘not messing this up’, which we saw in  your blog posts as well. And recently you wrote that because of the education level of the audience this appeals to, you were hoping they wouldn’t “call your bullshit”. What causes this hesitance?

Josh: Well, I’ll tell you this: it’s because I operate completely and solely from a place of fear and doubt in everything in my life. *laughs* No, I think that we were dealing with a very big subject and there was a lot for me to learn and a lot for me to comment on. I’ve been nervous to this day about it…  and you obviously picked up this on due to my incessant references to it. I think there are a lot of people in this world who are specialists on this region and the Acholi people. There was a big potential for me to get a lot wrong.

“When we set out on this book, that’s what I told my editor right off the bat. I said, ‘there’s a huge, huge chance that we’re going to really, really fuck this up.“

And I worked really hard not to do that. But if I can just be real personal and honest, it speaks to self doubt.

I’m a self educated person. I’m a high school drop-out, and suddenly I’m going and talking to colleges about this stuff. There’s insecurity there.   And so that manifests itself, even more so when I take on a really ambitious project where I’ve got to sit around and intellectualize pulp all day like this kind of book  demands.

UE: Do you see yourself ever doing a similar approach with Vertigo again? Or do you think you’ll be pursuing other interests?

Josh: Man, I don’t know what to do next. I just wrote an email to my editor, Pornsak… which is his actual name … I wrote an email yesterday about a pitch called ‘Stan’ which is supposed to be a Tartuffe-esque satire about an oil billionaire who is stuck in this dance around the Caspian Sea and has this religious experience, going on a Buddha-like journey. A man who is single-handedly responsible for 303 million dollars in fines and anti-trust laws and 104 oil spills in 2 years… and I thought it could be really funny. That would have definitely taken me back down this path of Unknown Solider. Although it would have been different because I would finally have taken the advice of Billy Wilder who said, “If you’ve got to tell the truth, you’ve got to make it funny or they’ll kill ya.”

But he wasn’t as responsive to that. So it’s going to be interesting to see what my next move with Vertigo is. One part of me really wants to do something fun and something I can write while I’m high.  But this is a real aspect of my character; there is a reason why Unknown Soldier is the book that…. well, I’ve been working for ten years and even though Unknown Solider is getting canceled, this is the book that really has broken me out and has unanimous acclaim. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a review of it that wasn’t impressed with the work and I think it’s because this is my real voice.

So it’s going to be interesting to see what comes next. From Vertigo, no matter what, it’s going to be something intelligent because Vertigo is the only place that lets me access that aspect of my character. Now we’ve just have to figure out a way to make that more commercially viable. But you’ll probably see a span of projects designed soley to pay my rent next. So don’t judge me.

UE: You made me think of T. Boone Pickins when you were talking about your character Stan.

Josh: Nice! Well, we’re both from Texas, T. Boone and I.

UE: But now California?

Josh: I escaped Texas.

And that’s it for Part 2 of our Josh Dysart Interview on the Unknown Soldier.

 Coming Soon! Part 3.

Have any comments about this interview or thoughts to share about the Unknown Soldier? Leave them below!

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Josh Dysart, writer of Unknown Soldier. Given a slight tendency to speak at length on both sides, here is the first part (which will be three altogether) of the highly anticipated interview with a man who has created probably one of the best, literary graphic novels of the decade. The complexities of this piece of fiction is seemingly infinite; but like any well made web, the only way to really understand the labor that went into it, is to begin untangling.

The Unseen Eye: With the unfortunate cancellation of the series, do you feel that the story will be complete in its ending? The initial flashbacks of Moses’s origin story implies a much longer story arch.

Josh: If I’m being completely honest I think you’re going to see a lot more density of the pulp elements than you did in previous archs; we’ve really worked hard in this series to submerge those elements and keep the series as grounded in reality as we can… considering that we’re discussing a CIA programmed super soldier.

And what you’re going to see in these last 5 issues is a lot more of that brought up to the surface. But I still think that we’re going to see a complete ending. It’s not the ending I would of ultimately liked to have done, but back in December I literally had a dream that we were canceled. And it wasn’t a prophetic dream because our numbers were bad it was just kind of my unconscious waking me up, literally. I called my Editor and decided, before we ever got the cancellation notice, that we would start working on the ending. And so we devised a way to begin planting these elements that would allow us to wrap up if we had to in a quick manner, but still give us open enough spaces that we could put other stories in there.

That allowed us to do what we’re hopefully going to be able to pull off in these next 5 issues. We even have a one-shot that takes up a lot of space, or real estate, as I like to call it. I think we’re going to be able to pull this off.

UE: Are you going to have any double sized issues or is it going to be the standard 30 pages?

Josh: No, we have 22 pages of story and art in each issue, nothing oversized. They really kind of swooped in on us with the cancellation so it’s going to be interesting. I’m actually writing issue 23 today, so I haven’t even really done it. It’s just talk right now. Who knows, really.

UE: About the balance of violence present in your comic, specifically in issue 20 we noted that he commits his own kind of suicide, in which he experiences the afterlife through the manifestation of a white rhino. He lets the Unknown Soldier take over, all the violence it implies. Do you think that violence is ever justified? Which we ask given the non-fictional content of your stories.

Josh: Institutionalized violence is tricky, especially within the context of East Africa with groups like the Lord’s Resistance Armies. And to be quite honest, I don’t really know the answer. I used to identify myself as a pacifist. I have since changed my views on that. I don’t have a problem with Navy seals snipers taking out a Somali pirates to save human lives. I don’t have a problem with killing high level Al’Quaida operatives. I had to redefine my notion of what passes as legitimate violence. And that is a philosophical discussion that I will probably have with myself for the rest of my life. I don’t engage in violence, and I’m not in a position where anything I can do that’s violent is going to make the world a better place.

The book is an attempt on my part to deal with that exact question with out presenting an answer because I don’t presuppose to know.

I think I would like to see Joseph Kony taken out of the equation. Now whether it’s done through death or capture is irrelevant to me. I want to see what’s going to bring the most social healing to the East African areas that are inflicted. We have 22 years of failed attempts to kill Kony and what that has done has caused more aggression and more violence. There really is a difference between haphazard violence and directed, meditated, careful violence. Surgical violence versus the kind of thing that Moses represents in the book which his non-surgical violence. He’s a loose cannon. He hasn’t made the situation any better.

UE: Like during the first trade, his interference with the Catholic Nun and the girls at St. Mary’s School.

Josh: It’s interesting… we try to find the balance between him doing good and him doing ill-will. That first story arch is very loosely based on the Aboke Girls incident, where several women were stolen from an all-girls school in Alcholi Land. Comparatively none of those girls escaped that situation. Many died, many were forced into LRA for slavery, some may have escaped but a lot didn’t.

In our rewriting of this moment, Moses does save lives, he did bring people back. Children also died in doing that; children that were socialized into an unconditional life of violence, which by no means was there personal choice. Besides, what kind of a personal choice can a 12 year old make anyway?

It gets very complicated… what is the right way to do this? And that’s a perennial question that units who face child soldiers have to deal with all the time. Do we bomb them out of existence and just write off these children…who in no way choice to be in this life, or do we find some other way to combat them? It’s a very very difficult question. Probably one that a comic book cannot bear out, I now know in retrospect.

UE: You can only show an iteration of that situation and leave it to the reader to make their own judgment.

Josh: It’s kind of my job as the persona making the dominant creative decisions to find ways that both show this as a successful method of attack, for lack of a better term, or an unsuccessful method- and then weigh that. Generally, that’s how we should approach these very complex issues, by just being open and honest with ourselves and our dialogue. As honest as a pulp action comic can be.

UE: Jack is an open and honest speaker, for example. Do you think he balances out Moses’s character by serving as a voice of reason? And what provokes the character transition we see when Jack helps Moses during the Memorial Dinner scene?

Josh: It’s true that Jack does step up and behaves in what appears to be an ethical manner to a certain degree. But what Jack ultimately wants to see by the end of that trade, is the people who are making his life hell– dead. He does manage to achieve that through his friendship with Moses; something he couldn’t have achieved on his own. Jack has ability to do whatever is in his best interest. Having said that, I believe (because I’m writing it right now) that Jack needs a friend. He’s all alone, and so is Moses. They are the kind of people who don’t make friends; a tribe of two, really. Jack has spent his whole life on the run pissing off everybody who put any faith into him, including the institution that hired him and brought him out to Africa in the first place. While Moses has only the memory of Sera. Moses has made a decision to surrender to the Unknown Soldier’s personality: the killing in the IDP camp that Moses learns he was involved in, and what we just saw in Issue 20 with Moses being subsumed. I think all of that would have happened a lot sooner if he didn’t have the moment with Jack; those few days where he had a friend. And the friend was manipulative and self serving.

UE: And he knew that.

Josh: Exactly, and you know what? All friends are manipulative… haha.. That’s not true I don’t actually believe that.. But anyway, Jack and Moses serve each other a great deal and I never thought about the possibility of them being opposite aspects of the same person, but I really love that you brought that up. That’s interesting to me, and maybe unconsciously that’s something that made it into the works. It’s a nice observation.

UE: So Sera’s initial impression of Jack in the first trade, where she calls him out and instantly doesn’t trust him, is accurate? It’s interesting that she picks up on this immediately.

Josh: Sera is the best human being in this book. And Maluku. Two people who have a sound humanist philosophy and stick do it and don’t waiver. Sera can just see Jack’s aura: and it’s this dirty gray, drug induced, hooker stained aura that Jack walks around with. Sera is one of those amazing human beings that you come across in life and she sniffs him out, absolutely. He’s totally dogdy. Look at him.

UE: Just as she sniffs out her husband, turning it into a hunt. In that situation, she doesn’t react like a ‘typical’ person would be expected. Which for us, really demonstrated the strength of her character.

Josh: That’s a really interesting thing. My editor and I were having a discussion, a lot like you and I are having right now, about what to do with Sera. We really loved her… and the the three women in the world who are reading the comic book (laughter) that knew her very well.

I am a non-religious person, but I was really interested in the notion of Sera as a good Christian, but not a stereotypical Christian that we see represented in the media a lot. I was really into this character and we were worried that we had created this really strong, interesting, intelligent person who was a great counterbalance to the book. A book where everyone else has descended into these very dark places.

So what was she going to turn into? A doting wife? A loving suffering creature? I thought that would do her such a disservice. And that’s when we came up with our angle: No, she’s actually sick of this. This is bullshit. She knew a man once, and she loved a man once and now that man has turned into everything she could not possibly imagine that man would turn into. She’s pissed off and looking for him. And not because she’s looking for her love, although sometimes it feels that way to her, but because she wants certain questions answered. This is an impossibility that has been brought into her life and she’s not the kind of person to back down from impossibilities.

UE: Considering his actions were influenced by this super soldier engineering; do you think that Sera as a character would understand or take him back, should she know the full story?

Josh: Well, that’s what we’re going to find out.

What is it that you want to find out? Leave comments below!

About 2 years ago, Vertigo asked some of its creators to revisit the concept of the Unknown Soldier from DC Comics.

There were several pitches. Would it be a direct sequel to the Garth Ennis series from the mid 90s? Would it be set in World War 2?

Joshua took the concept of the Unknown Soldier, and turned it on its head; taking the Unknown soldier to a new setting– the war torn country of Uganda.

What set this apart from other pitches was that this setting is in a very real world, and is about a very real conflict.

How could one come to approach this intelligently?

Through an ongoing critique of a very central question to the series. Is violence ever justified? Can it be attempted in a real world setting? Or is pacifism the way to resolving conflicts?

Enter Dr. Moses Lwanga.

Moses was born in Uganda and raised in America. After graduating college and entering the field of medicine, Moses yearns to return to his homeland of Uganda and help his culture progress. His central statement is a mission of peace;  no conflict is justified, and peace is the only way to solve real world conflicts.

So how does it all go wrong? Moses begins to experience nightmares of extreme violence, and doesn’t know what to do about it. He quickly loses his mind, and leaves his wife Sera in the middle of a major conflict.

This is where the series truly begins. In a cry of rage, Moses scars his own face and applies a mask of bandages. And against all of his ‘natural’ tendencies,  begins carry-out covert missions  against some of the local warlords.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Some ‘inner demons’ are driving Moses to carry the missions of an Unknown Soldier. That is one of the central questions of the series. Where do these demons come from? Was Moses brainwashed? How does this tie into the other Unknown Soldier? Why Uganda? What’s his true mission?

What this series gets right is reporting on many real world horrific conditions. Child Soldiers. Famine. Poverty. All of these are approached head on and handled intelligently and with detailed care. Joshua Dysart manages to walk a fine line of fiction and real world reporting. The result is a novel that forces you to question your own insecurities, broaden your world view…. and simultaneously tells one of the best stories  currently on the stands.

Accompanying this work is the strong pencils of Alberto Ponticelli. Ponticelli’s gritty pencils give a very real world sheen to the horrific conditions in Uganda.

The urgency of the situation is shown, as well as the hardships that occur for the people of Uganda. Contrasting this are very striking visual images that symbolize some of the very real world horrors occurring there.

Saving children in rains of blood

Among moments of hardship, there is also the struggle for humanity. Sera is one the few saving graces for Moses, and his struggle to retain his core personality. Ponticelli illustrates this in a few tender moments.

With a striking blend of gritty art, and sharp writing, we give Unknown Soldier a 5/5. Check this out. You won’t regret it.  And stay tuned for our interview with the writer!

It’s official–the Unknown Soldier is being shut down at Issue 25. This comes as a huge blow to fans who have become entrenched in this graphic novel realism. The Unknown Soldier, written by Joshua Dysart is a ‘loosely inspired‘ departure from the original 1960′s WW2 classic. In short, Dysart’s contemporary version draws attention to current realities, and attempts to resolve one of the biggest conundrums ever faced: Should wars be fought in the name of peace? Perhaps even more importantly, can anyone ever really win?

*Spoiler Alert!*

This is a core issue for our main character, Dr. Lwanga Moses, who fled Africa as a boy to grow up in the United States and became a successful Harvard doctor. His wife Sera (also a doctor) are planning a trip back to their native home in an attempt to restore balance within Africa and within themselves. In the opening scene, Moses makes a declaration to an audience gathered in his honor which cements his intentions. He says, “If I could call out to every Ugandan tonight, no matter where they are… I would say come home. Rebuild This nation is you. This nation is me. I am Uganda.”

The doctors thrust themselves into a war zone and after an attack on some of the village’s children, Moses transforms from his pacifistic nature and takes the ‘eye for an eye’ route. It’s during a moment of weakness, when he is being held at gunpoint by a child, that the Unknown Soldier manifests. At first, he is merely a voice. But it gets stronger, and within a couple issues Moses is living on the fringes of society and battling for control of his actions.

As the Unknown Soldier draws to a close, the Unseen Eye would like to give credit where credit is due, and fully explore the shortly lived series with a full graphic novel review. This includes an upcoming interview with Josh Dysart.

To get started on the series, download Unknown Soldier Issue # 1.

Ever since Christopher Nolan took over the Batman film franchise and brought it back from the commercial precipice that Joel Schumacher’s “Batman and Robin” left it dangling from, there has been one clear rule that the franchise has established for itself: Robin doesn’t belong on film. From the very get-go, both Nolan and Batman actor Christian Bale have been adamant that the Dark Knight’s freewheeling circus boy sidekick doesn’t work on film and has no place in the current series of Batman films. For the most part, fans were inclined to agree and were happy to consign the Boy Wonder to the category of Schumacher-era mistakes that have been jettisoned from the Batman series. However, with the release of the recent film “Kick-Ass,” fans of the Batman mythos might want to reconsider their position on whether or not Robin belongs on film.

“Kick-Ass” introduced a character called Hit-Girl, the charmingly foul-mouthed 11-year-old sidekick of the character Big Daddy. Whereas in the comic the characters of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl were written more as The Punisher and The Punisher’s ninja-esque daughter, in the movie the characters are definitely a riff on Batman and Robin. Nicholas Cage’s portrayal of Big Daddy was obviously informed by the Adam West-era Batman, while Hit-Girl is very reminiscent of Carrie Kelly, the female Robin from the 1986 mini-series, “The Dark Knight Returns.”

On screen Hit-Girl was a revelation, easily stealing the show from all the other characters. Audiences loved seeing her use her size and youthful agility to her advantage in order to slice and dice her way through hordes of mafia thugs. Her scenes showed that having a sidekick could be useful rather than a handicap if portrayed the right way. Not only did Hit-Girl have more energy and maneuverability than Big Daddy due to her size, and could easily get into places that Big Daddy couldn’t, but there were times when thugs would have difficulty knowing where to shoot at because of her lower vantage point. It started to make sense why, if you were a superhero with a young ward that you were training in a war on crime, you might consider bringing them with you into the field of battle.

In previous film adaptations of Robin, it was assumed that if the character were in his late teens, or even mid-twenties, that it would make more sense to see him bounding across the screen in tights and hanging out with a grown man in a cave. In fact, it only made the character feel more out place, with the last portrayal of Robin on film having to be written as a cross between Nightwing and Jason Todd. Meanwhile, the favorable portrayal of Robin in the comics continues to be a young, prepubescent boy.

“Kick-Ass” has proven that not only do sidekicks work better as younger characters, but they have a place in gritty superhero flicks as long as they are handled with the same care and sophistication as the rest of the cast. The writers of the film even found a great reason for Big Daddy to justify training his daughter as a superhero sidekick by saying that he is a comic book fan himself, and uses superheroism as a kind of game to preserve his daughter’s innocence while he continues his quest for vengeance. I seem to remember a similar rationale being used for Batman in the animated film “Justice League: The New Frontier,” with Batman changing his aesthetic tone from a dark detective to a caped crusader once Robin was brought on board to make the crime-fighting world easier for the young boy to adapt to. Couldn’t a similar justification work just as well in the Christopher Nolan Batman series?

It may be a long time before we see Robin again on the silver screen. Most people attached to the current line of Batman films see him as a bit of a toxic asset to the Batman mythos, which is quite sad considering all the good stories that could be told with that character if they were done right. The makers of “Kick-Ass” went out of their way to demonstrate how they think a character like Robin could work on the silver screen, and the result was a unique and unforgettable character. Now it’s time for Warner Bros. to take the next step, and finally give the Boy Wonder the big screen adaptation that he deserves.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout

The movie “Kick-Ass” opened a few weeks ago, and after many joyful repeated viewings of the soon-to-be cult classic, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is perhaps the best Spider-Man movie that fans will ever get. Although the comic that it was based on, by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., was much more dark and seemed to have more similarities to Daredevil and Punisher, the film itself is without a doubt the most faithful representation of Spider-Man ever brought to film.

The movie features a wimpy, bespectacled protagonist who lives with a single surviving guardian in what appears to be the exact same neighborhood in Queens that Peter Parker grew up in. One day, while hanging out with his nerdy friends at the comic book store after school, he becomes inspired to follow in the foot steps of his favorite four-color adventurers. The kid dons a scuba suit and becomes an amateur superhero, getting his ass kicked a few times before learning the ropes from some other, more experienced costumed crime fighters.

In addition to the basic similarities between the characters, practically every scene from “Kick-Ass” has some kind of reference to Spider-Man somewhere in the frame. Some scenes, such as Kick-Ass attempting his first building jump, bring to mind specific moments from the Spider-Man films. One character even brings up the original Steve Ditko issues of Spider-Man, the issues that, for all intents and purposes, probably inspired Kick-Ass. I’m not certain if Director Matthew Vaughan was actually making this statement or not with the film, but from my perspective, I can’t watch it without thinking that what I’m seeing is Vaughan’s treatment for a Spider-Man film.

Furthermore, as a hardcore fan of Spider-Man, I’d have to say that “Kick-Ass” is the most accurate interpretation of Spider-Man that we have seen thus far. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films were good, but still missed certain elements that made Kick-Ass more relatable as a character. It’s the same reason Stan Lee uses for why he picked Steve Ditko over Jack Kirby as the original Spidey artist: Raimi’s Spider-Man films were just a little too good. Everything from his costume to his fighting abilities were absolutely flawless. I’m sure the studio probably wouldn’t have been pleased with their movie’s hero losing fights and having a laughable costume, but that’s really how Spider-Man is meant to be portrayed.

In Kick-Ass, we don’t get Raimi’s golden vision of a mighty hero swinging gallantly in front of the American flag, we get Matthew Vaughn’s bloody and bruised underdog of a protagonist. Instead of a cheesy Danny Elfman score we get John Murphy classics from “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine” reused in a Tarantino-like fashion. Instead of a God-awful Nickelback song for the character’s anthem (Spider-Man would never, EVER tolerate Nickelback), we get The Prodigy.

In addition to getting the superhero half of the equation right, “Kick-Ass” knows how to depict high school geeks in the 21st century. Usually when people write the teenage Peter Parker he’s nothing like any high school kid I’ve ever known. He doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, it’s more like he’s indicative of what middle-aged writers guess high schoolers must act like. “Kick-Ass” breaks this mold by making the character a real teenager in the real world, not some idealized science nerd. In “Kick-Ass,” the main character isn’t just unpopular, he gets mugged regularly on his way home from school. His high school crush doesn’t just overlook him, she mistakes him for being gay. These are exactly the kinds of things that Peter Parker would be going up against as a teenager in 2010.

Whether it was the intention of the filmmakers or not, “Kick-Ass” stands as my new favorite Spider-Man movie. I’ve watched the film over and over again, each time reveling not only in the dauntless protagonist from the film, but the echoes of Peter Parker that exist between the lines. I can only hope that Marc Webb, the director of the upcoming 3-D Spider-Man reboot, has watched the movie by now and was taking notes.

Next week, I’ll continue my analysis of “Kick-Ass” (maybe after a few more repeat viewings) and discuss how the film debunks the long-standing myth that Robin will never be able to fit into a dark and gritty Batman movie.

The Terror by Dan simmons

Few novels make you truly appreciate history. In 1845,  Captain John Franklin of the UK led a doomed expedition to the NorthWest Passage. It was a spectacular failure. For over a year, Franklin’s crew was trapped in the ice.

Numerous expeditions from the UK were sent to find and hopefully rescue Franklin’s crew. They never found them until it was too late.

The entire crew died, and there have been many theories into the whys and how.

The Terror is of course a fictionalized account of what happened, with a good doze of supernatural fantasy also added to the tail.

In this book, the crew is not only trapped in the ice, they are also being slowly hunted by a supernatual monster of legendary proportions.

The book itself numbers around 955 pages. Simmons isn’t so much a writer as he is a world builder. This is one of the rare books in where the reader is transported to another world. I could feel the numbing colder of the arctic. I could feel the dread of being slowly hunted by a supernatural monster.

In real world history, the crew of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were trapped in the ice for 3 years. They died a long slow death, through their steady diet of rationed canned goods and salt pork.

Which way would you rather go? Quick or slow? The crew is hundreds of miles away from civilization, and only has the company of a supernatural monster who can’t, and won’t let them leave.

In the end, I encourage the reader to give this magnum opus a try. It’s a jaw dropping read, and it truly takes your reading experience to another level.