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

by Joshua Dysart, Alberto Ponticelli (Illustrator)

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 565 ratings · 42 reviews

Welcome to Northern Uganda. In 2002, it's a place where tourists are hacked to death with machetes, 12-year-olds with AK-47s wage war, and celebrities futilely try to get people to care. Moses Lwanga is a pacifist doctor caught at the center. But when his life is threatened, Moses suddenly realizes he knows how to kill all too well. What is this voice telling him the only...more

Paperback, 144 pages

Published August 14th 2009 by Vertigo (first published August 1st 2009)

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Jan 24, 2013 Sam Quixote rated it 2 of 5 stars

Dr Moses Lwanga escaped Uganda as a child with his family to America but now as a grown man he has returned to help Uganda overcome it’s many problems – civil war, disease, corruption – and become a unified, peaceful nation. But faced with the hellish realities where kids with guns are killing people randomly and kidnapping female children to become sex slaves, Moses realises the only effective route to bring about real change in such a brutal landscape will be uncompromising violence.

I realise...more Dr Moses Lwanga escaped Uganda as a child with his family to America but now as a grown man he has returned to help Uganda overcome it’s many problems – civil war, disease, corruption – and become a unified, peaceful nation. But faced with the hellish realities where kids with guns are killing people randomly and kidnapping female children to become sex slaves, Moses realises the only effective route to bring about real change in such a brutal landscape will be uncompromising violence.

I realise that almost everything in this book – Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, child soldiers, child rape, endless bloody fighting, rampant disease – are completely grounded in reality, and continue to be problems not just for Uganda but throughout the continent of Africa, so it makes critiquing this book more awkward than others. If I say “this book was boring” then it seems like I’m a heartless monster with no sympathy for these peoples’ plight! So all the criticisms in this review are about Joshua Dysart’s treatment of the subject matter and writing rather than the realities themselves which are, of course, truly horrific.

I’m not sure what this book is supposed to be. An action story with a superficial conscience? Look at all this suffering – now watch this gunfight! Pray for the children – now watch kids being slaughtered by other kids! The reaction to a serious real world situation in a comic is instinctively “this is important” but unless the writer is saying something meaningful about it then it may as well be a Red Cross infomercial for donations. And that’s what “Unknown Soldier” feels like, a showcase of suffering in Uganda whose solution, at least to Dysart, seems to be watching Moses dispense rough justice in a land where justice is entirely absent. It feels very insubstantial and immature given the subject matter.

It also lacks any ideas. After presenting the many difficulties in Uganda, Moses’ reaction to all of this violence is more violence. Great. Fair enough Moses is a good guy killing kids (while saving some) as opposed to Joseph Kony who is only killing kids; but as a reaction, it seems questionable at best. I mean, if Kony is killed, how will that change the violent culture of the country? Won’t the collective surrounding him break off into factions that fight each other until a new Kony appears? So is Moses just going to keep killing and killing? Is he now African Punisher? And if he is, doesn’t that cartoonish approach undermine the seriousness of the situation? Taking the politics out, it’s your basic, straightforward revenge story, the only difference being the setting.

For a Vertigo book, whose publications tend to separate themselves from comics that feature superheroes through more substantial and different series, it’s remarkably similar in approach to superheroes than other indie comics. Moses becomes “Unknown Soldier”, a guy whose “mask” is made up of bandages, concealing his identity, while his sudden expert fighting abilities manifest and he’s able to save the innocent and kill the guilty singlehandedly. While I understand that a comic without action isn’t appealing, to have your protagonist become the kind of super-action hero type like Jason Bourne or James Bond or Frank Castle seems a bit of a cop out for a book whose subject matter is somewhat unique in semi-mainstream comics. If I wanted to read a Punisher-esque story, I’d read the Punisher; reading a book about the horrors in Uganda perpetrated by Joseph Kony, I’d expect something more than simply meeting violence with violence. It doesn’t help you understand the situation any further nor is it a particularly clever approach. I think the story could’ve been more compelling if Moses wasn’t so capable at killing - that he kills Kony is something I feel is inevitable despite not having read (nor do I intend to) the remainder of the series. And that kind of dull storytelling choice is what irks me most about this. That and the ambiguous morality where we’re supposed to believe killing some kids is justified over other kids because those kids did evil things.

I really wanted to like this because it looks like another brilliant Vertigo series I’d love but in the end I found that stripping away the real life tragedies that the story is based around, reveals a fairly bland revenge story that isn’t particularly thrilling or interesting, and featuring a main character who isn’t particularly memorable and seems to be a cobbled together amalgam of popular characters - part Jason Bourne, part Frank Castle. Maybe I’m wrong - first volumes are notoriously difficult to get right and gauging a series on one book is hard and sometimes misleading - but, based on this book, I’m not particularly interested in finding out what happens in the rest of this series. (less)

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Feb 26, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up this morning and read it.

In a few minutes, I'm going to go back to my comfortable chair and read the other three books that comprise the sum total of this reading experience. And then, knowing me, I will just go back and start the whole thing over again.

This is . . . this is just amazing. It's a comic book, sure, okay, keep telling yourself this as you turn the pages and read the words and look at the pictures.

But another voice will start to be heard in your head. A voice tellin...more I picked this up this morning and read it.

In a few minutes, I'm going to go back to my comfortable chair and read the other three books that comprise the sum total of this reading experience. And then, knowing me, I will just go back and start the whole thing over again.

This is . . . this is just amazing. It's a comic book, sure, okay, keep telling yourself this as you turn the pages and read the words and look at the pictures.

But another voice will start to be heard in your head. A voice telling you that this is clearly well researched, and even if it is only a fiction, the characters are so well drawn, so real, that you will lose the ability to think of them as merely characters in a story and start to think of them as people you are seeing in a documentary. In a story and a setting so horrific and brutal that the idea that this is only fiction, merely fiction, will be beaten out of your skull, and you will be left with the realization that, sometimes, the only way to truth is through stories. Stories that are made up, but are sometimes more real than the one you live in every day. The one you tell yourself when you wake up, and the one you go to sleep with.

I should emphasize, rather strongly, the brutality. This is by no means and in any way, shape, or form, for children, even though there are children throughout the book.

It is set in Uganda, in 2002. I have done some reading, and I know a little bit about the region, and the people, and the horror, but I do not know one one-hundredth of what Joshua Dysart knows. And he is very very good at telling a story. A story that you really ought to read, once you have braced yourself--and make no mistake, you should brace yourself, because this is about the worst things humans can do to other humans, in one of the worst places on the face of the earth.

And, yeah, okay, it's a comic book. And it will probably never be made into a film--I don't see how it could. It would be rated XXX, and would never be financed. And no computer graphics could simulate . . .

Just read this.(less)

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Nov 03, 2010 Dennis G rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: tpbs-from-the-library

This updated take on the World War II era character is a compelling read that takes the reader to some very dark places. At its root, it is a story of violence and real world depravity, with an underpinning of social commentary. Set in Uganda in the early 2000's, writer Joshua Dysart pulls no punches as he utilizes the conflict of the region as the center point for a story detailing the unraveling of the mind of sleeper agent Dr. Lwanga Moses in Uganda on a mission of aid and mercy. Atrocity and...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Jeff Lanter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

One of the things I believe in is that as a citizen of this world, it is my duty to know what is going on around the globe. That means the good, the bad, and the downright brutally awful. Unknown Solider tackles a name that is familiar to most people I imagine. Kony. This graphic novel was written before the Youtube sensation and while it is a work of fiction, it feels incredibly real. Unknown Soldier is depressing and incredibly moving all at once. It depicts what is a moral quagmire in Uganda,...more

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Apr 28, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, fiction-myth-historical-fantasy-f

I was particularly pleased with this series, especially because it focuses on a delicate political and cultural situation- the war in Uganda, which has migrated now to the Congo and the Sudan. Where children are forced to be soldiers as a matter of daily fact, and whole peoples are marched about from camp to camp to seek refuge from the attacks from any and all sides, with little help from any government. All in the name of various religous groups (christianity in the case of Uganda and the Cong...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Lynne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-2012, graphic-novel

I'm not sure "really liked it" characterizes my reaction to this graphic novel. Horrified by it, compelled by it, in awe of it...better. Reading some of the comments, I realize the "Unknown Soldier"is a comic book hero from (WWII?) that Joshua Dysart has updated and placed in the middle of civil war in Northern Uganda (2002). The main character seems to be the mutilated alter ego of a Ugandan American doctor, a volunteer at a clinic in Kampala. It is all very confusing (imagine living through th...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Zedsdead rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

Unknown Soldier is the story of Dr. Lwanga Moses, a Uganda-born raised-in-America physician who returns to his war-torn native land with his doctor wife to work in a refugee camp. He finds himself entangled in the fight between the corrupt government and the child soldiers of the vile Lord's Resistance Army. Moses goes all Jason Bourne, discovering that he has combat skills and no memory of acquiring them.

It's not fun, but it's an excellent book. The politics are convincing, the dialogue rings...more

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Sep 10, 2009 Sandy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, graphic, fiction

This was a pretty quick read (2 train commutes). Evidently, this is a "reimagining" of an earlier comic book series of the same name. In the same way Battlestar Galactica kept a prop or two (Vipers) for a shred of continuity, Unknown Soldier keeps the bandaged head from the original series set in World War II. But I have to believe the rest is different.

Lwanga Moses fled Amin's Uganda as a child, went to Harvard med and is now back in Uganda as a peaceful man of medicine, treating refugees in N...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: african-american, african-american-major-character, american, child-abuse, comic-graphic-novel, drama, politics, race, racism, religious, rape

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 t...more 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, 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.(less)

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Dec 29, 2012 Headmetal Comics rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first read this on vacation, and I read it fast. I was drinking whiskey by a pool whilst doing so. It read fast and was full of dramatic violence -- even providing the reader with a standard "dude walking away from explosion" shot. I liked the book well enough as a nice little dose of action on a hot, drunken day.

Then I reread it at a much slower pace, soaking in the richness of detail. Joshua Dysart and the team behind the book put in much research for this project, and it truly does read as...more

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May 21, 2012 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 n...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Deen Sakurai rated it 4 of 5 stars

I did not know that this was a re-imagining of an older DC character when I first read through this book but that point did not matter much as this trade collects the first 6 issues of Vertigo's 'Unknown Soldier,' that kept me compelled with its tale of Ugandan strife and brutality and an anti-hero that rises from its ashes. Oh yeah, Alberto Ponticelli's artwork is a standout with a strong visual style that is both detailed, articulate and visceral.

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Dec 06, 2009 sweet pea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, graphic-content, superhero

this is the kind of book that begs discussion. a highly intriguing, mysterious premise. lots of violence. a controversial take on a modern war. it's not easy to read, surely, with child soldiers, rape and violent rampaging. still, it's interesting, if fucked up. intriguing parallels between the protagonist and Alice Auma. i still don't know what i think about it. but it's one of the most daring forays into current events i've yet read.

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Dec 05, 2012 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Unknown Soldier along with Sgt. Rock were some of the earliest military comics I can remember reading. So when this new Unknown Soldier came out I was all over it. I’m not surprised that it took place in parts of Africa where child soldiers are sadly very common. Very gritty, visceral really, and paints Joseph Kony in a light that might have people who were quick to post videos and hang posters think again.

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Jun 25, 2011 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

I couldn't tell at first whether this was going to be good or whether it was going to abuse real world events in the name of sensationalised violence and pumped up action. Thankfully it's the former. The violence is intense but purposeful, and there's a definite passion and depth of knowledge for the setting and story. I'm definitely interested in seeing how this one continues.

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Apr 04, 2010 Gregory rated it 5 of 5 stars

I believe this volume collects the first six or seven issues of this comic set in Uganda in 2002. If it's any indicator of the series as a whole, I'd say Unknown Solider is definitely one of the best regular comics on the shelves these days. It takes the vigilante concept and puts it in a pretty unexpected setting. Really amazing and highly recommended.

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Mar 18, 2011 David Camacho rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli pull no punches in their story about a pacifist doctor caught in the midst of bloody tribal warfare in Uganada. This is a powerful, jarring story with visceral - but never gratuitous - visuals. Characters are well developed and underlying subplots are explored just enough to support, but never overshadow, the main story.

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Apr 19, 2010 Jess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel, africa

Let the booing and rotten tomato-throwing start: I'm no fan of graphic novels. Uncool and untrendy, I know. But I made an exception for this one (and its sibling), because they take place in a country I care about, telling a story too few of us know about war, violence, child soldiers, love, and nationalism.

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Jun 29, 2011 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

This graphic novel series follows a peace activist doctor into 2002 Uganda. One part examination of the geopolitical mess of child soldiers, corrupt dictators, and abusive rebels/government that was Uganda at the time. The other, a bloody meditation on justified violence. A truly heart rending story.

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Dec 28, 2009 Caleb rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

The subject matter--genocidal war in Uganda--and it's dealt with quite frankly, so this isn't always an easy book to read, but it is a well done book.

Kinda/sorta review here:
http://everydayislikewednesday.blogsp...

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Mar 30, 2013 Morgan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hyperviolent revenge fantasy along the lines of Tarantino's recent brand of thematic gore porn. It really is a pretty intense story and it is nice to see a comic focus on a non-western subject. I'm looking forward to seeing where this is going.

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Jul 14, 2012 Myke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics, graphic-novel

A horrific story of events in Uganda with a character who intends to kill a certain African warlord who is now famous for being the focus of a dubious charity. Will definitely be seeking out the later volumes.

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Dec 16, 2011 Kenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this trade up at a Barnes & Noble and next thing I knew 2 hours had passed and I'd read the whole thing while standing right there in the graphic novels aisle. It's just that compelling.

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Jul 31, 2010 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

I've been dying to read this after an NYTimes review late last year. Dysart is compelling writer, and his first-hand experience in Uganda jumps off the page and informs everything in this gripping graphic novel.

Joshusa Dysart's work is powerful, compelling and makes you think. I was a brief friend of a former (and late) Newsweek Africa Bureau Chief and he sent me transcript interviews of child soldiers, and Unknown Soldier reaches into the reality of the shattered lives of Uganda's children and...more

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May 14, 2012 Keith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels-comics

I love the theme of the first volume of Unknown Soldier, violence and all. It's a very interesting take on the LRA and the various wars in Central Africa.

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Oct 13, 2009 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought it was a good idea, but I didn't really get all of the back story. I thought it took too long to get going, at least through the first collection.

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Apr 12, 2010 Marc rated it 4 of 5 stars

To listen to my review go to V for Vertigo, Episode: 57 at http://vforvertigo.blogspot.com or on iTunes.

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Dec 20, 2010 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow. Pretty amazing history lesson within a beautiful comic. I hope there will be more.

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Dec 05, 2012 Hakan Jackson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Well done art and story. Rekindled my interest in Africa and her challenges.

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Sep 26, 2010 Sonic rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing hard-hitting horror story, with most of the horror of the real-life kind in Uganda. Recommended!

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About Joshua Dysart

Joshua Dysart co-created and wrote the cult hit comic book series Violent Messiahs in 1997. The first eight issues were originally collected in the graphic novel, Violent Messiahs Vol. I: Book of Job in 2002.

Since then he has done work for virtually every major comic book publisher, including DC, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Random House Books and Penny Farthing Press.

He did a two year stint a...more

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Unknown Soldier, Vol. 4: Beautiful World

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

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