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Trench Dogs
Inspired from assorted first-hand accounts, this fictional story of World War I is an anthropomorphic retelling of that global conflict and the soldiers who experienced the horrors of the front lines and high seas. While horse drawn carts and trains were ordinary sights, automobiles, tanks, submarines, and airplanes made their wartime debuts alongside machine guns, poison gas, and flame throwers. While the nightmares of World War I and the aftermath are sometimes forgotten, this book asks the reader to look again and remember the dead, and to weigh their number against those who would choose war. Conceived as a long, continuous camera pan through the trenches and beyond, the reader is soon buried in mud, corpses, and ruin, emerging on the other side with blurred recollections of lost comrades and a nagging sense of pointless destruction. Ian Densford's graphic watercolors paired with a spattering of onomatopoeic utterings create an unforgiving tale of the "war to end all wars."
184 pages, Paperback
Published September 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 18, 2020
With no dialogue and with animals but damn its impactful. Idk what to say its just good. Made me look more into WW1. Its dark, but thats war.
March 28, 2022
Continuing my delve into the stack of World War I books that I have purchased in the last year, I figured it was time for another comic to decompress since I just finished reading a HUGE book on the Belgian relief effort in 1914. The subject of this review is a book by Dead Reckoning, the comics imprint of The US naval Institute Press, called Trench Dogs. Written and illustrated by Ian Densford, this is somewhat unlike anything I’ve read by this publisher as one could almost characterize this as a horror comic in many ways. Created with war stories the author curated, this book takes a look at the absolute worst parts of “The Great War” all rolled into one fast-paced page-turner.
“Inspired from assorted first-hand accounts, this fictional story of World War I is an anthropomorphic retelling of that global conflict and the soldiers who experienced the horrors of the front lines and high seas. While horse drawn carts and trains were ordinary sights, automobiles, tanks, submarines, and airplanes made their wartime debuts alongside machine guns, poison gas, and flame throwers. While the nightmares of World War I and the aftermath are sometimes forgotten, this book asks the reader to look again and remember the dead, and to weigh their number against those who would choose war. Conceived as a long, continuous camera pan through the trenches and beyond, the reader is soon buried in mud, corpses, and ruin, emerging on the other side with blurred recollections of lost comrades and a nagging sense of pointless destruction. Ian Densford’s graphic watercolors paired with a spattering of onomatopoeic utterings create an unforgiving tale of the ‘war to end all wars.'”
One of the first things that struck me from this book was how realistically the war was depicted here. We see the off juxtaposition of machine guns and horseback cavalry, armored cars and near medieval lance charges, and many weird near anachronisms that often appear on snappy Facebook historical posts. Some people forget that 1914 wasn’t too far from The Victorian era and not everything was modernized yet. Hell, a lot of Western films take place AFTER WWI during the Mexican Border Wars, and that fact is lost on many. You can tell Ian Densford did a lot of research on various “war stories” to feature in his panoramic series of interlocked vignettes. I recognized a few things from a couple of books and even Dan Carlin, so that was pretty cool.
Much in the same way Art Spiegelman used animals as human stand-ins in MAUS, the author has decided to depict different nations as various creatures so that one can easily tell them apart and cause an uncomfortable feeling in the reader. In his own words, “it’s interesting to juxtapose something cute and fun with something horrible and disturbing, and it connects to a motif that runs through all of cartoon history”. We see dogs as Britain, cats as the United States, some sort of bird for France, pigs for Germany, and raccoons for Austria Hungary, just to name a few.
The artwork is chaotic and sometimes hard to read, but once you get rolling with the plot it gets easier and that much more unsettling. This book is pretty brutal, and pulls no punches whatsoever. For Example, I think one of the more shocking scenes in the book was a German gas attack on French soldiers where one man realized his gasmask had a hole in it. Out of desperation, he attacks another soldier and steals his mask only to watch him vomit and gasp for breath at his feet.
For those that read this book, It was cool to see that the author put together a study guide as some sort of citation page or index and posted it for FREE on his website. It’s about twenty pages long and shows where some of the book’s gruesome imagery comes from with side-by-side comparisons. I would have preferred this in IN the book itself, but it’s a cool idea for have extra material available for those that want it.
Overall, this book definitely takes the horrific aspects of the war, ones that that are often overlooked to present tales of heroism that are palatable for the general public, and puts them front and center. Due to its graphic nature, this really is not for everyone, and could upset someone that gets it based on their being animals on the cover (I used to work retail, people due make dumb mistakes like this). The art is interesting, and the book is VERY action-packed. It makes you think about some of the social issues of the time, and paints the war as the most inhumane meat-grinder of it’s time that we should think of it as. Not everyone is a hero here, and it really makes you think about what man is capable of when backed into a corner. This is quite the feat to have such a profound story with nearly no dialogue at all. Trench Dogs is a great World War I book, and should be more well known than it is.
https://arcadiapod.com/2022/03/28/rev...
“Inspired from assorted first-hand accounts, this fictional story of World War I is an anthropomorphic retelling of that global conflict and the soldiers who experienced the horrors of the front lines and high seas. While horse drawn carts and trains were ordinary sights, automobiles, tanks, submarines, and airplanes made their wartime debuts alongside machine guns, poison gas, and flame throwers. While the nightmares of World War I and the aftermath are sometimes forgotten, this book asks the reader to look again and remember the dead, and to weigh their number against those who would choose war. Conceived as a long, continuous camera pan through the trenches and beyond, the reader is soon buried in mud, corpses, and ruin, emerging on the other side with blurred recollections of lost comrades and a nagging sense of pointless destruction. Ian Densford’s graphic watercolors paired with a spattering of onomatopoeic utterings create an unforgiving tale of the ‘war to end all wars.'”
One of the first things that struck me from this book was how realistically the war was depicted here. We see the off juxtaposition of machine guns and horseback cavalry, armored cars and near medieval lance charges, and many weird near anachronisms that often appear on snappy Facebook historical posts. Some people forget that 1914 wasn’t too far from The Victorian era and not everything was modernized yet. Hell, a lot of Western films take place AFTER WWI during the Mexican Border Wars, and that fact is lost on many. You can tell Ian Densford did a lot of research on various “war stories” to feature in his panoramic series of interlocked vignettes. I recognized a few things from a couple of books and even Dan Carlin, so that was pretty cool.
Much in the same way Art Spiegelman used animals as human stand-ins in MAUS, the author has decided to depict different nations as various creatures so that one can easily tell them apart and cause an uncomfortable feeling in the reader. In his own words, “it’s interesting to juxtapose something cute and fun with something horrible and disturbing, and it connects to a motif that runs through all of cartoon history”. We see dogs as Britain, cats as the United States, some sort of bird for France, pigs for Germany, and raccoons for Austria Hungary, just to name a few.
The artwork is chaotic and sometimes hard to read, but once you get rolling with the plot it gets easier and that much more unsettling. This book is pretty brutal, and pulls no punches whatsoever. For Example, I think one of the more shocking scenes in the book was a German gas attack on French soldiers where one man realized his gasmask had a hole in it. Out of desperation, he attacks another soldier and steals his mask only to watch him vomit and gasp for breath at his feet.
For those that read this book, It was cool to see that the author put together a study guide as some sort of citation page or index and posted it for FREE on his website. It’s about twenty pages long and shows where some of the book’s gruesome imagery comes from with side-by-side comparisons. I would have preferred this in IN the book itself, but it’s a cool idea for have extra material available for those that want it.
Overall, this book definitely takes the horrific aspects of the war, ones that that are often overlooked to present tales of heroism that are palatable for the general public, and puts them front and center. Due to its graphic nature, this really is not for everyone, and could upset someone that gets it based on their being animals on the cover (I used to work retail, people due make dumb mistakes like this). The art is interesting, and the book is VERY action-packed. It makes you think about some of the social issues of the time, and paints the war as the most inhumane meat-grinder of it’s time that we should think of it as. Not everyone is a hero here, and it really makes you think about what man is capable of when backed into a corner. This is quite the feat to have such a profound story with nearly no dialogue at all. Trench Dogs is a great World War I book, and should be more well known than it is.
https://arcadiapod.com/2022/03/28/rev...
February 13, 2019
Trench Dogs is a dense and intense book that catalogues some of the horrors of the first world war. It doesn't follow any one character, but instead uses a wide canvas to tell the story of several different regiments from both sides of the conflict, as well as civilians on both sides. Densford hand-watercolored the book, and I felt the meditation on the death and suffering that he must have gone through working on it. The book is mostly wordless, and bops between continents and theaters of war (air, sea, France, Turkey etc.) so he's created a guide which you can get on his website to help you untangle the history of the conflict and learn more about it.
While the book is too bloody to use as a teaching guide for most age groups, I can imagine it being used as an introduction to the war for students in high school. All of the characters are depicted as cartoon animals (hence the title), and that helps make the horror bearable, and to built empathy with characters that we often only see for a few panels before terrible things happen to them. A book without words might seem like an odd teaching tool, but it helps to see what the horrors of war looks like, opposed to just reading about them. Densford shows the entire war machine in incredible detail, from the women making munitions in factories to the stretcher-bearers sharing cigarettes with the enemy on the battlefield. If you have even a passing interest in WWI, I'm sure you would love it.
While the book is too bloody to use as a teaching guide for most age groups, I can imagine it being used as an introduction to the war for students in high school. All of the characters are depicted as cartoon animals (hence the title), and that helps make the horror bearable, and to built empathy with characters that we often only see for a few panels before terrible things happen to them. A book without words might seem like an odd teaching tool, but it helps to see what the horrors of war looks like, opposed to just reading about them. Densford shows the entire war machine in incredible detail, from the women making munitions in factories to the stretcher-bearers sharing cigarettes with the enemy on the battlefield. If you have even a passing interest in WWI, I'm sure you would love it.
April 16, 2019
A beautiful book that covers World War I in its majority through little snapshots. The art is slightly cartoonish, but beautifully detailed. The muted color palette matches what I associate with the era. The use of animals to convey countries was well done. When it comes to doing that, I'm especially hesitant to accepting it because it is often a mockery or poor remake of Art Spiegelman's "Maus", but Ian Deford doesn't fall into the usual faux pas. This book is done tastefully. Like Danzig Baldaev's "Drawings From the Gulag", this book conveys horrors of war and conflict in an unsettling way. It simply tells what happened without overglorifying the deaths, but you realise the amount of gore that did happen. These realisations were punctuated by little selfish moments of joy that characters had in the story. A soldier escapes the war for a moment by sitting inside a house, only to realise the destroyed carcasses of the original owners.
My only negative comment that I have is that Ian Densford uses minimal text in the book. To identify what year and location you're at, you have to use a little guide at the beginning of the book to help identify what soldiers you are reading about. Using minimal dialogue is a great tactic to use in graphic novels, but a caption in the corner of a new scene could be helpful for those who aren't familiar with WWI. A minuscule comment, to be honest.
My only negative comment that I have is that Ian Densford uses minimal text in the book. To identify what year and location you're at, you have to use a little guide at the beginning of the book to help identify what soldiers you are reading about. Using minimal dialogue is a great tactic to use in graphic novels, but a caption in the corner of a new scene could be helpful for those who aren't familiar with WWI. A minuscule comment, to be honest.
August 6, 2020
A fictionalized account of WWII in graphic novel format.
Several first-hand accounts are woven together to tell of trench warfare common during The Great War, this uncovers many horrors experienced at the time. It also shows how improvements in technology played a big part during the war as automobiles, tanks, submarines, airplanes and battleships were used for the first time, alongside machine guns, poison gas, and flame throwers.
Densford weaves an incredible narrative of mud, corpses, and futility in this largely wordless work. He relies on visual cues and clues to inform readers about action on land, in air, and the sea. He very cleverly uses illustrations of anthropomorphized dogs and cats in place of people, to help soften the harshness of this reality. One pages of backmatter includes a cartoon list of important people of the time, including T.E. Lawrence, J.R.R. Tolkien, Faisal I, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Virginia Woolf, and Grigori Rasputin. For more information and a study guide about them, go to iandsesford.com
This one packs a real punch to the gut. For mature readers only.
Highly Recommended for grades 10-adult.
Several first-hand accounts are woven together to tell of trench warfare common during The Great War, this uncovers many horrors experienced at the time. It also shows how improvements in technology played a big part during the war as automobiles, tanks, submarines, airplanes and battleships were used for the first time, alongside machine guns, poison gas, and flame throwers.
Densford weaves an incredible narrative of mud, corpses, and futility in this largely wordless work. He relies on visual cues and clues to inform readers about action on land, in air, and the sea. He very cleverly uses illustrations of anthropomorphized dogs and cats in place of people, to help soften the harshness of this reality. One pages of backmatter includes a cartoon list of important people of the time, including T.E. Lawrence, J.R.R. Tolkien, Faisal I, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Virginia Woolf, and Grigori Rasputin. For more information and a study guide about them, go to iandsesford.com
This one packs a real punch to the gut. For mature readers only.
Highly Recommended for grades 10-adult.
October 21, 2019
I honestly thought when I picked up this book that it was going to be odd but then after reading for about 20 minutes, I realized that it was very in depth and got as close as it could to the real lives for soldiers in World War 1. Ian Densford made it very easy for me to automatically tell who was in what faction based off of the different types of animals varying from dogs being portrayed as the british and americans and pigs representing the Germans. Densford also did not shy away from showing gruesome scenes and what it most likely was in some spots of war, especially the part that had the mustard gas dropped on the british. Altogether the book was great and would definitely recommend to anyone that loves books about war because this book does not leave anything out about what possibly happened in World War 1.
November 13, 2018
Was lucky enough to pick this up at Comic Arts Brooklyn and loved it. Sort of a Blood Meridian but WWI instead of the west and in mostly wordless, anthropomorphized graphic novel form. Very stirring, and will make you want to learn more about the war. Also incredibly timely for right now as of this writing- the day I picked it up was the 100th anniversary of the end of the war. It’s important to know the ugly, unpolished truth about war and this is a phenomenal place to start.
March 21, 2025
An anthropomorphic and almost wordless retelling of World War I. I couldn't follow this at all. It's almost all just random violence set in World War I. The art had all of this same muted color too and wasn't very detailed. I couldn't really follow much of a story at all. Just an all around fail unfortunately.
August 14, 2018
A sparsely worded, sweeping look at World War I on land and sea in multiple theaters of operations. Animals stand in as soldiers, different ones representing nationalities. The images offer an unrelenting, horrific depiction of the scale of carnage and destruction.
October 3, 2018
This book was a Best of the Best for the month of October 2018, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet. http://forums.delphiforums.com/stevo1...
November 1, 2018
An interesting way of telling the history of WWI. Definitely graphic in its depiction of war, lots of gore.
February 12, 2019
Gritty, landscape water colors tell the inhumane cost of WWI. Using dog breeds to represent the cast is a stroke of genius. One of the most realistic depictions of the War to end all Wars.
October 27, 2019
Really powerful visual look at the horrors of war. Not something you read quickly, or if you aren't in the right frame of mind.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews