Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1: Haunted House

Unknown Soldier

by Joshua Dysart, Alberto Ponticelli (Illustrator)

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 way to fix what's wrong with the country is by slaughtering those responsible? What is Moses' connection to another past bandagewrapped warrior?

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Africa, War, Fiction, Horror, Comic Book

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

I write comic books, graphic novels and novels. I'm a three time Eisner nominee, two time Glyph award winner, New York Times bestseller, a recipient of The Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year award, and have been in competition twice at Angoulême.

I've worked on Hellboy, Swamp Thing, & Conan the Barbarian; I co-wrote a graphic novel with Neil Young; I helped restart Valiant Entertainment; and I've done on-the-ground research in Uganda (2007), Iraq (2014), & South Sudan (2016), writting graphic novels about war and famine in those regions.

Goodnight Paradise came out in 2018 with long time co-creator Alberto Ponticelli and is a murder mystery set in the houseless population of Venice Beach, Ca.

My first novel (novella - it's only 100 pages) has dropped. It combines my love of slasher horror, Agatha Christie fair-play mysteries, construction sites, and bugs. It's called BROOD X. Buy it wherever trash genre books are sold!

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Alex Sarll]

Woah. This is not an easy read; never mind the tendency towards dumping undigested exposition, there's no amount of artistry could make the Ugandan civil war slip down easily. Child soldiers, mutilation, the West's guilt and Africa's complicity in its own state - there's something to upset everyone here. But it rings true. This is a story in which the line "I want to wrap his heart in barbed wire and fuck his corpse with it" makes perfect sense. Coming from the hero. And unlike the normal smoke and mirrors, the need for any real-world bastard to have at least a paper-thin disguise when they're fiction's villain, this one makes everything crystal clear: the big bad is Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army (this was, I should add, published in 2008, before he became internet news for a week or two). Hell, make it considerably more boring, ensure that the pacifist doctor's turn to violence weren't quite so devastatingly effective, and remove all those gory pictures and you could probably win a litfic prize with this, instead of getting a prematurely cancelled comic.

This was how Vertigo used to be, before DC fell into darkness and the core company demanded all its toys back, no matter how little idea it had of what to do with them. Vertigo was founded on old, unloved DC properties, which would be left for radical retooling by oddballs who could make them matter - cf Animal Man, Sandman, Doom Patrol, Shade. I think this may have been the last of them. There are hints of a link back to the original Unknown Soldier - an old war character who I only really know through his earlier Vertigo miniseries - but so far, nothing anyone needs to know to get it. After this, I think the only African lead in a DC comic was Batwing. That had child soldiers too, as origin story set dressing in a misjudged Batman spin-off which clearly hadn't done a quarter the research Dysart has here. Says it all, really.

[Ensley · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTE BENE: This is a comic book series, but in NO WAY is it appropriate for young children.

This review will stand in for a review of the complete 25 issue (5 trade) series. A brilliant use of a classic DC war comics character to help expose the realities of the problems facing Eastern Africa, particularly focused on the wanted terrorist and religious fanatic Joseph Kony, who became notorious for his forcible recruitment and use of child soldiers. Dysart spent several months in Uganda, both south and north, and his stories reflect both his own experiences int he region as well as his extensive research into the area, its politics, and history. The art by Alberto Ponticelli perfectly illuminates the contradictions of the beautiful, hyper-violent, and morally ambiguous world evoked by Dysart. This a brilliant comic series, produced by a writer and artist who truly and deeply care about the continuing agonies of Eastern Africa, but it is also a sharp reminder of the West's goldfish-like attention span when it comes to that region, or to Africa in general.

The Unknown Solider is a part of a brief Western campaign to bring international pressure to bear against Kony and attention to his depredations in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan. The campaign resulted in the indictment of Kony on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, at which point the West celebrated success and promptly all but forgot about him. Of course, in 2013, Kony has yet to be caught, nor are his current whereabouts known beyond the fact that he is probably in the eastern DRC, a vast region decimated by decades of international, regional, and tribal warfare, where no government truly exercises any real authority.

[Frédéric · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5*
Strange book, really. I'm not sure of what to make of it yet.

In war-torn Uganda an humanitarian afro-american doctor turns into the local Punisher and kills and maims killers and torturers... who happen to be kids most of the time! Psychopathic brainwashed kids, but kids nonetheless.

Very ambivalent to say the least, appealing to one's natural basic intinct to kill monsters hurting people, when one should know society can't function on an eye-for-an-eye basis.
No heartwarming compassion and good conscience here, just violent and graphic revenge.
Not for the faint of heart assuredly.

On the other hand it has the honesty to show things are they are, in all their raw cruelty, kid raping, amputations and other niceties. For now I think it's Dysart's clumsy attempt to express his frustrations at a situation that Westerners let rot, turning a blind eye.

On a more mundane note, I felt less than appealed by Alberto Ponticelli's art, though he manages a good storytelling. It looks like a second rate Jock, of whom I'm not a big fan in the first place.

[Zedsdead · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 true, his new-found skills seem genuine. The narrative is disjointed, wandering, which echoes the hero's dissociation and confusion. Some of the scenes are brutal, but not gratuitously so. This first volume ends with some truly tantalizing hints of things to come. I'm looking forward to reading the next installment.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believable, painful to watch and rewarding to all pessimists and fans of revenge fantasies. Vividly told and drawn, makes most books feel saccharine by comparison.

[Astir · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comic about child soldiers in Uganda.

Unknown Soldier by Joshua Dysart is a 25 issue-long reboot of the 1970’s DC war comic by the same name, which focused upon a North American World War Two soldier, his face obscured by bandages, waging a one man war against Japanese and German soldiers, culminating in the killing of Hitler. The 2008 version of this comic transplants these character ideas (mask, obfuscated identity, one man army) to Uganda, where a new soldier declares war on Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. The story is set in 2002, during a massive military offensive in which the armed forces of Uganda (the Ugandan People’s Defense Force) attacked Sudanese LRA bases. This resulted in LRA retaliating by attacking refugee camps in Uganda and Sudan, massacring hundreds of people and abducting many others; the abducted boys to be used as soldiers, the girls as ‘soldiers' wives’ – sex slaves.

What follows is an unflinchingly violent narrative which explores such real life atrocities, along with issues of witch hunts, internally displaced people, land mines, political corruption, and the international exploitation of Africa. ‘The moral complications of a war fought against children’ remain the issue at the centre of this comic, as it continually asks how one can fight again an army of abducted, manipulated children. Unfortunately, the solution the comic provides is, all too often, kill them. The first volume is awash with child death, and although the protagonist later swears off intentionally killing children and innocents, deaths still occur as a result of his otherwise uncompromising actions. The book eventually arguably presents this non-murderous ideological change as an Achilles’ heel, then closes with the message it wants to bequeath to its readers: that it is better to die (and to kill) for peace than it is to tolerate ongoing war.

That’s what this story is at its heart: a let’s-hunt-and-kill-Joesph-Kony revenge fantasy, one which seeks to solve violence through violence. A comic like this could have easily fallen into the realm of Frank Miller-esque propaganda, but, to its credit, it is far smarter and more complex than such simplifications. The author, Dysart, spent a month in Northern Uganda and its IDP camps, and his experience and research invest the comic with an aura of authenticity. His essays which accompany the trade paper backs are insightful, and one issue in particular, told from the perspective of a gun as it is manufactured, first brought to Africa, and how it exchanges owners over bloody decades of turmoil, shows great understanding of the history of conflict in the region. There’s also a degree of self-aware unease present in this comic in relation to having a North American author writing a book about a former North American soldier attempting to solve Africa’s problems. The comic seems somewhat uncomfortable with its own jingoism. On one hand, it’s hauling the USA over the coals for being involved in the exploitation of African politics and resources. It attacks Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, for having ‘strong ties to the American evangelical movement have placed the U.S. Christian doctrine at the heart of Ugandan lawmaking’. It criticizes Western leaders for praising Museveni while he attempts to make himself president for life, arrests his opposition, and whilst he urges his people to be self-reliant whilst cutting state spending and privatising state enterprise. America, (the political and economic America at least) is complicit in Dysart’s representation of human exploitation and misery.

On the other hand, the comic sometimes appears to embrace jingoism, with America, through its militant world policing ethos, seeming praised and its violence viewed through a lens of stability-ensuring humanitarianism. The Unknown Soldier of the past is painted as someone who ‘took on the horror, the moral complexity and the physical and existential atrocity of American hubris so that WWII would never happen again’ yet later came to view this attitude as having created his own concentration camp of those dead at his hands and his policies. The Unknown Soldier of the present is given the option to seemingly atone for this by becoming a humanitarian doctor, but rebels against this identity to embrace the ends-justify-the-means identity of the first soldier anyway. While a significant portion of the text is spent exploring the clashing nature of the humanitarian doctor and the ideological mercenary, the Unknown Soldier’s identity becomes, to a large degree, the ‘force of nature, beyond morality… absolutely necessary in a world as horrible as this’ which the first soldier was. Though the comic places some of the responsibility for the character’s violent identity on the American military for programming him this way, it never wholly embraces any non-violent solutions. Unknown Soldier ultimately settles on the idea that killing Joseph Kony will be an act of redemption from the violent acts it has perpetrated preceding it. It is a complex, engaging, well-researched comic, unafraid to approach a host of important, horrific issues, but it is also violent utilitarianism sometimes masquerading as humanitarianism.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jonathan Maas · Rating 5 out of 5]

No cliches, no character arcs the way you expect

This tale is incredible, though not for everyone.

I honestly would have put it down midway through were it not for the skill of the author and illustrator.

They pull no punches in this foray into an African war. There is no hero bringing order to the chaos.

There is a hero entering the chaos, and then becoming part of the chaos.

That is what makes this tale so difficult, and so important.

I recommend it - with the notion that this is not for everyone.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread it and it's even better the second time. Heavy stuff.

[Friz Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

the Warren Ellis quote on the cover is absolutely right. this is a fucking awesome and bold ass story. can't wait to begin the second volume.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pretty surprised that I liked this as I never read realism or war books or revenge fantasy at all. Not even from faw writers such as Ennis and Ellis. I only picked it up because I’ve liked a few other books the writer has been involved with

It’s not an easy read. It’s not a pleasant read. It’s not easy to like. So why did I read it? So why did I like it?

It’s an anti-war war book. What the book wants, is to show us people in the ‘civilised’ where ever world, that this war is going on and how insanely horrific the consequences of ‘our’ milking the country for own means for decades and decades really are. That this is going on in parallel time to our by comparison, neat blue collar Problemen lives. It doesn’t want us to feel shit about our lives not being worse, but it wants to give us a contrast and to educate us. While entertaining us with the mystery ‘who is Moses really?

American educated Ugandan born Moses is a good guy. A really good guy. To his own mind and to anyone who knows him. At least until he’s met with the unparalleled horrors of the Uganda he wants to save through peaceful means. Then it becomes clear that the luxury of being ‘good’ is no longer afforded to him. Or maybe ‘good’ is no longer defined the same way to Moses. Or to us. But I recon there’s a lot more to Moses than meets the eye. That also includes Moses own eye.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating comic, Joshua Dysart paints a very dark story here showing glimpses of real life from the Sudan war, I love his essays explaining the history of the country and the breakdown of the lingo. Great artwork too.

[Sean O · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unknown Soldier, a minor DC property, is repurposed to a tale set in Uganda during Joseph
Kony's LRA rebellion.

Ugandan-born, American-raised Doctor Lwanga Moses. He is disfigured by rebels and becomes enmeshed in a struggle between the Army, the LRA, and anyone else who gets between him and murderers.

Tragic and readable, despite dozens of Ugandan factions, towns, and people. The Unknown Soldier is no hero, but he does heroic things.

[Jeff Lanter · Rating 5 out of 5]

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, where there is simply no right answer to all of the problems. It is this kind of situation that turns a pacifist doctor to violence and as a pacifist myself, I find the exploration of this issue fascinating.

If all of that does not hook you into reading this series, the art is amazing. It is kind of a loose style that almost seems undetailed, but it captures the tone of this book perfectly. When Ponticelli draws the child soldiers it is incredible. The children have these big heads, long lanky bodies, and innocent eyes. In spite of their malnourished and diminutive appearance, they're strapped with AK-47s and threaten peaceful people in Uganda. The art perfectly captures a mix of innocence, suffering, and violence that should not exist in this world.

I want to thank Goodreads for recommending me this book. I had heard of it, but never really considered reading it until, Goodreads said I would like it because I love Scalped. Fans of that series need to give this a shot as well. It has the same sad tone and moral complexities in a different place and is quite possibly more grounded in truth. I bought and read six different graphic novels at once and read them in a span of about a week and this is the one series that I'm dying to read more of. I can't wait to read the other volumes of this story even though I know the ending will not be a happy one.

[Aidan]

Took me a couple issues to really start to get into this, especially considering Alberto Ponticelli’s art is very much not for me, but once the CIA backed conspiracy threads started to appear you know I was hooked in. Dysart’s writing is solid, but this really is interesting in its metaphors as channelled through both pulpy and historically-based violent conflict. As a follow up to the previous CIA and US military Unknown Soldiers of the past, this seems to be about how well meaning liberals (who “can’t keep blaming Africa’s problems on colonialism” as celebrity activist Margaret puts it) and Americanized immigrants from exploited countries have been, unknowingly or not, co-opted by US interests to perpetuate violence in exploited countries. The brief appearances of the previous Unknown Soldier in flashback could well be the CIA one seen in Ennis or Priest’s work, passing on the mantle of subversive US imperialism. Moses also seems to be struggling with his reactionary position, caught between his anger at the violence immediately in front of him and the violent solutions he’s been secretly taught in his past. “When you’re CIA, every problem looks like a terrorist” sort of thing.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read the first issue/chapter, but, yow, this first trade paperback makes me want to read the whole series. The violence of war, portrayed in a kind of origin story with espionage elements, is still full of trauma; the art is skillful storytelling... and I'm realizing I keep overlooking African cultures.
Reading into later issues in this series, I have to find the other trade paperbacks.
Recommended.

[Sonic · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this story are so horrific that I think that readers erase bits from their memories, to keep it from being worse in their heads.
For example, some reviewers mention that the central character was mutilated by rebels in the war-torn setting, but that's not really what happens, if you read the sequence. Early in the story, he begins hearing a voice in his head, and the mutilation is NOT at the hands of rebels.
Part of the difficulty I had with this story was in comparing it to the earlier versions of the Unknown Soldier character. By the end of this volume, this one just didn't make sense, as he's either haunted or crazy, and I couldn't tell which. On the other hand, not counting the main character, the story was powerful and interesting, so I found it worth continuing to read. I just wish the main character made more sense, and hope that things became more clear as the story continued.
The horrors of war, especially a weird religious one, in one of the war-torn areas of Africa is painful enough, but this story tries to show the reader just how complicated and messy the situation can be, and that makes things heartbreaking in several sequences of the story. The main character and his wife, both doctors, are intelligent, informed observers of this chaos.

[Sarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read "Unknown Solider" on a whim, because it was there and because my 6th grade ELA students love comics and graphic novels and any sort of literature with pictures, and for the first time I wondered if my life as a reader could be made better by an illustration.

I'm not sure I've ever reacted so vocally to a book before in my life. Sure, I've laughed a few times, cried a few times, and yelled at a character or two, but this story... this story stole breath out of my chest.

The writing was clear, powerful, realistic, and creative. The illustrations were vibrant, violent, and heart wrenching. I hope to find the second volume soon, as this story broke me out of my prose-heavy preference and has opened the door to a whole new kind of story in my life.

[Bob Solanovicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Izravan i bespoštedan prikaz situacije u Ugandi 2002. s nešto, naravno, fikcije jer ipak se radi o novoj verziji DC-jevog lika, iako moram priznati da mi je ova inkarnacija definitivno najdraža jer zasad nije toliko povezana s prijašnjima. To se možda i promijeni u narednim knjigama, ali ne vjerujem da će se promijeniti stav same priče što je u ovom stripu i najbitnija stavka. Dysart, a bogme i Ponticelli su dobro proučili ono s čime imaju posla u serijalu, što izbija iz svakog kadra. Ako očekujete nešto što nalikuje tv serijama, nešto što usprkos svemu ima udobne klišeje, možete to ostaviti pred vratima jer Unknown Soldier ide na sva mjesta na koja ne želite ići, i to je apsolutni plus.

[Evette · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

[26/01/25] 7/10 for the complete story (vol. 1-4)

Hard hit in the stomach: when violence in real world exceeds imaginations.
I've been overwhelmed by the many factions in play: thanks for the appendix at the end of each volume that teach you the real story of this region.

I've found Vol. 3 a bit weak and I understand the idea at the ending but do I like it? Don't know.


[16/01/25] 8/10

Violence everywhere

[Neil Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read this 10 years ago (may have made a go at at it, but not actually finished all the way through; which is perhaps understandable given the material), and shame on me for not revisiting it sooner. Part character-study, part fever-dream, part vessel for anger, this could not be more gripping.

[Soos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story that's really grounded, just what you would expect from Vertigo. Just be cautious of some gut-wrenching moments here & there.

[Timo · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much better and distressing than I remembered. Even blabbering about religion (which is the cause of all that is evil) did not annoy.
Looking forward to read the next edition.

[Adam Laws]

In the first few pages of this book I have seen A wife and husband who are both doctors take care of kids in war all the way in Africa. In thee fewer pages later the husband had went out alone to retrieve the girl that was lost and had saw two kids who are rebels and fought them. while he was fighting them he had heard a voice in his head that he told him what to do and it made him feel corrupted. So after he had retrieved the girl he had teared up his face and passed out. Moses at the end of the book had defeated The Rebels and had took the leader of The Rebels hostage and bullied the leader to death wounds.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 Northern Uganda. He runs into Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels (sort of a Christian cult run amok) and ends up with a battered face (hence the bandages). He also snaps. The story then becomes an exploration of do you answer violence with violence, revenge and what does it mean to be human in a world where children chop off limbs and kill their parents and fight out of fear rather than commitment. This is the story of how Moses comes to be the vengeful fighter out to end this crazy war.

And strangely, for a pacifist med school grad, he seems to be channeling a trained secret agent that knows how to fight. That part seems a little far-fetched but maybe there's an answer for that down the road.

Although this is fiction, Dysart did extensive research on the war with the LRA in Northern Uganda and this is a very real (and very violent) depiction of what has actually taken place there. This didn't hang together as a story as well as Persepolis and I felt like it could use some fleshing out. But it did a great job of portraying the brutality of life both in the LRA itself and in its kill zone.

[Dennis G · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 violence awaken the deeply buried training within the good doctor and he starts to unravel as he embarks on a vendetta against the madness he has been thrust in the middle of. Well researched and well-written with fantastic artwork by Alberto Poncticelli (which reminds me quite a bit of Richard Corben), this book left me wanting more. One caveat though-not for the faint of heart. The horrors depicted here with uncomfortable realism and accuracy will make many a reader squirm in their seat.