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Reviews / Society and Animals 15 (2007) 401-408 405 A Graphic Novel Depicting War as an Interspecies Event: Pride of Baghdad. Brian K. Vaughan, Niko Henrichon (Art). Vertigo/DC Comics, 2006. $19.99 Introduction Writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Niko Henrichon have created a graphic novel that resists camouflaging impulses of willful euphemism when it comes to nonhuman animal victims of war in their hauntingly beautiful Pride of Baghdad. Th is graphic novel, like “Th e Animals’ War” at the Imperial War Museum in London and its catalog, Th e Animals War: Animals in Wartime from the First World War to the Present Day (Gardiner, 2006), recasts war as an interspecies event. Th e text implicitly asks whether the fantasy world of talking animals—indebted to Rud- yard Kipling, George Orwell, and Walt Disney—enhances or distracts from a topic like war. As thousands of human lives are lost in Iraq, should anyone—even animal rights activists—care about the fate of four lions after their accidental “liberation” from Baghdad’s zoo? And if sympathy for suffering animals seems justified alongside mourning of human losses, is the popular anthropomorphizing device of talking animals necessary to generate empathy? We bring two very different perspectives to this review: One of us teaches a course on animals in literature; the other teaches courses in comics as literature. Our subtext is a shared interest in the challenges animals pose in popular representations. In this case, hybrid animals in a hybrid text test readers’ assumptions about whose stories matter, how stories of speechless creatures might be told though words and images, and what perspec- tives we neglect when we assess the impact of politics, violence, and war solely from a human perspective. Vaughan authors two, ongoing comic-book series, Ex Machina (an audacious take on the superhero genre after 9/11) and Y: Th e Last Man, an apocalyptic tale of the survivors (including a lone man and monkey) of a plague wiping out all males. He is well-trained in balancing the requirements of pulp adventure with pointed social commentary. Artist Hen- richon provides largely realistic, often violent images in contrast to the more common comic book depiction of animals as cute, upright, and clothed. Except for their articulated thoughts, the characters in Pride of Baghdad resemble actual animals. Th ey are driven by basic survival instincts rather than recognizably human motivations. Henrichon inks and colors his work, in contrast to the usual division of artistic labor in mainstream comics’ production. Vaughan and Henrichon’s text has already achieved a “cross-over” success that remains elusive for most “graphic novels” that only reach a core audience of fans. Reviews and inter- views in mainstream media testify to the book’s broad reception, including a book signing at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Obviously, the work’s status as a “comic book” set in the current Iraq war merits attention, but its tight focus on animals rather than humans (who barely appear) may be more daring that its setting. Like its most significant precursor, Spiegelman’s (1986, 1991), two-volume Maus, Pride of Bagh- dad relies upon what even now seems a surprising juxtaposition: Both are explicitly grim tales of war in a form still often associated with children and the Sunday “funnies.” Both are told through talking animals, drawing upon a long tradition rarely (in comics at least) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156853007X235564 SSOANOAN 115,4_f7-f8_400-408.indd5,4_f7-f8_400-408.indd 440505 110/23/070/23/07 99:38:07:38:07 AAMM 406 Reviews / Society and Animals 15 (2007) 401-408 taken seriously as a way to address grave matters, although comic animals—from George Herriman’s Krazy Kat to Bill Watterson’s tiger, Hobbes—have often spoken words of wis- dom (with Charles Schulz’s Snoopy perhaps the medium’s Zen master). However, these figures have almost always been comic characters in both senses of the word. A surprising seriousness marks those animal “comics” that grip audiences precisely because they under- mine a history of “funny animals.” Pride of Baghdad is identified as being “inspired by a true story.” Vaughan credits Mari- ette Hopley and her colleagues at the International Fund for Animal Welfare for informa- tion that helped him write his story: Th eir rescue efforts at the Baghdad zoo are chronicled on the organization’s website: www.ifaw.org. Opened by Saddam Hussein in 1971, the Baghdad zoo was the largest in the Middle East, holding more than 600 animals. In the days before the U.S. invasion of March 2003, zoo personnel retreated. Th e animals had been poorly fed for months. After the animals had been abandoned for two weeks, the area was heavily bombed. Stephan Bognar of the International Office for WildAid, who also helped to recover animals and restore the zoo, recalls that several desperately hungry lions dug themselves out of their enclosures. One escaped lioness had brought down a horse and was dragging it away when U.S. soldiers appeared and she attacked. On April 22, 2003, the BBC reported three females and a male lion were shot when the starving lions “lunged for” the soldiers. Th e story was picked up by U.S. newspapers and circulated widely, with reas- surances that the remaining animals (including a Siberian tiger kept in Hussein’s son Uday’s private zoo) were being protected by the U.S. 3rd Infantry and fed by supplies from Kuwait. When it reopened on July 20, 2003, the zoo held 86 animals. Anthony (2003) reported, “To help the animals, we had to focus on the people” (p. 201). Two years later, the zoo offered sanctuary for humans and animals alike. Pride of Baghdad unfolds in an unnatural palette of greens, browns, yellows, and reds. Th e opening panels deliberately mislead us by locating a powerful lion in a seemingly natu- ral, arid landscape seen from above. Th e image mimics a conventional nature documentary with a fairy tale twist, as a bird warns “Th e sky is falling!”. A turn of the page reveals a dramatic image spread across two conventional pages. We’re thrust into battle, and nature is now revealed to be “civilization” at its most high-tech and destructive. From a canted, ground-level view, we look up across the lion at a hill of rubber tires and the concrete walls of his enclosure. Th ree U.S. fighter planes, heavy with bombs, roar overhead. Until the bombs destroy the zoo, however, animal politics prevail. Th e pride of the Baghdad zoo consists of the male Zill; the older female, Safa (blind in one eye); the younger female. Noor; and her male cub, Ali. Vaughan’s decision to make one of the lions young flirts with a Disney tradition, only to lay the ground for a harshly realistic revision of Th e Lion King. Noor coyly negotiates with antelopes and monkeys in a desperate bid for freedom. Safa, who knows that aggression organizes leonine hierarchies in the wild, angrily clings to the bleak security of imprisonment. Zill exasperatedly negoti- ates between them, while Ali’s cuteness and ignorance (he’s never lived outside captivity) heightens—rather than undercuts—the ominous mood. Vaughan is unapologetic about his anthropomorphism, which is emphasized through contrast with Henrichon’s realistic drawings. Th e writer retrieves childhood pleasure in talking animal texts but also understands that even readers, implacable in the face of vio- lence to humans, are often moved by violence to animals. He has described the text as an SSOANOAN 115,4_f7-f8_400-408.indd5,4_f7-f8_400-408.indd 440606 110/23/070/23/07 99:38:07:38:07 AAMM.

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