SHOOTING WAR began as a serialized web comic here on SMITHMAG.net in May 2006. What was to be a short online preview of the story expanded to 11 bi-weekly chapters as reader and media interest grew. Earlier this year, the web comic was nominated for an Eisner Award.
In the fall of 2006, the story was acquired by Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) for publication as a hardcover graphic novel in North America and in the U.K. by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Think of the web comic as a sort of beta version of the book. We ended up remastering every panel from the online version, reworking the storyline and the political context, some of which came as a result of suggestions from our loyal readers on this site. The full-color 192-page hardcover graphic novel takes the story to its dramatic conclusion and features over 110 pages of new material, including all new plots twists and, by popular demand, more Dan Rather than you can shake a dead armadillo at.
The original (unedited) web comic chapters can we viewed here.
A scathing near-future satire of the Iraqi occupation that rings with eerie plausibility, this Web comic-to-print hardcover collection follows a cocky young journalist named Jimmy Burns, who finds himself video-blogging across the front lines of Iraq in the year 2011. An accidental Internet celebrity transplanted suddenly to the Baghdad battlefields, Jimmy quickly progresses from arrogant to regretful, then jaded—in short, he is America in Iraq.
As the world slowly disintegrates around him, Jimmy finds himself caught between the competing agendas of Muslim insurgents, the American military and a sensational cable news network as they all clamor for blood on the battlefields. Journalist and first-time graphic novelist Lappé takes obvious delight in skewering all three with a whip-smart, left-leaning indictment of both American media and foreign policy that offers little hope and fewer heroes.
The bleak prognostications are cut with black humor and a penchant for explosions that keep the narrative moving.
The collection adds 110 pages of new content to the Web version, and Goldman's art, a cinematic blend of photography and digital painting, is framed in widescreen panels that lend an air of video documentary to a grim graphic novel that manages to make media—and the truth—seem more fluid than ever.
