Anyways, recently I read "Pride of Baghdad". It's tells the fictional story of four lions who escaped the Baghdad Zoo upon the American bombings in 2003. According to Wikipedia, it was actually released on my birthday, 2 years ago (No effin' way!). Anyways, the story is written by
Brian K. Vaughan, and illustrated by Niko Henrichon.
I made a blog on Threadless about comics/graphic novels that people have recently read. Along with some other comics, people had suggested picking up Pride of Baghdad. I usually head over to Borders Books every week or so because they e-mail me coupon codes thanks to their zweet rewards programs. So, recently I headed over to the ol' bookstore with a sweet 25% off coupon and I went in originally looking for Charles Burns Black Hole, but instead I found this gem. I was a little bummed that the one time I come into Borders and finally try and purchase Black Hole, it's sold out (seriously, I've gone into borders so many times and picked it up, only to put it down to get some lame Spider-Man TPB). But, picking up Pride of Baghdad was definitely worth it.
First of all, I haven't followed Brian K. Vaughan that thoroughly but I was familiar with his work. I had read the first 3 volumes of Y: the Last Man and I was pretty enthralled by the story, the only issue is I have so many other comics that I'm reading heat i haven't really been following the series as deeply as I do with other comics. At the same time, I've been following Ultimate X-men, and the current volume I'm on, and the few volumes to follow it have been written by Bendis, and to be honest, the issues I had read thus far (of X-men) had actually been really interesting. Anyways, we can discuss Ultimate X-men another time, but I'd like to add that on numerous occasions I've been suggested to read Runaways (which was also written by Bendis), so I was pretty confident in the awesomeness that would soon sex up my brain.
So, I started reading my book the day that I got it. I actually finished it that same night (which isn't a very common occurance with me). I think what aided me in really loving the book was the illustrating. The animals were drawn beautifully, the inking was done equally well. My favorite thing about the art was how diverse the landscape changed throughout the story. The way the landscapes were done really helped me invision the sort of amazement that the Lions felt as they were finally "free".
The only issue I sort of had with the book is that it felt like it ended so abruptly. The pacing was done well, it was a pretty lengthy story. However, I wish that the book had gone into more detail about each Lion's individual story, it gave brief indications about their pasts, but I really wanted to know more. It felt like just as soon as I started getting to know each Lion's unique personality, the story ended. But I also feel like the abrupt ending to the story was really what made me love this book, I won't go into details as to what happens at the end. But it definitely characterized the animosity and immorality that humans can really display.
I highly recommend Pride of Baghdad to anyone who enjoys a good story. However, this book is probably not the best to share with the little ones, or anyone who doesn't feel comfortable seeing giraffe's getting their head blown off (although, it's pretty awesome).
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