A review by myqz
Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf
4.0
Backderf has written a thorough, compassionate, and compact book here, and created the strongest argument for sequential art as a go-to art form for histories since March. While his art style is distinctive, it didn’t stand out nearly as much as his keen eye for editing a story. The art never distracts, it only illustrates, but in a history like this, that illustration is necessary to humanize. There is a difference between reading about bayonets, and being visually shown what it looks like as one enters a fleeing college girl’s abdomen.
Kent State was little more than a footnote in my American history curriculum and a Joni Mitchell song to me, and learning more about it, it’s easy to draw parallels to protest movements today; this history also serves as an explanation for why progressive protest movements never gain foothold in America: because the state will crush them, plant guns on their corpses, and bury them, leading a nation that not only excuses, but often delights in this bloodshed (Backderf cites a Gallop poll after the massacre in which only 11% of Americans blamed the troops in any way). Compassion isn’t just a extended to protestors or victims here, as Backderf also honestly illustrates the deployed National Guard members, many of whom were only enlisted to avoid being deployed in Vietnam.
Their comic filled me with a lot of anger, but it’s because the narrative was unflinching and uncompromising in reporting what actually happened. Victims are memorialized, guilty leaders are named (and history’s naming of these pathetic scumbags is the only justice they ever faced), and sources are exhaustively cited.
Kent State was little more than a footnote in my American history curriculum and a Joni Mitchell song to me, and learning more about it, it’s easy to draw parallels to protest movements today; this history also serves as an explanation for why progressive protest movements never gain foothold in America: because the state will crush them, plant guns on their corpses, and bury them, leading a nation that not only excuses, but often delights in this bloodshed (Backderf cites a Gallop poll after the massacre in which only 11% of Americans blamed the troops in any way). Compassion isn’t just a extended to protestors or victims here, as Backderf also honestly illustrates the deployed National Guard members, many of whom were only enlisted to avoid being deployed in Vietnam.
Their comic filled me with a lot of anger, but it’s because the narrative was unflinching and uncompromising in reporting what actually happened. Victims are memorialized, guilty leaders are named (and history’s naming of these pathetic scumbags is the only justice they ever faced), and sources are exhaustively cited.