Sunday, January 4, 2009

PHESP review: Pride of Baghdad

This awesome graphic novel written by Brain K. Vaughan and illustrated by Niko Henrichon was released by DC Comics in 2006 and is a fictionalized take on the true story of four lions that escaped from the Baghdad zoo during the American 2003 bombings in the beginning of the Iraq war, and was winner of the IGN award for best original graphic novel in 2006.

I picked this comic up when browsing around my local book sore in Melbourne around Christmas time and was immediately attracted to the awesome illustrations. Having heard of the true story of the lion’s escape in 2003, I was amazed and impressed that someone had created a graphic novel about it. Although it is a fairly short story I thought it to definitely be worthy enough for a place in my personal collection and I was not disappointed.

The story revolves around the four lions, their escape and what they encounter in the ‘real-world’.. wondering around the desolate city, the small pride encounters a brief period of freedom whilst learning more about their lives, and that of the humans before their unfortunate but inevitable abrupt ending. 





Check out Amazon or Wikipedia’s reviews for more info.

We rated this:

Characters 3/5       Story 4/5     Graphics 5/5      Overall 4/5