REVIEW: The Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn, Niko Henrichon

The Pride of Bagh­dad by Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Hen­ri­chon, pub­lished 2006 by Ver­tigo (imprint of DC Comics), graphic novel, tells the story of a quar­tet of starv­ing pride lions who escaped the Bagh­dad zoo dur­ing the US bomb­ing of Iraq. This story is inspired by true events and packs an emo­tional punch to the gut in the telling.

The cover of this graphic novel drew me in imme­di­ately. Another thing that drew my atten­tion was the author: Brian K. Vaughn, who also wrote another favorite graphic novel series I read that won the cov­eted Eis­ner award, titled, Y: The Last Man. The book­seller at my favorite comic book­store stated that Vaughn and his pub­lisher had no idea how well received this graphic novel would be and had sold out of x-amount of copies in a record amount of time. I man­aged to find a hard­cover copy of The Pride of Bagh­dad and bought it. I read it quickly and wasn’t pre­pared for the emo­tional jour­ney sur­round­ing a set of pride lions who find them­selves free after their zoo has been bombed by US forces.

We see Bagh­dad through the eyes of the lions–Zill, Safa, Ali and Noor, who are rum­mag­ing around the war torn city of Bagh­dad. Their zoo has been bombed and they are left to fend for them­selves. The keep­ers of the zoo had fed them and then aban­doned them to their fate. The sky is full of fighter jets and the city streets look empty. We see them duck and doge artillery fire and bombs as they try to make safe pas­sage through the city. They run across civil­ian casu­al­ties as well as the casu­al­ties of other ani­mals caught in the cross­fire. The author empha­sizes the utter help­less­ness and igno­rance of these deserted ani­mals. They are inno­cent bystanders, caught in the mid­dle of a con­flict that they know noth­ing about.

Safa is an old lioness, who is blind in one eye. She has lived much of her life in cap­tiv­ity and doesn’t care to go back into the wild. There’s a flash­back of her being raped by four other lions. When the zoo is bombed, she decides to stay behind. She prefers liv­ing her life in cap­tiv­ity instead of being free and had con­sid­ered the “keep­ers” her friends. Soon, she gets a rude awak­en­ing in learn­ing the truth about her keep­ers, when it turns out that they tor­tured other ani­mals. Zill is more of an “oppor­tunist” accord­ing to the author, some­one who is con­cerned about the here and now. Ali was born in cap­tiv­ity and knows noth­ing of life out­side it and Noor is more of a fighter, a sur­vivor, who feels that free­dom should be earned and not given.

Most of the story is spent with the lions try­ing to find food and rel­a­tive safety. They run into a bit of law­less­ness from the other zoo crea­tures after they have been freed from cap­tiv­ity. Before the zoo was bombed, Noor had been plot­ting to escape and had tried to con­vince the other ani­mals to help with no suc­cess. She couldn’t con­vince the other crea­tures that they could all rise above their baser instincts to work together. She later proves it, when the ante­lope, apart from her herd, comes across the pride who are starv­ing and look­ing for some­thing to eat. Zill and the rest want the ante­lope as food but Noor inter­venes and lets her go. There are a cou­ple of bat­tle scenes where the group run into other wild ani­mals — like a blood-thirsty bear named Fajer.

The cli­matic con­clu­sion left me sucker punched. Dur­ing the fall of 2003, as the US forces try to gain con­trol of Bagh­dad, US sol­diers opened fire on the four pride lions. It leaves you with a ques­tion of why? What hap­pened? I’m sure they hadn’t planned on being con­fronted with zoo ani­mals let loose in the streets of Bagh­dad. Any­way, the author kind of ends the story on a cyn­i­cal note stat­ing that “there were other casu­al­ties.” The art­work was well done as was the plot­ting of this story. There are brief moments of humor and lev­ity and other moments of pity and out­rage. This graphic novel was recently released in paper­back. It’s a quick read with an emo­tional punch and I highly rec­om­mend this title to graphic novel fans. My grade, B+. It is rated for Mature read­ers, price for hard­cover $19.99 and $12.99 for the paper­back. I’m sure most libraries might have a copy as well.