Report on Pride of Baghdad

I took an English class about graphic novels my senior year. Our final essay was a report on a comic we read that wasn’t on the curriculum. I wrote about what is probably my favorite book, Pride of Baghdad, an allegory about the Iraq war based on a true story.

In April of 2003, a month into the Iraq War, four lions escaped from their cages at the Baghdad zoo. They wandered the streets of Baghdad, starving, for days until they were shot and killed by American troops. This true story served as the inspiration for Brian K. Vaughan’s 2006 graphic novel Pride of Baghdad. Teaming up with artist Niko Henrichon, Vaughan used the death of these four lions to construct a deeply moving story that serves as a political allegory, commentary on the impact of war, and raises a powerful question about the nature of freedom.

I first picked up Pride of Baghdad shortly after its release on a whim. I had just started to seriously read comic books and graphic novel (as supposed to collections of newspaper funnies,) and thought that Pride of Baghdad had a cool cover. It was shrink-wrapped, so I was not able to flip through it or learn anything more about it that what it said on the back of the book. Little did I know that I was purchasing what would turn out to be my favorite book, and what is still the only book to ever make me cry.

Brian K. Vaughan is a big name in the comics world, and has been in the business a long time. Born in 1976, Vaughan entered the world of comics while studying film at New York University. In the 1995-1996 academic year, New York University partnered with Marvel comics for the Stan-hattan Project, a cheeky portmanteau of  Marvel’s Stan Lee and the Manhattan Project. The program was intended to develop new writers for Marvel, and by the end of 1996, Vaughan had his first writing credit for Marvel Comics’ Tales From the Age of Apocalypse #2. Vaughan went on to write for many top tier characters for both Marvel and DC comics, including X-Men, Spider-Man, Green Lantern and Batman.

As he became more established in the comics community Vaughan wanted to start telling stories using original characters, rather than the longstanding characters. Though he loves the characters, and enjoyed his time working on them, Vaughan was eager to create his own characters. Vaughan noted that people like “Geoff Johns and Mark Millar […] are much better at finding ways to use [their] own voice with other people’s characters. It’s not my strength.”[1]

Vaughan’s most well known original works are Runaways, an ongoing Marvel series that takes place in the main Marvel universe. Runaways is about a group of teenagers who, upon finding out that their parents are supervillians, and that they too have superpowers, rebel against their parents. Vaughan left the series in 2007, and won an Eisner for his work. Vaughan also wrote Y: The Last Man, a science fiction story about a mysterious plague that kills ever male on earth, except for one twenty-two year old and his pet monkey. Vaughan’s other major work was Ex Machina, about Mitchell Hundred, the world’s first and only superhero, who was elected mayor of New York City after his heroic actions on 9/11.

Vaughan’s monthly series have similar themes and styles. Vaughan enjoys the serialized nature of monthly comics, calling the serialized written word the “Dickensian art form” This style of storytelling is rarely found outside of ongoing comic series, and such storytelling relies on expert use of pacing and cliffhangers to help propel and express the story. Though his love for serials is ongoing, Vaughan likes to have his works have a definite end, claiming “that’s storytelling, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Something like Spider-Man, a book that never has a third act, that seems crazy.”[2] In addition Vaughan’s works are almost all have a political or social message to convey. Y: The Last Man is about the gender divide and inequality, and Ex Machina reflects Vaughan’s disappointment with political leadership following 9/11.[3] This propensity towards political commentary is in full effect in Pride of Baghdad.

Pride of Baghdad was Vaughan’s first graphic novel, as compared to the monthly serials he had written before. Vaughan “wanted readers to experience the suddenness with which these animals’ lives were changed and that worked much better in a story that can be read in one sitting, as opposed to over several months.”[4] He also was eager to challenge himself by writing in a format outside of his usual format comfort zone. Vaughn had very conflicted feelings about the Iraq War. Eager for a story to express these thoughts and emotions in a comic, he noticed a mainly overlooked BBC News article about the deaths of the four escaped lions. Noting “comics have always had a pretty rich tradition of telling meaningful stories with anthropomorphized animals,”[5] Vaughan decided to use this as the basis of his story. The lions’ story was helpful in expressing Vaughan’s themes because, according to Vaughan, “it’s very difficult to empathize with foreign casualties of war. It’s always difficult to connect with ‘the other.’ Animals have a way of bridging that gap.’’[6] Vaughan first pitched the story to Vertigo (an arm of DC Comics,) at the height of what he called “Dixie Chicks paranoia,”[7] when criticism of the Iraq war was social and professional suicide. Nevertheless, Vertigo let him tell this story. As he worked on the script, it became time to decide upon the artist. An editor at DC Comics put him in contact with Niko Henrichon, and their partnership began.

Niko Henrichon is a French-Canadian illustrator and comic artist who received his artistic training in Belgium. Inspired in large part by the European comics tradition, especially the art of Moebius, Henrichon’s first big work was Barnum!, a graphic novel written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman, though he has also illustrated issues of more mainstream comics such as Spider-Man and Fables. Vaughn was looking for an artist who could draw expressive animals and realistic locations, with a higher degree of verisimilitude than the typical Disney design, and Henrichon delivered. His art is somewhat unique among mainstream comic artists in that he often forgoes inking, opting instead to color his pencils, which combined with a pastel-like pallet results in a soft, yet lush and realistic image.

Pride of Baghdad opens in the Baghdad Zoo, where the reader is introduced to the main characters. Safa is an old lioness, blind in one eye from an event that took place before her capture. Her past experiences make her view the safety that comes with confinement in the zoo with a more accepting positive light. This puts her in contrast with Noor, a younger lioness who desperately wants to escape imprisonment in the Zoo, going so far as to try to coordinate an alliance with the neighboring antelope, using their naturally docile nature to catch the keepers unawares. Noor is the current mate of Zill, the group’s male lion. Zill remembers life before the zoo, especially the now lost sight of a horizon fondly, but is opportunistic, cynical, and above all apathetic, unwilling to consider any course of action one way or another. Finally, there is Ali, Noor’s young cub, an optimist who knows no life but that of the zoo.

In a breathtakingly graphic and violent scene, bombers hit the Baghdad Zoo, giving the lions their chance to escape. Zill is delighted with the freedom that has, pretty literally, fallen into their laps. Noor is somewhat wary of the nature of their newfound freedom, articulating one of the book’s major themes when she tells Zill “there’s an old saying … Freedom can’t be given, only earned.”[8] Safa at first refuses to leave the zoo, preferring the relative safety of captivity to the dangers of the outside world. She only agrees to leave when it falls upon her to rescue Ali from a group of monkeys who have captured him.

The lion’s response to their freedom is somewhat aimless. Vaughan intentionally constructed his story so that there was no specific endgame in mind for the lions. “There’s no McGuffin,” he said in an interview with Comic Book Resources. “They’re not trying to find a magical amulet or whatever. Like everything I’ve ever written, it’s just a story about a group of characters who want to do the right thing, but have no idea what that is.”[9] During the lions’ travels, they come across an old turtle, who has lots of experience of the horrors of war. This is illustrated in a horrifying flashback panel depicting the mangled corpses of the turtle’s friends and family dead in an oil spill, casualties of man’s war. They debate the acceptability of eating the corpses of their former captors, who, despite being jailers, provided them with food.

In the books most action packed scene, and Henrichon’s personal favorite part of the book[10], while hunting a group of white horses, the lions stumble into what’s assumed to be the Hussein’s former palace. There, Noor and Safa find a starving, abused pet lion, and Fajer, a monstrous black bear. Fajer effortlessly fights off Noor and Safa, fully blinding Safa in the process. It is Zill, finally taking initiative that is able to take down the beast. Announcing “I am not a hunter. I am a fighter,”[11] Zill brutally battles Fajer, winning the fight when he launches Fajer out of a window, and Ali springs a trap by scaring the horses and having them trample Fajer. His spine shattered, the lions leave him to slowly die.

Starving, injured, and lost as ever, the foursome climbs up a pile of rubble to a rooftop. There, in an absolutely beautifully drawn double splash page, they view the sun setting over the horizon. They view the sight, which for Zill especially is the epitome of freedom. Safa asks Zill “was is worth it old man? For this?” The question is an honest one, and one that is never answered, as Zill is suddenly felled by an American soldier’s bullet. Safa attempts to retaliate, but is gunned down, as are Noor and Ali. As Noor dies, her speech turns into scribble, while another world bubble becomes legible. It is the American troops. They are not shown in full, and we never see their faces, and their dialogue makes clear that they were not out to hunt lions. They came across them unexpectedly and acted as anybody would have. “Where’d they come from sir? Those things aren’t wild out here are they?” one soldier asks. His commanding officer responds “No, not wild. They’re free.”[12] It was at this point upon reading the book for the first time where I broke down into tears.

Pride of Baghdad is an incredibly well written and complex work. It is notable in that there are several viewpoints expressed by different characters. Vaughan does not overtly endorse any of these varying viewpoints, aside from perhaps the turtle’s observation that war wreaks havoc on the innocent. Vaughan was not looking to, nor could he tell his readers what the right viewpoint or answer was. “I wrote this story not because I have all the answers, but because I wanted to ask myself hard questions about the Iraq War, the nature of occupation, and the price of freedom.”[13]

One thing I missed upon my initial readings of the book was the extent to which the different characters were representative of specific aspects of the Iraqi population in addition to being broader symbols of different views of freedom. Safa, who was brutally raped by a gang of male lions in her free past, and who accepts imprisonment in the zoo over the ravages of the wild, is representative of Iraq’s older population. Though Hussein was an unjust dictator, in the minds of many older Iraqis, the tyranny and relative stability of the Ba’ath party rule was better than the horrors of civil war. Safa views Noor’s ideas of freedom as flights of fancy fueled by idealism and ignorance. Noor, like many Iraqis, was eager for freedom from Hussien. Ali is the youth generation, who know nothing but Hussein’s Iraq. Zill is perhaps a stand in for the majority of Iraqis, whose chief concern is keeping their families safe and fed rather than engaging in a larger battle.

The battle with Fajer the bear has weighty symbolic importance in addition to its role in driving the plot. The victory comes through a group effort. Zill takes a stand, and Ali the young optimist, uses the horses, symbolic of hope and freedom to crush the tyrannical ursine. Their victory and escape from danger is tragically temporary, but the combined effort is telling. Through these events, Vaughan’s message is clear. “No matter what side of the conflict we think we are on, there is no simple answer.  We can’t break these ideas down into simplistic slogans or trite sayings and we must at least attempt to digest all the potential angles if we really want to find any kind of understanding of freedom.”[14] No one viewpoint wins on its own, and given the ultimately tragic end of the story, it could be argued that there really is no winner at all in war.

Vaughan makes his most overt allusion to the human side and cost of the war in the books final pages. After the lions are shot, a series of two-page splash pages track the progression of a bird, flying free among American jets, over the ruins of the city, and finally to a more remote village. There the bird lands on the statute of “The Lion of Babylon,” depicting a lion pounced in a man who is fighting the beast off. This statue had been described earlier in the book by the turtle as being part of a legend that “says that as long as that statue’s still standing, this land’ll never fall to outsiders.”[15] The bird’s flight is accompanied only by the unattributed text that tersely tells of the lions escape and that “the starving animals were eventually shot and killed by U.S. soldiers.” As the bird flies to the statue, the last words of the book appear over the Iraqi houses. “There were other casualties as well.”[16]

By changing from speech bubbles to an unattributed narration, and by having the action rise above the lions to Iraqi homes while following the flight of the bird, Vaughan changes the focus from just the story of the lions to something greater. The focus moves from the largely fictionalized story of these escape lions to a reminder of the human cost of war on the Iraqi people. As one critical analysis of Pride of Baghdad noted, “this direct address from the author reminds us that there are very real events occurring thousands of miles away as we read this.  That whatever conflicts we have jointly explored within ourselves, there is a very tangible and bloody conflict raging across the sea.”[17]

Ending on a shot of “The Lion of Babylon” raises questions about the nature of war and freedom, yet does not attempt to answer them. The statue still stands, and the people of Iraq have not fallen to the Americans completely. But they have been given freedom, or have they? The relationship between the war in Iraq and the lions’ journey is apparent, and we don’t know the answer to Safa’s final question to Zill if it was all worth it. Perhaps it depends on your point of view. Vaughan does an exceptional job of conveying the complexities of war and freedom without being too heavy handed. Pride of Baghdad was intended by Vaughan as a way to ask the hard questions, not to attempt to answer them. The final pages are deeply symbolic. The same critical analysis notes this complexity saying “Freedom and destruction land atop timeless solidarity and it is unmoved. Perhaps, over time, these ideas are less tangible than we tend to believe and more intertwined than we wish were convenient.”[18]

In terms of the veracity of the story, it is clear from the get go that Pride of Baghdad is only based on a true story. As a general rule, in any work involving talking animals, one can reasonably assume that some liberties have been taken with reality. Vaughan used the news story of the lions to construct a powerful allegory about the nature of freedom and the Iraq war. Nobody knows what actually happened during the lions’ wanderings through Baghdad, and there are even discrepancies regarding the basic facts of the story. Some news organizations only reported the deaths of three lions. Regardless, Vaughan used their tale as a basis for his story that spoke to a larger, complex truth, which in this instance is clearly more important than the unknowable realities of the lives and deaths of these four animals.

Vaughan’s storytelling abilities and the plot of the graphic novel are fantastic, but would not be half as impactful were it not for Henrichon’s visuals. On a basic level, Henrichon was able to accomplish the difficult task of making the four lions emote without making them too cartoony. Vaughan and Henrichon also make the decision to make the backgrounds big, very detailed and realistic. Almost every page has some sort of bleed, ranging from full splash pages to just specific panels. Henrichon combines the sweeping nature of his environments with a tendency to keep the lions very small in most establishing shots. They are very much lost and out of their element, and by portraying the king of the jungle as tiny in a big city, a message is conveyed. “The environment has to be very important in the story,” Henrichon said in an interview. “I wanted to give the feel of the background and the very hostile environment. So I keep a lot of space for it.”[19] Vaughan’s script and Henrichon’s visuals don’t dwell on images. The journey of the four lions moves pretty quickly, leaving little time for the story or the art to focus on specific ancillary details. As a result, there are almost no aspect-to-aspect transitions. The art moves fast, but neither it nor the story seems rushed.

Pride of Baghdad was released to nearly universal positive reviews, though it has not reached the same tier of popular and critical acclaim as many of the other graphic novels we have read in this class. Mainstream media reviewers praised Henrichon’s art and the emotional impact of Hernichon’s story. It got positive reviews from the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Variety, and The Portland Mercury among several others. IGN.com named Pride of Baghdad as its best original graphic novel of 2006, “Occasionally a concept screams ‘classic’ before it even sees the light of a comic book shop,” the review begins. “Pride of Baghdad is one of those ideas and its execution exceeded our highest expectations.”[20] Pride of Baghdad helped Niko Henrichon gain a much broader recognition, and Vaughan views the work as a total success, claiming, “no matter what other projects I write down the line, ‘Pride of Baghdad’ will probably always be the work I’m most proud of.”[21]

Pride of Baghdad is a very complex and important book. The Iraq War started in 2003, and though it has officially ended as of December of 2011, many of the same questions and conflicts remain relevant today. Brian K. Vaughan used the true story of these four escaped lions to create a graphic novel that raises hard questions about America’s wars, the Iraqi people, and the true nature of freedom. Using animals as a metaphor, Vaughan and Henrichon make their readers ponder the answers to these questions. There are no easy answers, but they are issues that deserve to be recognized for their complexities, and through telling of the tale of Zill, Noor, Safa and Ali, Pride of Baghdad does just that.