The best of this year s graphic novels, including The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott (main image), Matthew Dooley s Flake, above right, and Derf Backderf s Kent State
Kent State, Derf Backderf, Abrams Comics, £17.99 Derf Backderf’s account of the shootings at Kent State University in 1970 is a work that balances anger and sadness, while reminding us of the cold terror of American soldiers opening fire on innocent students. At the end of a presidency that has ramped up political division and fuelled anger, it’s sobering to be reminded where this can lead to. Backderf’s potent, clear-sighted cartooning, the result of deep reading and original research, brings that home very clearly. Graphic Content’s book of the year.
âKent Stateâ On Top of PWâs 2020 Graphic Novel Critics Poll By PW Staff |
Released in September during the 50th anniversary year of the 1970 tragedy,
Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (Abrams ComicArts) by veteran comics journalist Derf Backderf garnered the majority of votes in
PW’s annual Graphic Novel Critic’s Poll, receiving eight votes from a panel of 14 comics critics.
In this deeply researched work, Backderf, best known for his Eisner-nominated 2012 graphic nonfiction work
My Friend Dahmer, reconstructs the lives and last days of the student activists and bystanders killed when the National Guard fired on unarmed antiwar protesters on the campus of Kent State University. The book presents a nuanced portrait of the equally young National Guardsmen, who were under extreme pressure and suffered from a severe lack of training, while deftly examining the polarized political context, anti-communist paranoia, and rampant government surveilla