Shooting War

April 20th, 2008

I just finished reading the graphic novel “Shooting War” by Anthony Lappe & Dan Goldman. The story takes place in the near future of 2011 and is a story about a blogger turned reporter that is embedded with troops in the middle east. I had seen the book on the shelves at Barnes and Nobel but had not purchased it. As I was perusing my local public library last week I came across the book and decided to take it home.

I’m glad I did. The story was very interesting and suspenseful and the art is different than what most people think of when they think graphic novel. There is a melding or meshing of real world photographs and vector drawings done on the computer. I really enjoyed the art and the story and would recommend this book if you are into graphic novels and don’t mind a little adult language and content. I mean it is a book about war so what do you expect.

One of the most interesting things about the book to me was the use of product/corporation advertising. I don’t think that the authors got sponsorships to produce their book. I do believe that they were making a point about how much product placement we have right now in our television and movies, and they have imagined how bad it will be in a few years time when this story is based.

And for all you web savy geeks out there, the authors have put in several web references as the main character is a blogger so he needs to use cool web services. Here a a few that I can remember from the book: Treehugger, Huffington Post, Flickr and youtube. Jimmy (the main character) also uses an apple laptop featuring Apple Quicktime, Google Earth, and FireFox with google images as his default search. This book is full of techie hidden gems just waiting for you to discover along with the great art and story.

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