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Comic Review: Fax From Sarajevo (Kubert)

Well, this is no Safe Area Gorazde. I can only speculate on what I would have thought of this if I hadn't already read that. On the surface, they seem similar - stories about the war in the former Yugoslavia as Bosnia-Herzegovina tried to separate from Serbia. This time, instead of including stories from different people it told the story of a family that is friends with the Kuberts. The Kuberts were able to follow the story as it happened through faxes sent out between power outages, thus inspiring the title. So we learn about all the terrible things that happen to the family as they try to escape from Sarajevo as it starts becoming more and more dangerous of a place to live.

So why was this not nearly as powerful? I think the main characters were less sympathetic, especially after hearing the views of the people in Gorazde about the people in Sarajevo. I mean, they were still able to send faxes! OK, it is an impossible task to try to compare suffering of people in these kinds of situations. But the family in this also had friends all over the world trying to get them out of Sarajevo, after they had voluntarily come back just before the hostilities had picked up. Ultimately, these connections lead them to find a way to get out before the fighting ended. If anyone was a priviledged class in such a horrible situation, it was people like this family. And maybe this is an unfair view of things - the faxes themselves seemed more powerful to me than the cartoon depictions of what went on. Kubert's art style seems a bit too unrealistic to me to convey the horror of what was going on. It looked like a typical action sequence in a superhero comic.

And the depiction of the "bad guys" in the story was one-dimensional. They were evil, saying cliche evil things, doing evil things without any reason. Not like the heroes of this story, who were all selfless and good and never did anything mean to the bad guys. But the cliched presentation of the bad guys and the overwrought narration were just cringe-inducing to me. Sample: "What is the cost of a young life that could have been another Picasso... or a Da Vinci... or Beethoven? Or your child?"

It makes me wonder how much of an influence comics have on someone who has spent their whole life creating them and reading them. Of course, it is not just comics, but also a lot of TV and movies, probably. Do we need to easily classify people as good and bad? Try to make real life fit into our fictional story templates? How much does that affect our interpretation of what is really going on?

So, to sum up: Don't bother with this one, go check out Safe Area Gorazde instead.