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Reviews
COMIC REVIEW: Comic books as morality tales Ken Lowery, Oct 30, 2009
By Ken Lowery Staff Writer
Unknown Soldier Vol. 1: Haunted House Joshua Dysert and Alberto Ponticelli DC Comics/Vertigo Comics, 2009 Paperback, 144 pages
Recently, a colleague made a post on the Reporter blog about the number of pastors who are also comic book fans—and pointed out why that overlap might not be so strange after all.
Her post drew responses from pastors who said “Me, too!” Yet there were skeptical responses as well. One rather cynical person wondered if next we’d be searching for theological content on cereal boxes.
I don’t know from cereal boxes, but I do know from comic books. And while most superhero fare is saturated with a cheap justification for getting your way by brute force, there’s still plenty of comic book work—released monthly—that treads onto thornier moral territory.
Take Unknown Soldier, a DC Vertigo updating of the Silver Age Unknown Soldier character created by legendary war comicker Joe Kubert (co-creator of Sgt. Rock). The original Unknown Soldier was a horribly disfigured WWII intelligence officer who donned latex masks and make-up to impersonate people on missions.
The new Soldier, as created by Joshua Dysert, is the well-meaning Moses “Patrick” Lwanga, a Ugandan expatriate, doctor and philanthropist who returns to his homeland in 2002 to build and run a free clinic.
Dr. Lwanga is a staunch pacifist who is haunted by dreams of extreme violence—committed by his own hands. When two child soldiers of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army ambush and mutilate him, leaving him for dead, something in Dr. Lwanga’s head snaps. It’s after this brutal attack that Sister Sharon, a nun who runs a remote orphanage for young girls, takes the unrecognizable Dr. Lwanga in to heal him.
The plot threads split in many directions at this point, but a strong theme underlines them all: as Dr. Lwanga rages back and forth between his previous pacifism and his spooky proficiency at murder, Uganda at large struggles between using violence and force or peace and mercy (as personified in Sister Sharon) to find its equilibrium. Dr. Lwanga, a faithful Christian, finds it hard (and sometimes impossible) to reconcile his earnest faith with the violent and corrupt world around him, and with monsters like Kony who routinely corrupt the message of Christ.
What’s so refreshing (and not a little relieving) about Mr. Dysart’s Unknown Soldier is that the story doesn’t dismiss the pacifism of people like Sister Sharon or Dr. Lwang’s wife, Sera—a strong and fearless doctor in her own right. And Sister Sharon is routinely portrayed as brave—brave enough to wander the brush and attempt negotiation with armed soldiers to spare the lives of her children.
Make no mistake: Unknown Soldier is an R-rated comic, and it does not hide the often-intense violence that marks the lives of so many there. The violence is never glorified, however, even when it’s Dr. Lwanga committing it. We are horrified, and we are meant to be.
Child soldiers, well-meaning celebrities, amoral CIA operatives, international journalists—all the major players are represented, some more flatteringly than others. Mr. Dysart writes with the sober, fact-laced intensity of someone who feels very passionately about the subject. It’s to his credit that he and artist Alberto Ponticelli so clearly convey the conundrum of front-line mission work, and that he can do it without making the whole thing feel like a kind of tourism.
Take Unknown Soldier, a DC Vertigo updating of the Silver Age Unknown Soldier character created by legendary war comicker Joe Kubert (co-creator of Sgt. Rock). The original Unknown Soldier was a horribly disfigured WWII intelligence officer who donned latex masks and make-up to impersonate people on missions. 
