UNKNOWN SOLDIER #23
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Art by ALBERTO PONTICELLI
Cover by DAVE JOHNSON
Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99
This review contains spoilers, click here to read
With each passing issue I find that I'm a little more in love with this comic, which makes it's inevitable end in two months time even more devastating. Josh Dysart has managed an extraordinary feat, conveying the epic conflict within the Ugandan nation through the microcosm of a more intimate story of three or four main characters. It's an extremely difficult balancing act, and even experienced, accomplished storytellers have difficulty achieving it.
Issue 23 seems to have a slightly jarring quickening of the pace. Throughout the series Dysart has always seemed free to take his time but presumably he was given a certain number of issues to wrap things up and he's having to move things forwards sooner than he would have liked. It's not a problem so much as an adjustment that the reader has to accept and go with. In this story he extablishes the hinted links between Moses and the previous Unknown Soldier(s), which does have cause to take the plot away from it's African focus for a while. However, I like the tie to past DC/Vertigo continuity and it makes sense given Moses' bandaged appearance. Thankfully it doesn't take too long to put our soldier back on his original mission brief: to hunt down and kill Joseph Kony. Seizing his opportunity to track the man down at last, Moses pauses only to have what may be a final meeting with his wife Sera while also providing Jack Howl a long sought redemption.
It's in Howl and Sera that I find my sympathies lie in this book, and they're brilliantly realised characters. Don't get me wrong, Moses Lwanga is a very compelling protaganist but it's in these more human supporting characters that the real emotion is to be found. Sera is the best human being in the book, trying desperately to both locate a husband she's sure is alive while still trying to maintain her efforts to provide aid to injured and sick Ugandans. Howl, meanwhile is a man at the other end of his life, his youthful idealism burned by CIA policy finally finding an opportunity to accomplish a sliver of good by reuniting Sera and Moses. That done, he appears to bow out, happy to fade into the Africa he loves and, no doubt, wait to be killed.
The final pages set us on two courses. One is next month's "Secret Origin" of the Unknown Soldier if you like, which will presumably be followed by the resolution to Moses' Ugandan mission to round the series out. When I think about these characters and the story as a whole I'm convinced there's nothing else like this out there. I've no idea if Dysart even comes close to recreating Uganda and the civil war convincingly, but I do know that it FEELS authentic. I also know that the people he writes about are about as genuine as it's possible to get. If the real world holds any interest for you at all buy the trades when they come out, because it's all right here in this book. You'll be gripped for page after page after page....
Art: 5 - Excellent
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