To Afghanistan And Back (Updated Edition)

by Ted Rall

Some graphic novels are so far beyond the genre that it’s hard to classify them as graphic novel to people. Works like Persepolis, Maus, The Alcoholic, and Fun Home are graphic novels in every definable way, but they’re more memoir than novel, of course. It’s these kinds of graphic novels, however, that attract academia. Let’s be honest—graphic novel courses would have never been aloud if we didn’t have Maus to “legitimize” the genre. Well, now there’s a newcomer to this seemingly elite category: To Afghanistan and Back by Ted Rall. In fact, Afghanistan sets itself in even another category altogether by calling itself a “graphic travelogue.” It’s a journalistic graphic novel, aiming for the heights of going legit like the others mentioned before. There’s just one little problem. It’s not a graphic novel. It’s not a graphic travelogue. It’s good, but it’s just not what it sells itself to be.

I got this graphic novel in the mail, a review copy, all excited to read something new and different (not that I don’t love everything else). As well, I wanted to read about this journalist’s experience because not only am I pitching a novel dealing with Afghanistan, but also because my brother had served there for quite a long time. So I open to the first page, read Bill Maher’s introduction, followed by Ted Rall’s prologue, and then prose chapters. I have no problem reading prose. In fact, despite that I work so much with graphic novel, most of what I read is still prose. But when I’m sold a “graphic travelogue,” I want a graphic travelogue. Whatever, I can deal with 35 pages of memoir before the graphic novel actually begins.  And Ted Rall’s prose is actually pretty good. It’s engaging even if you disagree with his position (but really, is anyone going around talking about what a swell guy Bush was?). If I was ever tempted to be a war time journalist, Rall helped me realize how crazy I’d have to be. Describing their situation, Rall says “the [Northern] Alliance [turned] us into targets by [forcing] us into caravans of rented vehicles containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, traveling across remote dustscapes, with no more control on human behavior than the estimated five million mines planted among the spindly trees alongside the road.” Yeah, probably not the best place to be…okay, I’m still intrigued by the idea, but will probably never do it.

So now the 35 pages of prose are over and the actual graphic travelogue begins. And it’s good. He develops even further. His artwork is in the accepted style of graphic memoir, with very little definition (remember what McCloud said in Understanding Comics: the less defined the character’s face, the more we the reader can identify with him/her) and drawn somewhere between Art Speigelman’s and Marjane Satrapi’s style. This style works really for Ted Rall. Like the other two, there’s something about the very cartoony style juxtaposed with the seriousness of the content that just drives the seriousness home. There are scenes of journalist being sent home in boxes that have such a haunting effect that wouldn’t have existed if this was drawn by a big time artist. But it feels like once it begins, the graphic travelogue is over and we’re brought back into prose-town.