I'm conflicted thanks to the author. On one hand... "I'm very grateful to Vertigo for being so supportive of an overtly political story about a conflict that's still ongoing."
Versus.. "There's not a single "moral" to the story that I'm hoping everyone will walk away with."
So is this hippie peacenik propaganda (said toungue-in-cheek) or just a general "war is hell and life sucks in the middle of it" story? All online discussion seems to hit a point where a guy says "so is this trying to promote an anti-war message?" and then suddently 2/3rds of the thread jumps on him with the usual circle-jerk for "proof that we needed to fight Saddam" and so on.
There's a little bit of stuff with the domesticated animals kept in the palaces that were treated like shit, but I don't think there's really any validity to somebody claiming that that's being presented as a good reason for invading the country.
I think the message behind the story is fairly clear, it's just that there's a little bit of "look okay we know the guy was bad" by using the treatment of the animals that were kept in the palaces ([spoilers]one of the lions is missing an eye because he was tortured for amusement and there's a bear whose whole life has been used for fighting other animals for amusement[/spoilers]) as the only real example.
However, something terrible happens in a flashback in Africa, and it's a group of lions doing it ([spoilers]one of the lions is missing an eye because she was attacked and raped by a neighbouring group of lions[/spoilers]). If anything, I'd say the only real generalized moral would be that bad things are bad so don't do them.
Acually, I was more concerned about it being a treatise on why we shouldn't have gone to war because OMGANIMALS or something. Having investigated further, I don't think I could take it just because of the explicit violence (yeah I know it's just drawings of animals, but...) but I first wanted to make sure I wasn't walking into a heavy-handed "NO LION BLOOD FOR OIL" political message.
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"I'm very grateful to Vertigo for being so supportive of an overtly political story about a conflict that's still ongoing."
Versus..
"There's not a single "moral" to the story that I'm hoping everyone will walk away with."
So is this hippie peacenik propaganda (said toungue-in-cheek) or just a general "war is hell and life sucks in the middle of it" story? All online discussion seems to hit a point where a guy says "so is this trying to promote an anti-war message?" and then suddently 2/3rds of the thread jumps on him with the usual circle-jerk for "proof that we needed to fight Saddam" and so on.
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I think the message behind the story is fairly clear, it's just that there's a little bit of "look okay we know the guy was bad" by using the treatment of the animals that were kept in the palaces ([spoilers]one of the lions is missing an eye because he was tortured for amusement and there's a bear whose whole life has been used for fighting other animals for amusement[/spoilers]) as the only real example.
However, something terrible happens in a flashback in Africa, and it's a group of lions doing it ([spoilers]one of the lions is missing an eye because she was attacked and raped by a neighbouring group of lions[/spoilers]). If anything, I'd say the only real generalized moral would be that bad things are bad so don't do them.
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