The Four Color Media Monitor

Something I'd almost missed, Wired's Underwire book section wrote about a new graphic novel called the Blackwater Chronicles being co-written and drawn by Billy Tucci, who's mainly known for Shi, which he created in the mid-90s, that focuses on the villifed-by-lefitsts military security contractor that worked in Iraq almost a decade ago, although there are some biases appearing here in this article written at the SDCC:

SAN DIEGO — War correspondent Robert Young Pelton approached Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary company Blackwater, with a bold proposal in late 2004. Pelton, a veteran who’s covered more than a dozen conflicts, wanted to ride along for a month with the toughest for-profit soldiers in Prince’s outfit, in what was then the most dangerous place in the world: Route Irish, the 12-mile stretch of highway connecting Baghdad’s airport to the Green Zone, the fortified neighborhood surrounding the U.S. embassy.

In exchange for unprecedented access, Pelton would tell the real story of Blackwater’s security contractors, men that Pelton and his co-writer Billy Tucci later described as being “attacked by terrorists, hated by the media [and] loved by the troops and the men they protected.”

Pelton’s upcoming graphic novel The Blackwater Chronicles is the result. Based on Pelton’s book Licensed to Kill and co-written by Pelton and Tucci, with pencils by Tucci and colors by Brian Miller, The Blackwater Chronicles is a gritty, unflinching portrait of hard men in a hard place at a moment in history that most Americans would probably prefer to forget. Wired met up with Tucci at Comic-Con International for a preview of the graphic novel, slated for a 2013 release.

I don't know if claiming Americans would rather forget the Iraq war so much as I'm sure there's plenty who'd rather the leftist media stop villifying the military and its allies like the Blackwater company, whom they're still going after, despite the tragedy they experienced in 2004 that's referenced here:

Two panels down, something reflects in the goggles attached to the man’s helmet: mutilated bodies dangling from a highway overpass — an obvious reference to the 2004 killing of four Blackwater employees by insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq. Their burned corpses were hung from an overpass as a statement of terror. [...]

Tucci says he was surprised how willing the contractors were to talk about even their worst experiences. “Some have been blown up, seen guys get killed, been shot up — a lot have been shot … what struck me is how open they are about it,” he says.

But many Americans, soured on the seemingly endless reports of atrocities committed by U.S. troops and contractors, don’t want to hear about mercenaries’ humanity. The Blackwater Chronicles is still months away from publication, and already Tucci is drawing flak: He’s been accused of creating pro-Blackwater propaganda.

“A lot of people don’t want to put a human face on Blackwater,” Tucci says. “A lot of people don’t want to know what their government does.”

For his part, Pelton welcomes the pushback. “Artists should challenge people’s perceptions,” he tells Wired by e-mail.

Yes, they should, or conservative-leaning writers should be allowed to relate their viewpoints just as much as liberals. 4 of the company's employees were butchered in 2004, and that's not something demanding offense and outrage at how those barbarians would murder foreigners trying to protect innocent soldiers and civilians? Sigh.

The claim that "many" Americans don't want to hear the deeper story on Blackwater is obfuscating the real picture: it's many leftists who don't, and if anything, I wish Tucci would have the courage to cite that fact.

Despite the signs of leftist leanings in Wired's report, they're still willing to be favorable to it. The hostility to Blackwater from the left is strange, considering that they once donated to Bill and Hilary Clinton. I wonder if Tucci's new venture explains why, at least when he first began his career, the majors didn't want to hire him, because he's a rightie.

Labels: good artists, good writers, indie publishers, islam and jihad, politics, terrorism