To End All Wars – The Graphic anthology of The First World War

It can be found on Amazon 

This collection, sold in aid of Medecins Sans Frontieres, tells a wide range of stories from the First World War.

There is something about the use of the “Graphic Novel”, or comic strip, format that creates a different kind of engagement with what is in many respects familiar material. Also the fact that there are many different contributors, and so the visual styles of the stories varies also helps to heighten the immediacy of the encounter.

These are short stories, but in most there is still a significant depth of characterisation. The is an energy to the stories that draws you into the centre of the action.

The majority of the stories focus on participants from the “Allied” side of the conflict, however this is a non-partisan collection, and when the focus is on a “German” story it is included on equal terms.

There is a strong anti-war (or at least anti-this-war) message throughout the collection. The First World War is seen as wasteful, and the leaders on both sides are shown as fools – it is very much in the “lions lead by donkeys” school of thought. Published in 2014, the introduction makes it clear that it is a deliberate counter narrative to the mythologising of the First World War that is currently surrounding much of the commemoration of its centenary. As such it would whole heartedly reject the views Gordon Corrigan advanced in “Mud, Blood and Poppycock” (which I read in Dec 2014).

But as with so much in life I tend to the view that the “truth” is somewhere in the middle – I certainly found so of Corrigan's attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Military Establishment were over stating the evidence, but there was much that he argued that seemed valid. In the same way I would I subscribe to the majority of the narrative here in “To End All Wars” - but again there were times when you got the feeling that facts were being shoehorned into an agenda.

While in terms of content there was no great revelation here, I think the mode and medium of the presentation make this deserving of a part on the ever more crowded shelf of First World War narratives.