The Other Side

This hard-hitting graphic novel examines life on opposing sides of the Vietnam War through the eyes of two young men. Bill Everette is a 19-year-old Alabama farm boy who's been drafted into the Marine Corps, while 19-year-old Vietnamese farmer Binh Dai enlists in the People's Army of Vietnam to fulfill his duty to his country. Along the way, Private Everette encounters demonically vicious drill instructors, talking maggots, voiceless ghosts and a rifle that begs him to shoot himself. Vo Dai must undertake the long march south through black forests and bloody swamps, past tigers, dragons and mounds of dead. Both men struggle with their own demons and nightmarish vision ... before their inevitable showdown. This impeccably researched, critically acclaimed book heralds the arrival of two new superstar talents: writer Jason Aaron and artist Cameron Stewart (Seven Soldiers of Victory).

"'Awar comic without heroism, Aaron and Stewart's uneven tale alternates sequences about two teenagers — red-blooded American Bill Everette and patriotic Vietnamese Vo Binh Dai — as they leave their homes and families and move toward the battlefield where each of them hopes to kill the enemy during the Vietnam War. Everette, drafted into a cynical, vulgar-mouthed, vulgar-minded platoon of Marines, desperately wants to survive, while Vo, a Buddhist who's slightly too idealistic to believe, longs to make a meaningful sacrifice for his national cause. The two combatants hallucinate constantly about death and decay; as the conflict enters the evocatively drawn landscape of the siege at Khe Sanh, the tone shifts from lurid grossness to bleak, smothering horror, and its stylized violence is sometimes hard to bear. Both Aaron's script and Stewart's crisp, impressionistic artwork (convincingly evoking the landscapes of the country and jungle, and colored in a palette that's mostly bloody reds and rotting greens) revolve around contrasts and reflections. But the title isn't just a reference to the opposing army: it suggests the way each of its protagonists is transformed, and loses his humanity by the process of being trained to kill.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)