Welcome to all of our new friends! If this is your first foray into the world of graphic novels, you can find out more about the author of Pride of Baghdad and some of his other comics (Y: THE LAST MAN, EX MACHINA, RUNAWAYS, etc.) by adding his personal MySpace page today: http://www.myspace.com/briankvaughan
You can also read more about Pride of Baghdad in these interviews with WIZARD MAGAZINE and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY , which recently gave Pride of Baghdad this Starred Review:
"This story of a pride of lions that escape from the Baghdad zoo during Operation Iraqi Freedom bombing is simple, lavishly drawn and devastating. The four lions—Zill; his two wives, the young, ideological and passionate Noor and the older, more cautious Safa; and his son, Ali—must negotiate life outside their pen. The insanity of war and of Saddam's state comes out in Henrichon's stunning images, which can move seamlessly from earth-rocking video game to a grieving peaceable kingdom. A turtle mourning his dead family notes that the local humans called their tanks "the lions of Babylon," and then the tanks rush in. Later, an image of Safa facing a portrait of a winged lion backed by lightning is startling, as she wanders the splendor of an abandoned palace in wonder. Without taking sides, Vaughan has his marvelously imagined characters debate the concept of freedom versus desire for safety, and fills the animal conflicts between lions, antelopes and monkeys with all-too-human tropes of honor and betrayal. PRIDE parodies the surrealism of war, with bewildered yet realistic animals among the ruined, megalomaniacal monuments of Baghdad—and the total effect is memorable. (Sept.) *Starred Review"
Pride of Baghdad was also a recommended read in the new issue of GQ MAGAZINE , and on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION , host Neal Conan included Pride in his "Summer Reading Picks," right up there with The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick.