GUERILAS: Volume 1

by Brahm Revel, 168 pages, 6 x 9, b/w, Oni Press, paperback, $14.99

Set in Vietnam during the “war” there, this is the first of a reputed trilogy about a private in the U.S. Army, the frightened (not to say cowardly) John Clayton, who is the only survivor of a Vietcong attack that wipes out all the rest of his unit. As he contemplates his prospects for continued survival in the surrounding jungle, he is joined by a band of chimpanzees — gun-toting, cigar-chomping, military trained chimps — who effectively rescue him by taking him under their collective wing because they need someone who can light their cigarettes.

Revel’s drawing style is clean and clear and as realistic as his simplified manner can be. And it is happily enhanced with gray tones. As satisfying as it is to gaze upon his rendering of apes (at which he achieves simian perfection), it is his storytelling that is the chief distinction of this book. He often writes in counterpoint, paralleling the pictorial action with contrasting (and sometimes ironic) narrative captions. The maneuver emphasizes the way words and pictures can blend in comics to achieve a meaning neither makes alone without the other, a startlingly dramatic example of which occurs early in the novel when Clayton is calmly discussing father’s military career in captions as his unit is being attacked by a sniper in the accompanying pictures.

Later in the novel, another sort of parallel narrative transpires: we meet another bunch of soldiers whose adventures while assigned to a mysterious mission in the jungle alternate with developments in Clayton’s case. The mysterious assignment, we eventually conclude, involves tracking down the chimps that a scientist has trained as soldiers but who have probably gone off the rails and started killing and dismembering human soldiers. But that, we assume, will be revealed in the ensuing volumes of this series.