The Unknown Soldier

The greatest injustice about injustice may be that, after a while, it gets boring.

Take the war against the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda as an example. That conflict started way back in 1987. That is before the civil wars Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Eastern DRC, and Darfur.

Basically, that conflict is old news. The articles have been written and rewritten. The severed limbs have been photographed. The invisible children are famous; the documentaries have been screened. It is older than old news.

Which is not to say that it is irrelevant. Quite the opposite in fact. With as many as 12,000 people killed and over 35,000 children abducted, it is a serious long-running crisis.

But the average human being can only remain horrified for so long, even at the most obvious horrors. At some point, if we have a choice, we just tune out.

And this is what makes it such a challenge for the activists who want to see this conflict brought to an end. It is hard to get people to care anymore. Not while there is a war on terror, and refugees in Darfur, and rampant rape in eastern DRC, and a recession, and Michael Jackson's death murder demise, and the next episode of America's Next Top Model.

These days it seems that for a problem as serious as a war to gain our attention, it had better touch us personally or entertain us.

So it should come as no surprise then that the latest effort to get us interested in the war in Northern Uganda comes in the form of a comic book. (Film, music, and good old-fashioned journalism have all been tried, so why not, right?) Vertigo's new series The Unknown Soldier, written by Joshua Dysart and illustrated by Alberto Ponticelli, makes a subject of the war in the north.

At the forefront is the good Dr. Lwanga Moses, a repatriated Ugandan who aims to use his medical skills to ease the suffering caused by the conflict. Not to ruin it for you, but the doctor does not stay good for long. The effect of the conflict on his character and the choices that he makes sets the stage for what is an otherwise typical comic book plot. Suffice it to say, there is plenty of violence and self-loathing in the first issue to keep fans of the genre intrigued.

And of course the politics behind the conflict is simplified and kept to a minimum. It has to be. This, after all, is entertainment, and not some political science seminar. 

That does not have to be a bad thing. Entertainment can usually make it past our psychological defenses against bad news. The packaging makes old news seem new, which in turn can make it easier to raise awareness.

At least for a while.

The first issue of The Unknown Soldier series is available as a free PDF download on the Vertigo website. The content is intended for mature readers.