Trench Dogs

This blood- and gore-drenched graphic collection of vignettes from World War I renders the conflict as a nonstop horror show, in which all the combatants and civilians are rendered as anthropomorphic animals. The scene will be familiar to any student of WWI: the patriotic rush to enlist, introduction to the hellish muck and mire of the front, and the crescendos of artillery barrages and suicidal charges into enemy fire. Void of dialogue—wordless except for sound effects—the book unfolds like a flip book, jumping rapidly from a frontline aid station to the scene back home with “Votes for Women” signs and crippled vets wandering the streets. The almost cheerfully drawn, viscera-strewn pages cover the gamut of combat almost as though checking off a list, from trench warfare to aerial and tank combat, the ransacking of towns, and the sinking by submarines of passenger ships. Densford’s decision to draw characters as dogs, pigs, and birds (showing each country’s soldiers as different species) seems in homage to Maus but verges on gimmicky, and the effect here is distancing. While an ambitious effort, how this will strike readers depends on whether they buy into the cartoonish conceit. (Sept.)