Today’s Beat giveaway is the new graphic novel by comics Legend Joe Kubert, Dong Xoai 1965. In a starred review,  Publishers Weekly wrote:

In 1967, Joe Kubert illustrated a Veterans’ Day series run by a
newspaper syndicate and included a dramatic rendering of an episode from
the battle of Dong Xoai in which two members of a Special Forces team
helped one of their wounded comrades to safety. Years later, the wounded
man, Col. Bill Stokes, contacted Kubert about the drawing, and the
conversations that followed inspired Kubert inspired to create an
original graphic novel about the harrowing battle. In 1965, a Special
Forces œA-Team” was lifted into a remote Montagnard village near the
Cambodian border. Its original mission was strictly advisory, but a
change of plans relocated the team to Dong Xoai, a crucial point the
Vietcong needed for control of the region. In the middle of a torrential
downpour, a massive force of Vietcong launched an attack on the A-Team
and its contingent of poorly trained South Vietnamese soldiers. Kubert
tells the story of the assault, with waves upon waves of black-clad
guerrillas storming the barbed wire, in clipped, docudrama fashion (he
based this lightly fictionalized account on heavy research and
interviews, and the attention to detail shows). While Kubert’s dialogue
can slip into clenched-jaw heroics, his epic but personal treatment of
one incredible but little-remembered battle is in the running as one of
the greatest war comics ever made.

At age 83, Joe Kubert still has what it takes to capture the senselessness and humanity of war. The book has an extensive set of notes and photos covering the actual events in the back.

Do you want to own this book for your own library? The rules:

Email your NAME and your ADDRESS to [email protected] by 6 pm tomorrow (Tuesday) when another giveaway goes up!

1 COMMENT

  2. I’m a big fan of Kubert. And while I understand the reference that “Kubert’s dialogue can slip into clenched-jaw heroics” (which is occasionally reflected in his art as well), I was struck by how naturalistic and unself-conscious the cover art is. It’s almost reminiscent of the work of the king of “dogface” artists, Bill Maulden! Kubert still is producing topnotch work, more power to him. I look forward to picking this up.

  3. The new issue of Comic Shop News has a very good interview Kubert and how the Dong Xoai project came about. It includes lots of sketches from the book.

    The comic shop clerks who provide me with my copy of CSN were unfamiliar with 83 year old Mr Kubert, but thought he was “doing better work now than he had been on Sgt Rock” (ha ha, I laugh at the silliness of that comment).