Beautifully drawn and told story. Adult in nature, thought-provoking about the price of freedom and the nature of man. ( )

Despite the originality of the idea, and the wealth of symbolism and meaning such a story might have held, Vaughan did little with this book. He failed to capitalize on a story which certainly could have been interesting, but the plot, characterization, dialogue and overpowering allegory all drained this book of the strength and beauty it might have had.

There were some rather embarrassing factual errors, such as antelopes being kept within sight of lions at a zoo, sea turtles living in the Tigris, and zoo birds (which would have had flight feathers clipped) simply flying to escape their cages. If they could always just fly off, why didn't they do it before? However, these problems were only mildly annoying, and if the characterization and story had been strong, would have been negligible.

The characterization was awful, as was the dialogue. The overt and sensationalized sexism amongst the lions was insulting. Not only because it misrepresented animal sexual behavior, but because as a thinly-veiled allegory of human sexual behavior, it was both simplistic and sexist. Like in his 'Y the Last Man', Vaughan is interested in rape and gender inequality only for plot purposes, not for the sake of actually exploring the ideas.

The animal dialogue was also rather jarring to the reader, indicating that lions understood that the brain was the mental processing center (humans didn't get that until quite recently), that they measured time in seconds and integers, and that they felt their keepers were beneficent protectors. Vaughan did not make any attempt to create a dialogue based on the individual challenges and experiences of being a lion, but instead simply stuck cliched human characters in lion bodies.

Vaughan's lions are not lions, but overblown allegorical representations of the Iraqi people, a metaphor which becomes increasingly ham-fisted and awkward as the story continues. By the time we reach the climax, we have the antagonist delivering long philosophical speeches about power and rulership.

These prolonged speeches are set directly into the action sequences, so that between winding up and hitting, he delivers a good paragraph of moralism. I can only hope if I'm ever in a fight, my opponent will try to give me a summary of Plato's Republic between blows.

The art was passable but not great. It was often difficult to tell the lion characters apart from one another and action sequences were more abrupt than exciting. Tack on a weepy ending (to make us question our American nationalism) and roll credits.

If you want cute, badass animals in comic form, just read WE3 instead. It has better art, better characterization, a better plot, and less pulpit moralizing from the author. ( )

I really enjoyed this graphic novel which uses the escape of lions from Baghdad zoo as an allegory for the fate of the Iraqi people following the US led invasion. ( )

Basic Reason for Beginning: Now, you all know I hold to the opinion that there are some things that should not be forgotten. This book is about one of those things. So I snatched it up.
Basic Reason for Finishing: Graphic novels are short and, actually, there's a sense of hope for the ending and morbid fascination with the story as it unfolds. It is not a happy story.

Full review here.

Book Rereadability: I think... If it were just the story I would reread it. It's the graphic content that I have issues with. The violence fits, but that doesn't make it any less pleasant to watch.
Author Rereadability: I think I might, yes, if I had reason to believe other works weren't so violent... Or at least it occurs off-screen.
Recommendation: Not for the faint of heart of the young. This is not the kind of graphic novel you want to give you child. It's a very violent story and, though the artwork is not as detailed as it could have been, it's not undetailed either. ( )

Not a bad story, but too short to go into the kind depth it deserved. ( )