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Notes for a War Story
by Gipi
Translated from the Italian by Spectrum
First Second Books, 2007. 125 pages.
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This gripping coming-of-age graphic novel warns us that the experience of mass trauma can erupt anywhere, anytime. The cause of this war isn’t revenge, however, it’s patriotism with its attendant voraciousness. And you don’t know how you’ll act until it finds you.

Notes for a War Story follows three teenage boys through a fictional war torn country that looks and sounds a lot like Italy.

San Donato. San Giuliano. San Martino. Where we’re from, all the villages had saints’ names. When they bombed a village it felt like they had really hurt somebody. Not a village but a town, an individual person.

Giuliano is a runaway from a middle class family who joins up with two street kids, Christian and Little Killer. Together they scratch out a simple existence in bombed out buildings until they meet the gang lord Felix. Felix is a local tough who peddles illegal goods on the black market (we never learn what the mysterious items are.) The allure of easy money draws the boys deeper and deeper into Felix’s schemes. Soon the three friends must pit themselves against the Russian mafia, and eventually, the guns of war.

Good Enough for Your Friends

What makes this story memorable is that Gipi, an Italian comic artist, weaves together some captivating themes. The three kids are hell-bent on growing up fast, becoming toughened men:

We lost points every time we weren’t tough enough. When we fell from the moped or a chick said no. And this was already happening before the war. But what did it really mean to ‘lose points’? Because if we’d kept them, what purpose would they have served? Perhaps there was a list of prizes to choose from, once we were dead? And how many points did we have when we were born? A thousand? Perhaps a thousand to spend every day, getting weaker and weaker…finally reaching zero. And then? What happened then? At zero points?

The narrator Giuliano struggles to prove himself to his two buddies, but can’t overcome the charisma and guile of Little Killer. Easily dominated, he eagerly follows Little Killer’s directions despite their violent implications. He dreams of headless figures who mock him for his comfortable upbringing. “It’s the class difference,” they say. “You have a house, a family. You’re not like us.” And while Giuliano tries to prove them wrong, he doesn’t take the risks that his friends do. When Little Killer collects Felix’s debts, Giuliano keeps a lookout. When they are beaten to a pulp by gangsters, it is Little Killer who asserts their revenge as Giuliano stands idly by. Giuliano is not strong enough to cut it in the world they wish to inhabit, and you can’t blame him. Where Little Killer wants to take them, there is no exit.

Hair

I can’t say that I am moved by Gipi’s drawing style. His figures have a somewhat sickly quality, and his depictions of hair have all the appeal of an infectious disease. But these shortcomings are offset by his gift for landscapes and backgrounds, which are often drawn with a watercolor technique. The dialogue is snappy and cynical, full of a hardscrabble wisdom. The gang leader Felix knows how to survive, and it’s hard not to listen. And Giuliano’s deadpan narration keeps you turning the page.

Anytown Eastern Europe

Gipi intended for Notes for a War Story to be set in any town around the world. He happened to choose Italian names of the towns in his original version (and in this translation) because he wanted the conflict to feel close-by. So in France, French names were used, Germany, German towns, and so on. I had mistakenly assumed that the work was set somewhere near the Adriatic Sea because of the Italian names, near Croatia perhaps, so I considered it to be another Balkan war story. The story did not feel close by to me. Gipi’s desire to create an Anytown might work in Italy, or certain parts of Europe (Albania?), but it was impossible for me to imagine the war occurring here because I didn’t see a single non-white character. My imagination is not that good: I live in Brooklyn.

It is still easy to understand why Gipi has been approached by film producers for this work. The adventure of the boys has the eerie, twisted quality of a gangster film like Menace 2 Society, or Casino. Violence looms over each frame. And the characters offer enough depth to suggest their story will continue on. (I particularly enjoyed Christian’s dream of buying a pocket rocket motorcycle.) Amazingly, all of the violence occurs off-panel. We never see the war, only its consequences. We do not watch Little Killer stab the Russian mafia, we find his victims lying on the ground. The reason is that the narrator Giuliano fears violence and looks away, and this work is as much as a warning against war as it is an exploration of boyhood friendships.

The Real Perpetrator
There’s more to Notes for a War Story than this. Clever plot twists permeate the story, but I won’t spoil them for you.

Instead I’ll leave you with this sobering thought from the gangster Felix:

Someone once said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But that’s bullshit — it’s not a refuge. It’s a four star hotel, with cable tv, massages, and room service… So let’s make a toast to patriotism. I’ve made a little bundle off that theory. Everything I have I owe to this blessed war.

Maybe that’s what Felix was peddling all along in those mysterious packages, to the headless figures of Giuliano’s dreams. Patriotism that is more valuable than drugs. A lot scarier than a ghost story, if you ask me.

–Deji Olukotun