Graphic novel tells Iraq's story via lions

The real-life escape of a pride of lions from the Baghdad Zoo has become a political allegory, a contemplation of freedom and liberation and sacrifice - all with talking animals.

"Pride of Baghdad," a graphic novel written by Brian K. Vaughan, was inspired by news reports about four lions that fled the zoo during a bombing raid in spring 2003 and were killed by U.S. soldiers.

"I'd been looking to do a story with anthropomorphized animals because it was so different than anything I had done before and because comics have a really rich tradition of doing that well," Vaughan says. As examples, he points to everything from Scrooge Mc-Duck to "Maus," the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

At the same time, he says, "I also had been hungry to talk about my conflicted feelings about the Iraq war."

So when he read about the escaped lions, "sort of immediately all of the pieces fell into place."

"Pride of Baghdad," published by Vertigo, DC Comics' mature-reader line, is set for release Sept. 13.

It follows four main characters as it builds toward its inevitable tragic ending: Zill, head of the pride; Safa, the "old woman" of the group; a younger lioness, Noor; and Ali, her cub. Each has a different view of life behind bars and the promise of freedom.

"Zill is sort of the benevolent opportunist," Vaughan says. "He's the guy not so concerned about the politics of the world that he's living in. He's just concerned, `Is my family fed, are they taken care of, are we safe today?'"

Safa, who remembers the dangers of living in the wild, "thinks that living in captivity is a small price to pay for living safely and always knowing where your next meal is going to come from."

Noor yearns for freedom, Vaughan says, "but wants it on her own terms. She thinks it is something that the people have to rise up and gain for themselves."

And Ali represents the children who don't know what to make of the change.

Before writing, Vaughan researched his subject, borrowing his wife's membership card to the San Diego Zoo and talking to, among others, Mariette Hopley, head of an emergency relief team dispatched to the Baghdad Zoo by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

"I always try and find out as much about my subject matter as possible," Vaughan says. "I didn't want it to be a fairyland fable. It is a metaphor, but it's also very grounded in the real world."

Canadian artist Niko Henrichon proved to be the perfect artist for the book, Vaughan says. "We didn't want it to be too Disney, we didn't want it to be too cartoonish, but we also wanted the animals to have the flexibility to be expressive. That even though they were realistic, they would have personalities."

Henrichon was great to collaborate with, Vaughan says. "Since we weren't under the pressure of monthly deadlines, we just took the time to make sure that every panel was exactly the way we wanted it to be."

Elsewhere, though, Vaughan has plenty of deadlines to contend with. He is the writer of "Y: The Last Man" and "Ex Machina," two ongoing series from Vertigo, and Marvel Comics' "Runaways." He's also writing an upcoming Marvel miniseries featuring Doctor Strange and a Dark Horse miniseries, "The Escapists," inspired by Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay."'

And he recently finished his first draft of a screenplay for a "Y: The Last Man" movie for New Line Cinema.

It's just enough, he says, "to keep me busy and not feel like I'm hacking anything out."

"It's really not work," he says. "Having had crappy jobs in the past, I can say getting to sit around in your underwear and type stories about people kissing and fighting, it's just a joy."

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Contact Bill Radford at comics@gazette.com. For daily developments in the world of comics, go to www.gazettecomicsfan.blogspot.com.

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(c) 2006, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.