Cold War Graphic Novels

The Cold War and the post-Cold War era gave authors and artists a lot of grist to mill.  While the novels and plays are famous and plentiful, there isn’t much in the way of graphic art that conveys the history of the time while also telling a great story.  Here are four graphic novels that tackle that history in different ways, all with beautiful results.

• Laika by Nick Abadzis follows the imagined life of the first creature in outer space, the Russian dog Laika, along with her trainer Yelena and the Chief Designer, a survivor of the gulag.
• A Jew in Communist Prague by Giardino is a three-volume story of a boy who loses his father to the authorities during the Cold War.
• Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco is a devastating work of journalism as the author interviews survivors of the Bosnian War of the 1990s.
• The Wall by Peter Sis tells the author’s own story of growing up in Cold War Czechoslovakia and how the invasion of Western culture overwhelmed the invasion of Soviet tanks.