Customer Reviews

My War With Brian

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A short graphic novel about parents and school personnel too lazy enforce, let alone teach, basic standards of civilization. Somewhat based on real life, Rall casts himself as an outsider in a bland late 1970s Midwestern suburb. A small kid, "too smart" and ethnically different, he was not considered important by either the adults or kids, and soon becomes the constant target of one angry and very violent kid.

That there are bullies and nasty people is never unusual, but this book is unusually telling in that it exposes succinctly the blasé nihilism of late-`70s middle America. Early on, Rall responds to another bully in a history class by sneaking up on the cretin and cracking him over the head with a desk. "Mr Bradford took the roll call, marking the unconscious student absent." (p.9) Rall shows how the unmotivated, middleclass school teachers cared not about violence, learning, nothing...just getting by. The administration, the community just saw extreme violence and intimidation as "what boys do". Rall aptly calls this "a Darwinian nightmare of benign neglect."

I can testify that Rall's vision of that time and place is the correct one, and further that Rall's illustration of the consequences of adult nihilism is spot on. For 40 or so pages Rall shows how violence, vandalism, and youthful fighting are the ultimate effect of adults brushing their charges off with a stupid "you just have to learn to handle yourself". Like any war or feud, the battles escalate into something with little relation to the initial "cause", all because no one wanted to be responsible or be blessed as a peacemaker.

Like many a Rall cartoon, the "background" comments are brilliant. In BRIAN the kids who witness the violents offer only a mind-numbed "oh, cool"; the attempt by kids to be in control is contrasted nicely to the stone indifference of adults.

In the end of the tale, Rall allows people to escape death so he can show how the kids grow up to carry resentments and hate all their lives. (Rall says the kid who inspired the book actually killed himself.)

This book is yet another part of Rall's general theme found in all his work: the indictment of today's institutions as cover for the most short-sighted and stupid bureaucratic mindset possible. It therefore fits Rall's jarring cartooning.

Just when you think Ted Rall's, "My War with Brian," is going to be another run-of-the-mill victim story about bullying, this autobiographic tale takes a surprising shift when the misfit geek decides to fight back in shockingly savage fashion. And thus begins a full fledged war spanning the eternal length of time during Junior High and High School where Ted Rall learns to be a man, standing up for himself and exacting due punishment to those who strike at him, consequences be damned. At times, laugh out loud funny, this book will also shock in reminding you how brutal kids/teens can be to one another - the physical cruelty that Ted and Brian exact on one another is frightening in its murderous intent but just past that initial layer of shock comes a somewhat disturbing reminder of the cruelties adolescents face as they transition to adulthood.

This is both a tragic and a funny story. Ted's hellish grade school experiences produced scars that most of us have shadows of. Ted Rall mixes a strange hard mean exterior with a desire to point out sadness and occasional touching human contact that belies his detachment. Okay, well, some of his detachment. Anyhow, his art is interesting and the story is fascinating. My only complaint would be that it's a fairly expensive short story, but that's how all these cartoonists get so rich...

I don't what it is with the off-kilter independent comic book artists. They are so stylized that they create "BAD ART". The story in My War w/ Brian is quite good, but even too 'everyman' middle of the road. Some of it is quite funny.
But I still don't get the art. It is almost so bad I can't enjoy reading it the second or third or fourth time. (Heck, I may have enjoyed R. Crumb's word way too much reading the same tome 30 or 40 times over) CCG "Fuzzy Bear"

I moved to the States from Alaska at about the same time as Ted Rall was in HS, to finish high school. This comic is the only thing I can think of that ever captured that era - [impolite word] "Dazed and Confused" for example.

I should add that the high school I went to (in Wisconsin) was a (Lutheran) theocracy to rival anything in Iran. While I was constantly getting beat on by a gang of openly white supremacist kids at the school, which was quite backward by Alaskan standards, I usually got the flack from school officials who were chummy with them. Other than the extremes of the ultraviolence, I think people should think twice before thinking this is some kind of exaggeration for effect by Rall. Ted Rall's visual style is great, too, and I was happy to see that people who bought My War with Brian also read Ruben Bollings, another superb comic genius. I think Rall is a good representative of us 30-somethings born in the 60s, too - a more or less Lost Generation between the baby-boomers and their echo generation, but which includes the whole Brat Pack and cartoonists like Tom Tomorrow, Rall, and, I believe, Bollings.

Ted Rall is nothing if not a masterful teller of his own story. If you've suffered from bullying, pick it up - worth the green.

I've always been a fan of Rall's cartoons, both as an activist, and as a quasi-cartoonist myself... Unfortunately, I was too easily able to relate to Rall's situation in high school... This book is a must for PARENTS who maybe can't relate to what some kids are going through at the hands of privileged bullies.

Ted Rall is so outrageous that I would consider him the political writer whose comic supernatural powers allow him to do things that I can only talk about. Until we get to philosophy, of course, where the intellectual death wish sweepstakes rears its ugly head in ways that are as intense as the feelings described in the 66 pages of MY WAR WITH BRIAN, an episode in junior high school that reflects American politics so well, you can forget the adults. They haven't got a clue about anything.

The theme is MY WAR WITH BRIAN is bullies, but Ted Rall seems outraged that Americans live in a society in which others rarely have the opportunity to do anything to help victims. Close to the end of the book, Rall summarizes the situation with, "Actually, most conflicts are stupid and pointless, but they're impossible to avoid. Given that hard reality, I figure that pacifism is impossible." And on the next page, "I guess I still believe in God." It establishes his opposition to hyper-masculinity so effectively, that his young age hardly subtracts from the wisdom of a supreme being allowing the right people to get revenge on the haughty, which might be the highest ideal our society will ever achieve.

One of the characters who was under the most pressure is only in the introduction, shortly before Rall admits "reading the newspaper at age 5, Sartre at 8":

"He had troubles with bullies, but his biggest problem in life was his father. Dad was a Protestant minister, and he insisted that Bill follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, Bill thought . . ."

You really don't want to know that part, and the most exciting part of the intellectual death wish sweepstakes was the awareness on the side of young people who have questions that no one can answer of all the things Bill and Ted Rall would be willing to put down on paper and publish, especially after Bill ends up in the one dead buddy category, which certainly seemed queer to people who thought that killing other people made more sense than self-destruction. My dad was also a Protestant minister, but American society had made that such a simpleton's role that being "doomed to a life in the clergy" seemed a bit lame for anyone who was capable of accomplishing anything. Like most intellectual death wish sweepstakes observations, this attempt to clarify the nature of American society is unlikely to be considered a major accomplishment, but it magnifies my admiration for Ted Rall. He has paid his dues at the hemlock for Socrates altar, and all you have to do, to see how he did it, is to buy this book.

Mr. Rall sent me a text only version of this book through e-mail and I loved it! I'm buying this book since its nice to have a hard copy. I wish I had the guts to use these on my High School enemies(But there is already enough school violence!)

What if a school bully COULDN'T be avoided, and COULDN'T be stopped with adult intervention, although he was regularly severely beating you?
This happened to young Ted Rall, who took the logical next step and tried to murder his tormenter. Follow the bizarre but true story in this captivating book.
While this book is valuable for the story itself, it would be especially helpful for parents wishing to understand the world of adolescents, and for adolescents to understand the world of bullying -- perhaps a springboard for discussion with parents. There are definitely mature themes in this book, so don't just hand it to a young child.
To follow up on Ted Rall today, check out his opinion columns in Yahoo News Op/Ed, and his fascinating books such as _To Afghanistan and Back: A Graphic Travelogue_.