The Other Side [Paperback]

Jason Aaron (Author), Cameron Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2007

This hard-hitting graphic novel examines life on opposing sides of the Vietnam War through the eyes of two young men. Bill Everette is a 19-year-old Alabama farm boy who's been drafted into the Marine Corps, while 19-year-old Vietnamese farmer Binh Dai enlists in the People's Army of Vietnam to fulfill his duty to his country.

Along the way, Private Everette encounters demonically vicious drill instructors, talking maggots, voiceless ghosts and a rifle that begs him to shoot himself. Vo Dai must undertake the long march south through black forests and bloody swamps, past tigers, dragons and mounds of dead. Both men struggle with their own demons and nightmarish visions ... before their inevitable showdown.

This impeccably researched, critically acclaimed book heralds the arrival of two new superstar talents: writer Jason Aaron and artist Cameron Stewart (SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Awar comic without heroism, Aaron and Stewart's uneven tale alternates sequences about two teenagers—red-blooded American Bill Everette and patriotic Vietnamese Vo Binh Dai—as they leave their homes and families and move toward the battlefield where each of them hopes to kill the enemy during the Vietnam War. Everette, drafted into a cynical, vulgar-mouthed, vulgar-minded platoon of Marines, desperately wants to survive, while Vo, a Buddhist who's slightly too idealistic to believe, longs to make a meaningful sacrifice for his national cause. The two combatants hallucinate constantly about death and decay; as the conflict enters the evocatively drawn landscape of the siege at Khe Sanh, the tone shifts from lurid grossness to bleak, smothering horror, and its stylized violence is sometimes hard to bear. Both Aaron's script and Stewart's crisp, impressionistic artwork (convincingly evoking the landscapes of the country and jungle, and colored in a palette that's mostly bloody reds and rotting greens) revolve around contrasts and reflections. But the title isn't just a reference to the opposing army: it suggests the way each of its protagonists is transformed, and loses his humanity by the process of being trained to kill. (May)
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From Booklist

The Other Side demonstrates that war comics, out of favor for decades, retain substantial viability. It follows two farm boys, one from rural Alabama, the other from a village near Hanoi, approaching one another in Vietnam. While Private Bill Everette and his fellow grunts come to hate the country to which they've been sent, naively idealistic Vo Binh Dai voluntarily marches to the south to join the revolution. Both endure unspeakable horrors, including the ghosts of fallen soldiers, on their grueling treks to eventual confrontation at the besieged Khe Sanh combat base. Aaron, decades too young to remember the Vietnam era, has been inspired by his cousin Gustav Hasford, who wrote the novel Stanley Kubrick filmed as Full Metal Jacket. Despite its surreal aspects, his grisly account of the harrowing experiences of both sides rings lamentably true. Rather than taking a gritty, realistic illustrative approach, Stewart, best known for superhero work, employs his slightly cartoony style to bring just the right touch of exaggeration to the story's grotesque elements. Flagg, Gordon

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vertigo (May 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401213502
• ISBN-13: 978-1401213503
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.4 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #626,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jason Aaron is an Eisner and Harvey Award nominated comic book writer best known for the critically acclaimed crime series Scalped for Vertigo and stints on Black Panther, Ghost Rider and Wolverine: Weapon X for Marvel. Current projects include Wolverine, Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine and PunisherMAX, all for Marvel. He was born in Alabama but currently resides in Kansas City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic contribution, May 25, 2007

By 

Daniel Robbins - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Side (Paperback)

While I've always had a soft spot for comics like The Nam or Vietnam War Journal, the latter of those was probably my favorite for its more unflinching depiction of war and the characters' knee-deep-in-it placement. While I'll always applaud Marvel for even putting out The Nam, I always felt like too many issues left the devastation in the background, in the form of explosions on the horizon with characters reflecting back on it from their safe distance. That and the Punisher cameo. When I found Apple's Vietnam War Journal, it seemed a much more intense and authentic experience - it wasn't a Marvel comic, so you knew someone was going to die and stay dead; hell, it was in black-and-white - anything goes. Anyway, let me get to the point before I further digress into my criticisms and verbose rants (insert trademark symbol). It's been many years since either of those books have seen print, and - as far as my memory serves - the comic shelves haven't seen a war comic in quite some time, aside from a handful of Ennis titles. So it was a pleasant surprise to see Vertigo putting out this mini-series last year; even more so that it was really good.

Jason Aaron is related to the late author Gus Hasford (The Short Timers, among others, which became Full Metal Jacket), and it was nice to see that unforgettably great phrases like "get ready to run like a bald-headed chicken f***er" run in the family. In fact, one of the great things about this title is the superb balance of good dialogue and resonating imagery. Whether it be talking rats taking dibs on a young private's eyes when he dies, ghastly uniformed skeletons in the chopper waiting to land with everyone else on board, or heaps of bodies unceremoniously populating the setting, the line between the "real" and the "unreal" becomes moot in war, and they are both just as haunting. Cameron Stewart is a good asset to Aaron's script as well, and his art delivers the same "freaking-creepy" factor which I liked in some of his past work, like Seaguy.

If you missed the mini-series, pick up this newly released trade; it is not your typical Vietnam War story, and while that is one of its greatest strengths, it is such an engaging read that even the most rigid advocates of formulaic plot will have trouble not enjoying it. Yes, even you die-hard Marvel people (sorry, I couldn't resist). While you're at the comic shop, look for Aaron's newest from Vertigo, Scalped. It is just as good. Trust me, Captain America will come back, Superman will still fly, and The Crisis of 52 Infinite Civil Wars will come and go and come back again and again, and you won't be missing too much by passing on those and instead trying out something new. Who knows, when it's done this well, you may never go back to tights and capes again. Besides, Steve Rogers never had dialogue as good as "I'm ready for death ... and yonder the f***er comes."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars haunting, July 13, 2007

By 

B. Ucko (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Side (Paperback)

I didn't expect a comic to be so moving or for its story to linger with me. Innocence Lost is a theme much explored in the best of literature, and it gets a fresh take here. By showing us how war damages in particular two soldiers, American and Vietnamese, Aaron shows how war damages us all. The dialog rings true, and the pacing is excellent. I look forward to seeing more from this exceptionally talented writer.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An elegy to the dead - and those that survive, September 2, 2011

By 

Sam Quixote - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Side (Paperback)

Jason Aaron takes us back to the Vietnam war where a young man from Alabama is drafted to fight for the US Army and another young man from North Vietnam is drafted to fight for the Vietnamese Army. The book follows the stories of these two young men as they train for war and make their way to the battlefields where their paths are destined to cross. Welcome to the Other Side.

Aaron is probably one of the best new comics writers to emerge in the last few years and having read his work on big Marvel properties like Wolverine and Punisher, I can say that I was already deeply impressed with the man's abilities in writing amazing comics. "The Other Side" shows Aaron giving range to his storytelling abilities, leaving the superhero world behind to tell the story of real life heroes with no superpowers but with no less heroism or anguish or humanity to them than any other.

Needless to say the story is harrowing. Aaron spares no gruesome details to this bloody chapter of American and Vietnamese history. The genocide being enacted by the Vietnamese army against its own people, the atrocities being committed by the Americans with weapons like Agent Orange, the mutilated piles of dead bodies being flung into mass graves, the mutations following the introduction of such devastating chemicals to humans and indigenous animals - the reader is exposed to it all.

Aaron also takes you into the minds of these two young men as they take in this hellish nightmare and how their young minds are slowly warped to the point where the American man is hallucinating dead bodies following him everywhere and his gun talking to him, to the Vietnamese man who imagines gods and monsters talking to him and taking him on a Dante-esque journey through hell.

Cameron Stewart does an amazing job with the art. I loved his work on Grant Morrison's Batman Vs Robin and am so glad that that job was given to him for his work on this book. The pages of military characters trudging through forests are juxtaposed with flights of fantasy as Stewart takes the character's madness and lets loose beautiful drawings of dragons in the sky, an army of zombies crawling across a burning field, and subtle changes to the heroes' faces as the days make their mark on their souls. Truly amazing work.

There were a couple of moments in the book where I felt Aaron and Stewart had taken liberally from that famous Vietnam masterwork "Full Metal Jacket" (particularly the drill instructor) until I read the afterword where Aaron mentions that "Full Metal Jacket" was written by his cousin who also wrote the book the film was based upon "The Short-timers" and that "The Other Side" was written in tribute to his cousin's great work.

This is an unforgettable and compelling piece of comic book art, the kind of book that deserves a far wider audience than just those who read comics. It's well written, well illustrated, and a fantastic read. The ending in particular will break your heart. A powerful book, highly recommended.