Fatherland

Very quick read. Kind of a strange approach to telling the story, but definitely interesting, communicative, informative. Surprisingly sympathetic (without of course condoning some terrible acts). The art is well-crafted and a also relatively unusual style in the medium – you see a lot of faux-amateur indie comics; a few photorealistic; plenty that mimic the mainstream. You don't see a ton with this sort of Wall Street Journal portrait crosshatching/stippling style. Or, at least, I don't.

I did find it interesting how the author anglicized not just names and nicknames (somewhat reasonable, though I realized I kind of expect at least some foreign words thrown into conversation between foreigners in media) but also the conversational style. I had to remind myself that these conversations were (presumably, though never explicitly stated) taking place in Serbo-Croatian. Even a few place names got anglicized: Niš became “Nish,” for example. But Dejan wasn't “Deyan.” This won't be a thing for most people, but as someone who spends a lot of time around Serbs (girlfriend and family), I actually found it kind of distracting.