Kent State

Starred review from December 9, 2019
Backderf (My Friend Dahmer) delivers a provocative, heartbreaking account of the days leading up to the infamous tragedy of May 1970, in which National Guardsmen killed four unarmed students and injured nine others at a Vietnam War protest on the Kent State University campus. Backderf conducted extensive research to explore the lives of the four students, revealing their hopes and dreams for the future—portraits that sharply rebut the politically motivated smears politicians and media outlets inflicted upon them after the incident. Though wholly sympathetic to the student protestors, Backderf also takes care to report the grueling conditions the National Guardsmen were forced to endure; their lack of training for de-escalation versus battlefield deployment; and the failings of leaders such as Ohio governor Jim Rhodes (a Nixon loyalist) and Gen. Robert Canterbury. Both men’s anger and paranoia toward antiwar activists stoked their emotion-driven directives to the exhausted, agitated guardsmen and fueled an already highly volatile situation. Backderf’s tightly drawn, muscular figures and busy layouts anchored by choice period details are consistent with his established style, with flourishes (from hairstyles to smirks) that individualize the ensemble cast. His expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims. Readers may also draw from it sobering parallels to the deep divisions of contemporary times, again dangerously rife with media noise and misinformation muddying the waters.

Starred review from February 1, 2020

Backderf (Trashed) here relies on meticulous research to re-create the horrific National Guard occupation of the Kent State University campus in May 1970. Fears that student radicals might be preparing to rise up in armed insurrection are inflamed after a group incensed by the invasion of Cambodia riots on the evening of May 1, leading to a State of Emergency being declared. A protest outside the campus ROTC headquarters the following evening ends with a campus-wide lockdown by the National Guard. A sit-in to protest the occupation the next afternoon results in the students being beaten and bayoneted. By the afternoon of May 4, some students are eager to join a rally against the Guardsmen, some are too scared, others simply want everything to blow over so they can resume their normal lives. By the end of the day, exhausted and terrified National Guardsmen operating under orders from inept leaders will kill four and wound nine others. VERDICT An incendiary corrective to the myths and misconceptions surrounding these events and a memorial to the lives lost or forever altered that should be required reading for all Americans.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020

Gr 8 Up-In the midst of the divisive Vietnam War, Ohio's Kent State University was a haven for free thinkers and creatives who were fed up with compulsory enlistment and didn't believe that the United States' military involvement in Vietnam was about "keeping Communism at bay." On April 30, 1970, Nixon informed the nation that the United States would be invading Cambodia and that the war would ramp up instead of winding down. Protests were organized, including one at Kent State, prompting chaos and violence. The mayor of Kent begged the governor to send in the Ohio National Guard, and two days later, as the smoke cleared, four unarmed young college students lay dead and more than half a dozen were seriously injured. Compiling firsthand accounts, interviews, news articles, and photographs, Backderf skillfully recounts almost by the hour everything that occurred between Nixon's announcement and the aftermath of the shooting. The amount of text is a little daunting at times, but readers will be riveted by the black-and-white comics and strong linework. Revealing malice, panic, fear, and frustration, Backderf's depictions of people tell the story as powerfully as any eyewitness and will make readers crave even more information. VERDICT Fans of the author's My Friend Dahmer won't be disappointed. Students learning about the Vietnam War will find this vivid exploration of history a welcome supplement to dry textbooks.-Michael Marie Jacobs, Darlington School, GA

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2020
May, 2020, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy at Kent State University, in which the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four unarmed college students during a Vietnam War protest. Cartoonist Backderf meticulously recreates the events leading up to the slaughter in this graphic account based on extensive research and his own interviews. Most of his focus?and sympathy?is on the victims and their largely mundane activities in the days before the confrontation, but he also follows the lives of the guardsmen, law enforcement agents, and politicians responsible for the shooting, which roiled the nation and exacerbated its deep political divisions. Backderf, who started out in the ?90s as a punkish provocateur in alternative newspapers, has more recently demonstrated impressive journalism chops and a sensitive eye in such acclaimed works as My Friend Dahmer (2012) and Trashed (2015). His somewhat grotesque drawing style is reigned in here, as is befitting the somber nature of the project. The result, while remaining visually distinctive, vividly conveys the tragic events.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 15, 2020
An excellent graphic retelling of a climactic moment in American history. Kent State University represented a slice of the American dream, a place where the children of blue-collar workers in northern Ohio could gain an education. Most of the students, as accomplished Backderf shows, were intent on gaining that education and, with luck, staying out of Vietnam. Three events conspired against them: Richard Nixon declared the invasion of Cambodia on a Friday night when National Guardsmen, already riled up by a labor strike in the author's hometown, were dispatched to Kent State to contain student demonstrations. Kent State, he writes, was "hardly a hotbed of radical politics." Even so, there were representatives of five law enforcement organizations on campus, including undercover FBI agents, as well as 1,200 National Guardsmen, who were ready for a fight. When one squad among them decided to shoot, perhaps directed to do so by a senior officer, at least a quarter of the soldiers fired directly into the ranks of the student demonstrators. Backderf raises a number of points that other chroniclers--especially James Michener, an apologist for law and order--failed to emphasize: Some Guardsmen, reviled and insulted by the students, were clearly out for blood; though depicted as kids, like the students they faced, most were in their 30s, with "little in common with the bohemian, far younger college students of 1970." Nixon and the FBI, among others, wanted to make an example of the students. As the author's notes show, he's done more homework than other writers, too. The shooting may have been a "calamitous blunder," but in the end--and Backderf's depiction is gruesome--four students died, one, ironically, an Army officer in training. And the Guardsmen? After a long coverup, with destruction of evidence, not a single one has been held accountable or punished for murders in which Nixon exalted--and an astonishing number of Americans endorsed. Four dead in Ohio, indeed--but Backderf's vivid, evocative book does a splendid job of keeping their memories alive.

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