Eisner, Will, Last Day in Vietnam

Last Day in Vietnam by Will Eisner

Will Eisner's Last Day in Vietnam is a collection of graphic short stories detailing his and others' experiences during the war in Vietnam. Eisner artistic talents were used to create instruction manuals in comic-form for soldiers to find more accessible in order to reduce equipment failure due to poor preventative maintenance, and in this novel we can see how Eisner's artistic style carried through from the 60's, 70's, to when this book was published in 2000. This graphic novel explores the human condition and how a person reacts in times of severe stress, war, and loss through drawn representations of true events, making the work more accessible and understandable on a different level than one usually sees on stories/recollections of war.

The most notable aspect of his artwork in this novel is the fact that Eisner does not use panels/borders to separate scenes and images. This requires a focus what is there rather than what surrounds an image, that being the images representing the people he met during his time in the war. In the first story, the reader is put in the point of view of Will when he was touring the Bearcat outpost for the paper he wrote for during the war. He is escorted through by an unnamed officer who proclaims it is his "last day in Vietnam" and his demeanor is that of nonchalance and even giddiness.

This section focuses on the dialogue and movements of this unnamed officer, with only inferred conversation of Eisner shown through how the officer responds. The short story peaks when, after a tour of the base and the fairly lighthearted chatter turns sour and they are met with a bombing fairly close by. As he and this officer are trying to find a chopper to take them off base out of danger, the officer has a meltdown at the thought of dying now: "A whole goddamn tour without a scratch...I had it made...so damn careful...Now, I'm going to buy it!" This choice to focus entirely on this officer rather than any internal perspective from Will is a one that starts this graphic novel off to a very specific tone of observation of human behavior, which I think was Eisner's main goal with this graphic novel. He wanted to explore how people react in hard times, especially war, and the best way he could do it was through presenting what he saw and heard during this war.

In the second section titled The Periphery, Eisner presents to us the "Native" guide through this particular story, a Vietnamese who addresses us, the reader, directly from the beginning. In this section it is not suggested that we are in the point of view of Eisner as it did in the previous section in that he does not interact with this native guide, but he still directs his words to us. In this section we are first witness to a table full of reporters, jaded by the horrific nature of the war and discussing such things as bombs and murder freely, to which the native guide states "They are not sunning...They are discussing th'war! Naturally, they have a clear overview, because as observers they're dispassionate...No??... It is like reporting a football match... No??"

For two more pages we see the reporters speaking loudly and openly about a particular bombing and napalming of Khe Sanh in a skirmish between opposing sides. Another man appears in the forefront of the panel smoking a cigarette as this conversation of Khe Sanh begins. As the reporters' conversation continues panel after panel, they move further in the backdrop of the panel as the lone man comes closer to the reader and his anguish becomes more apparent with each panel until the native guide informs the reader that this man's son was killed in this battle and he had to identify his dismembered son on the periphery. This section ends on this note, a mix of grief from the father and a disengaged, matter-of-fact attitude from the guide. This contrast leaves the reader with a sense of melancholy and an understanding of the large spectrum of empathy that exists in times of war -- from nonexistent to utter pain.

There are four more sections following these two stories, but the last one I want to focus on is the final one titled A Purple Heart for George. The story starts with us watching George, drunk, proclaiming his bravery and determination to join his friend Benny out on the front lines. He is so drunk that he stumbles around the page, giggling, falling, and calling out to Benny that "I'm coming!" and he writes a letter of transfer to "a combat branch, specifically a mine or demolition unit." On the next page we see that his friends reach into the captain's mail to retrieve this letter of George's, stating "he does this every weekend... Doesn't even know that he wrote it..." and they tear it up. Every week, these friends sabotage George's drunken letter of transfer in order to protect him from imminent death were he to be transferred.

One week, however, the friends are gone and order a new, younger soldier to do it for them while they're away. When the friends return they discover George gone, transferred, as the new soldier didn't follow their orders to destroy his letter. This soldier says "it's nobody's fault!" On the next page a man comes in telling the soldiers that George died, blown up in battle and that he would be receiving a purple heart for his sacrifice. The man seems rather happy about it, his arms thrown up in celebration as if the honor of a badge makes George's death worth it, and as if the friends feel any less guilty for not intercepting George's letter. The friends sit at the table, heads down, shoulders rounded in shame and grief for their fallen friend.

In this final story we see the discourse that exists within our society when it comes to war -- most when it involves the death of a soldier. I believe that Eisner is reflecting on the way we reward ghosts with medals, badges, titles to make it a little less devastating for the family and friends that they died -- so that these families can feel like their loved ones didn't die for nothing. In this final page we see, like in the previously mentioned story, a spectrum of responses to the news of George's death, ranging from nearly ecstatic with pride, to guilty and in mourning.