It is not only the strongest work of graphic literature released so far this year, but one of the masterpieces of the medium, combining confident storytelling and rich factual detail into a work of devastating emotional impact ... Kent State doesn’t subordinate the art to the story. Every scene is dramatically staged and meticulously researched, with notes taking up the final dozen pages of the book ... One area where Kent State excels is its evocation of the social and political climate of the late 60s-early 70s ... What makes Kent State so powerful is how Backderf mostly keeps the subtext as subtext, and focuses on the lives of his characters. He makes sure we know each of the victims as a human being.
Kent State is Derf’s powerful interpretation of the day the Ohio National Guard fired 67 shots, killing four students and wounding nine others ... Kent State is handsomely produced, with a graphic hard binding and printing on heavy stock. The book’s heft underscores the psychological weight of its topic ... The book not only illuminates history but also brings a form of closure to an unforgivable, inexcusable episode ... Derf gives the book rhythm by varying the number of panels per page. He also varies the panel style for maximum impact.
Cartoonist Backderf meticulously recreates the events leading up to the slaughter in this graphic account based on extensive research and his own interviews ... 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.
...it’s clear that Backderf illustrates in service to the story, and not himself. First-person is his strong suit, but we don’t get near enough of that here. He appears as his younger self but leaves us early in the going, preferring to hand the story to his four protagonists ... Backderf’s brilliance...is his choice of what he decides not to put on the page. I love the determination to avoid cliché and showy visual exposition ... This is all beef, no fat ... Backderf takes on the role of the journalist as he paints scenes and gives us all the facts, and that approach serves him particularly well ... Kent is a very serious book, an essential testimony, written with care, drawn in blood ... To be clear, this is a marvelous story, well-told and well-researched with heart.
Artist Derf Backderf, an Ohio native, is himself a most remarkable comics sensation ... Kent State is meticulously researched, and unlike Pekar, the scriptwriter, Backderf is in total artistic control of his material. It bears the artist’s characteristic punk style ... It would have been better, in some ways, if Backderf had captured the specialness of the Kent State scene. But this is his narrative, and it more or less accurately captures the existing scholarship ... Backderf might also have worked harder to capture the conservative and avowedly racist context or vibe in parts of Ohio, linked intimately to Kentucky and the South since before the Civil War ... The artist keenly observes that military intelligence experts working at the Pentagon had spies on Kent’s campus ... It would be unfair to charge Backderf with any lack of accuracy or lack of sympathy for those who suffered most. What this observer of antiwar activities on three other campuses...finds limiting is the absence of a certain softness or Flower Power optimism ... This is the vibe unseen in Kent State, and perhaps Barkderf cannot find it there in 1970. I would like to think otherwise.
...exhaustively researched ... he had no way of knowing that it would become intensely, unforgettably relevant again ... Backderf’s narrative, rendered with great detail in his familiar exaggerated style and thoroughly detailed in every panel, sometimes gets a bit heavy-handed. The dialogue, except when drawn from actual contemporary accounts, tries to compress a lot of background information, with the result that it often feels like he’s trying to catch the reader up on what happened in a previous story they hadn’t bothered to read. His deep dive into the background of the political situation that led to the massacre is informative but sometimes intrusive ... Once the shit really starts to come down, Backderf compresses the narrative action beautifully ... By buying into the details so heavily, he makes a story that means something more today – and serves as a warning as we see the story repeated, again and again, every day, always as tragedy.
This outstanding graphic novel fills a huge void in the Kent State literature ... The graphic format lends itself brilliantly to telling this history ... His combination of storytelling and history creates a rich tapestry of the events leading up to May 4 ... By introducing us to the shooting victims of May 4th, Derf brings emotional power to the book ... Thanks to Derf, we can easily see how events can spin out of control to cause irreversible damage to our society.
I found it interesting, emotional, and informative. To say that it is moving would be an understatement. To say that it is painstakingly researched and referenced would also be an understatement ... The book analyzes what is known about why the guard killed the students and seriously injured nine others, but it does not fill holes with rumors. Backderf uses conversations that he has had, in addition to all the primary and secondary sources available ... The story of what happened that day is complicated, but it is served well in this book.
It is a work of years with copious notes and excellent sourcing supporting the brief narrative of four worsening days along with examinations of the surrounding culture and causes that made the tragic incident possible ... Imagery, details, and other connections call out on almost every page, reminding readers that these events are not so distant and too different from our present reality ... When reading Kent State, it’s easy to imagine it being drafted as a response to our moment, but the quality of history and rich network of stories testify to this being a labor of many years—albeit one with impeccable (or horrifying, depending on your perspective) timing ... Backderf’s prose is drafted like that of a historian or biographer, sometimes expressing a perspective but always careful to frame it carefully with facts, quotes, and direct observation ... It’s the careful attention to the lives lost in the massacre that makes the final sequence of Kent State, a slow motion breakdown of the escalation on May 4 ... The pain detailed in this sequence is indescribable, and Backderf handles each human being who was killed or injured on that day with care ... Kent State attempts to set the record straight, and the combined excellence of research and storytelling makes it easy to witness both the tragic loss of life and senseless police actions that were never punished.
Backderf (Trashed) here relies on meticulous research to re-create the horrific National Guard occupation of the Kent State University campus in May 1970 ... 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.
[A] provocative, heartbreaking account of the days leading up to the infamous tragedy of May 1970 ... Though wholly sympathetic to the student protestors, Backderf also takes care to report the grueling conditions the National Guardsmen were forced to endure ... His expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims.
An excellent graphic retelling of a climactic moment in American history ... Four dead in Ohio, indeed—but Backderf’s vivid, evocative book does a splendid job of keeping their memories alive.
