A Special Spotlight on ‘I Won’t Pretend These Missiles Are Stars’

I have read the stories within I Won’t Pretend These Missiles Are Stars about three times over the last month before finally sitting down to write this piece. I hesitate to call it a review; a review in the realm of comics is a question of taste and quality. When I am reading a conventional single issue or graphic novel, I am considering the coherency of narrative, the way the art looks on the page, the intersection and integration of the two. I am reflecting on how the comic made me feel and if I think that is in alignment with the author. I have drifted farther away from assigning numerical value the more I do it, because my job as a critic most days is to offer insight: This is my palette, and if you share my palette, this work may or may not be for you.

Some days though, I am handed a work that requires all of that to be put aside. I very distinctively remember the first time I ran into such a piece in 2018, and now I find myself in a similar situation with I Won’t Pretend These Missiles Are Stars. All of which to say, I encourage you to buy and read this collection yourself. It is one of the most heart-wrenching anthologies I have read in a minute and one that is excruciatingly timely.  The book covers 16 different cartoonists’ experiences during the 12-Day War in Iran. The stories are unsigned, so I do not know the names of the talented folks behind the work, but through their stories I do feel like I do know them as people. The Tehran’s Cartoonist Collective ha…