In 2022, Igort, an acclaimed Italian cartoonist, began taking down the testimonies of Ukrainians during the Russian invasion. He turned them into online comics journalism, collected here for the first time in English. “The collapsing bodies look like marionettes. The clouds of dust captured by drones have a surreal beauty. The crumpling buildings look like houses of cards. Even so, it’s upsetting, panic-inducing. How can you not think about the human lives, just like your own, buried under that rubble?” In this real-time work of graphic journalism (posted serially on Facebook), the cartoonist Igort uses the medium of comics to depict the telephone testimonies of Ukrainians as Russia invaded in 2022. In vignettes that grow ever more horrifying ― infiltrating spies, bombed cities, recorded accounts of children whose parents were murdered in front of their eyes, and more ― Igort also relays the events that led up to the invasion, such as the torture and killing of human rights activists. He tells stories of individual struggle and suffering with no resolutions because they are still Of Tetiana, who fled in the middle of the night with her children and whose car broke down on the steppe. And Maksim, who lived in Belgium and went for a five-day family visit and who could not return home when his mother died of COVID due to martial law. In art styles that veer from cartoon simplicity to photorealism, depending on what the moment demands, Igort paints portraits and scenes of ordinary people trying to survive among almost 10,000 civilian deaths. How War Begins is an important document of the past, the present, and the future. Full-color illustrations throughout

Avg Rating

4.04

Number of Ratings

355

5 STARS

32%

4 STARS

45%

3 STARS

19%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Igort

Author · 11 books

Igort is an Italian illustrator, comic book artist, writer, publisher, film director and musician. He is considered a key figure in the development of European graphic novels. Igor Tuveri was born in 1958 in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. At age 20 Tuveri moved to Bologne and started publishing comics with the pen name Igort. His early works appeared in 'Linus', a famous Italian comic magazine aimed at an adult readership, of which Igort himself will become editor-in-chief in the 2000's. In the 80's Igort founded the independent magazines 'Il Pinguino' and 'Dolce Vita' with fellow cartoonists from the so-called 'Valvoline' collective. The collective included artists Daniele Brolli, Roberto Baldazzini, Lorenzo Mattotti, Giorgio Carpinteri, as well as American cartoonist Charles Burns. Igort's works from this period include Goodbye Baobab (1982), a story set in Japan in the 40s and co-created with Daniele Brolli, and Ishiki no kashi - Il letargo dei sentimenti (1984), a comic taking place in a futuristic version of Japan. Igort is also one of the first Western authors to have worked in the Japanese manga industry, most notably with the series Yuri (1996) for Kōdansha. In 2000, Igort founded his own publishing house, Coconino Press. The publisher played an important role in the development of the 'graphic novel movement' in Italy, releasing new works by national and international authors, as well as classic works by cartoonist like Jacques Tardi, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, Will Eisner, and so on. In 2017 Igort left Coconino to found a new publishing house, called Oblomov Press. Between 2008 and 2009, Igort travelled through the Ukraine, Russia and Siberia, carrying out research for the books Quaderni Ucraini (2010, Ukrainian Notebooks) and Quaderni Russi (2011, Russian Notebooks). Together with the two volumes of Quaderni Giapponesi (2015-2017, Japanese Notebooks), these form a trilogy of illustration travel notebooks. In 2019, Igort directed the live action film adaptation of his most famous graphic novel, 5 is the Perfect Number (2002), starring actors Toni Servillo and Valeria Golino. Besides drawing, writing, publishing and occasionally working in cinema, Igort has also been a life long musician. Since 2022 he hosts a Youtube Channel on the medium of comics, called 'lezionidifumetto·it'.