Alans’s War: The Memoires of G.I. Alan Cope

Emmanuel Guibert’s illustration of Alan Cope’s life is very innocent. As I delved into Alan Cope’s experiences during WWII I felt as though while Cope was generalizing a lot of the events that to me would have been more personal. The illustrations reflect that generality, and this was the weakest point of the novel. Every now and again there would be some panels that seemed to be illustrations of photographs taken along the way. This was the strongest element in the novel because it brought the events to a more realistic level and provided a more dramatic and compelling image. Throughout the course of the memoir I never truly connected with Cope on a personal level. The only brief connection I made was when he brought up Boy Scouts this sparked a few personnel memories of my time in Scouting but ultimately I still felt like I was an observer for the rest of the novel. I wanted to understand how Cope really felt about the events that happened to him, he never expressed much emotion. More exploration into Cope’s psyche would allow for more abstract illustration that help truly define Cop’s experiences during the war.

Cope’s experience in the war had a lot of civilianized elements for the majority of the novel. Cope seemed to establish relationships with some characters that were rarely ever seen but every time he did, Cope would drift away and he would be off on the road again heading somewhere else. On this note, I loved seeing all of the places

Cope went and this love for travel was one of the only genuine emotional connections that Cope and I had in common.

Any moments of action were very passive. From most novels that I have read in the past, visually the most intense moments are a blur, but the sensation is very unique to the person and that sensation is very tangible. In most of the cases the emotions were withdrawn and fell on deaf ears when Cope and another character would discuss such things.

As I read the last few pages and scanned over the pictures of Cope in the various locations I felt as though the novel should not have been presented in this format. A regular non-graphical novel would have sufficed with Cope’s personal pictures incorporated as they are presented in the graphic novel. So as a final note Emmanuel Guibert illustrated Cope’s experience on a very general level and this really stopped the novel from reaching his true potential.