A few months ago, I picked up Rick Remender and Daniel Acuña’s Escape #1, an issue that immediately gabbed my attention and left me wanting more. It’s a series that grapples with the hard questions, specifically questions of patriotism and war. It deals with these themes in a manner that appears, on the surface, far removed from our own lives because the characters are animals, not people, fighting a world war reminiscent of World War II and other such conflicts. In this manner, Remender and Acuña provide us with an entry point into the story, not creating an “us” versus “them” narrative where we, as the reader, clearly see ourselves in one side or the other. If this was a straight World War II narrative, most readers would identify with the Allies, not the Axis, for obvious reasons, but even though Escape, which is inspired by Remender’s grandfather’s service during the war, places Milton as a United States service member, the fictional conflict and animal characters creates a greater distance between us and the story itself. It is this distance that allows conversations such as the one between Emil’s father and Milton in Escape #4.

The issue focuses on Emil and his father hiding Milton from Narenian troops who seek to capture him. The father and son hide Milton in their home, nourishing him and telling him that not every Narenian adheres to the positions held by the Narenian National Renewal party. Over a drink and a smoke, Milton and Emil’s father debate the essence of the war itself. Milton tells Emil’s father that he was shot down trying to stop the war, which would have included him dropping a bomb on a civlian population, including the duo. To this, Emil’s father tells him, “In our prayers for victory, we ask for God’s permission to slaughter his children.” He states this off panel, and we see Milton, with a bandaged head, staring at us, as if we are Emil’s father. His countenance, as he packs his pipe, looks at us with wide eyes, as if partly in shock. The next panel depicts the father’s arm reaching for a bottle as he continues, “Assuming he’s on our side. Secure we are the ones who are right.” Pouring a drink, he concludes by declaring, “We are all the villains, and God’s stopped listening to either side.” Milton, accepting the drink from the father. disagrees, telling the man that God did pick a side, his. Wearily sitting down, Milton’s interlocutor asks, “So, God sent you to murder our children for the sins of a government?”

This exchange epitomizes individuals’ belief in their reighetousness and in their divine providence for victory. It’s a conversation reminiscent of Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer,” which he wrote during the Spanish American War, where a church congregation gathers to send their young men off to war, praising their patriotism, when a stranger enters and tells them that the truth behind their prayers. He tells them that in truth they pray “to tear [the enemy] soldiers to bloody shreds,” covering the fields with their dead; for the noise of their guns to muffle “the shrieks of their wounded, writing in pain”; to destroy their enemies’ homes, turning the children outside and causing the widows to grieve. The stranger lays bare the realities of war, pointing out that while those in the congregation pray for victory, they conversely pray for the suffering of their enemies.

Likewise, William Dean Howells’ “Editha,” written during the same period, addresses this same issue. In the story, Editha presses her fiance George Greason to join the military and fight in the Spanish American War. She urges him to do this because she wants to live vicariously through him, telling him it is his patriotic duty to serve God and country. She does not expect him to die during the war, but he does, and when Editha goes to visit George’s mother, Mrs. Greson echoes the same thoughts as Emil’s father and the stranger. She tells Editha that she did not expect George “to get killed”; rather, she “just expected him to kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that weren’t there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor wretches — conscripts, or whatever they call ‘em.” Editha wanted George “to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of.” The “invisibility” of the enemy makes killing easy, and Editha and the congregants, far removed from the battle, don’t see the victims, the atrocities their desires enact upon others.

Milton, as well, realizes the ways that distance causes him to view individuals like Emil and his father, resisters to the Narenian National Renewal party’s fascist grip on their country, as nothing more that enemy combatants who adhere full throatedly to the party’s positions. Milton tells the father that dropping bombs from a mile up makes him a coward because he doesn’t have to see the destruction; he just flies in and flies out. As well, when Milton argues that Emil’s father that when one is on the side of mod they’re “already wrong,” the father simply responds, “Are you not in a mob? Are you immune to being fooled?” Milton pushes back, but the father continues by telling Milton that when they realized what the party planned to do, it was too late. The father’s comment about Milton not being immune from mob mentality is important. It reiterates Twain’s and Howells’ stories, which show the ease with which individuals succumb to a mob mentality wrapped in patriotism that kills others. Depending on the perspective, we can view Milton as a part of the mob, as inhuman, as a villain. That is the point here, that once we allow ourselves to become part of any mob mentality, we lose our sense of self and humanity because we do not see others as human. We see them as different than ourselves, as not human, as invisible.

The conversation ends with Milton asking the man why he chose to help him escape. The man simply responds, “We rebel in small ways. When we can.” The man points out that he cannot change the government by himself. but he can do smal lacts of resistance, maintaining his humanity and sense of self. He does this by protecting Milton, by sheltering him from the gurads. The man falls asleep and Milton looks at Emil in his bed. Emil holds a portrait of his family, with his dead mother and a sibling in the image. Milton thinks about his own pregnant wife at home and their unborn child, and we see in his face a moment of recognition, a realization of a shared humanity, a shared desire for achieving the best life for oneself and one’s family.

I don’t know where Escape will go from here, but I know I am still hooked. It is a powerful book that examines some very important questions, and I can’t wait to see where Remender and Acuña go next. What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.