Drafted
Written and Illustrated by Rick Parker
Edited by Charles Kochman
Designed by Josh Johnson
Published by Abrams Books
The absurdity of war has been well documented in pop culture. Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Catch-22, Waltz with Bashir, and Charley’s War are but a few of the examples that best capture the bizarre nature of military culture and conflict. Even the most patriotic war narratives feature portrayals of some of the most ridiculous aspects of warfare, be it through the vitriol spewed out by drill sergeants in basic training or through the shortsighted strategies that would result in senseless death with little to no gains on the battlefield (remember FUBAR from Saving Private Ryan?). In his book Wartime (1989), for instance, World War II veteran Paul Fussell spoke about military chickenshit, referring to orders given by higher-ups that either made no sense or were actively illogical. Irrationality was the norm, and most everyone serving today will attest to this still being the case.
Cartoonist Rick Parker has added his own two cents into this veritable world of nonsensical chaos with his graphic novel memoir Drafted, about the author’s time in the Army after being drafted for service at the height of the Vietnam War. Parker’s experience, though, does not conform to the expectations attached to these types of narratives, where the subject is shown going through boot camp first and then being deployed into active combat zones. In Drafted, we get the story of a soldier that by virtue of cleverness, luck, and ludicrousness managed to stay back home to become a military officer. But as the book shows, avoiding Vietnam did not mean being spared the absurdities of war.
First and foremost, it has to be stated that what sets this war memoir apart from others in its field is that art leads the way. This is a story about finding one’s calling, of defining one’s purpose. For Parker, it’s about his desire to draw. In fact, it can be argued that this skill is essentially responsible for dictating what his military experience would end up meaning to him. It’s actually what starts the book off.
Parker begins by going briefly into his family history and his sense of awkwardness growing up to account for the slightly odd path that led to his love for drawing, a path that includes a stop at an important moment of personal discovery that afford him a lifetime of teachings: Playboy magazine. We get a pretty good idea of the guy the United States decided to draft to its military quite quickly after that, and then it’s all about how an artistic mind navigates a new reality based on orders and regimented behavior.
What makes Drafted such a special book is its honesty, which comes through quite earnestly thanks to the visuals. Parker’s cartooning style lends itself well to satire and humor. This is on full display here as it’s exactly what’s needed to really hit at the surreal nature of the story. Drill sergeants look like they’re walking sticks of dynamite ready to go at the slightest provocation; new recruits look hilariously indifferent to the alpha male energy the Army wants to project; and more experienced officers look like they’ve surrendered to the nonsense they have to deal with on the daily to the point of indifference.
That said, Drafted is not a laugh-a-minute story. The book makes an argument that tragedy, trauma, and confusion are part of the overall package and that they always will be in these matters. It’s a fact that affects everyone regardless of whether you ended up in a jungle surrounded by the Vietcong or not. So, when the tone needs to shift to account for this and offer a deeper look at the dysfunction inherent in the military system, Parker transitions effortlessly to do so. Some of the things he witnessed were truly terrifying, and they paint service on the homefront in a much darker light. The point isn’t to compare experiences with those draftees that went to Vietnam, or to equate them, though. It’s about exploring a different aspect of military life and how it cames with its own challenges.
Drafted is an important addition not just to Vietnam War literature, but to war literature as a whole. It shows war as an idea that doesn’t start and end in combat. Instead it is presented a kind of living organism at odds with itself that once upon a time drafted young men for reasons that were rarely clearly defined. Rick Parker has a lot to say about this last point in particular, about the amount of institutional madness that accompanies military service. And as it tends to go with madness, you either acknowledge it or you go crazy trying to make sense of it. Parker works through this in his memoir, and he finds that pen, ink, and paper were his most reliable soldiers in sorting it out.
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