'Kobane Calling' written and drawn by Zerocalcare is a autobiographical memoir about a trip to the Rojava region of Syria.

Zerocalcare is a fictitious name of an Italian cartoonist. When he learns about what is happening in Rojava, he volunteers with a group of others. From dangerous border crossings to fear of Daesh, Zerocalcare finds himself learning about the struggles of the Kurdish people and meets the all-female Kurdish volunteer Women's Defense Units.

To balance the seriousness of the story, there is humor about always having lentils for breakfast and a chai addiction. Sometimes the people he draws are anonymized in to blocks of cheese and olives. There is gravity too, as this is a struggle that we only hear about in soundbites. It's also good to get a different perspective than my American one. I like the art and style as well as the writing.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Lion Forge, Diamond Book Distributors, and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

A must in graphic novels. Zerocalcare does more for the Kurdish cause with his graphic novel than a thousand books or rallies.

The story of a Italian cartoonist who visits the Kurds to document their struggle against ISIS. I think it's important to see global issues from multiple angles to gain new perspectives. I liked being able to see this conflict through both Italian and Kurdish eyes. Zerocalcare gives us heavy doses of information in digestible chunks. Seeing it through a graphical interface made it easier to grasp the foreign concepts and complicated geopolitical issues. He also brings in some humor to a pretty dour subject. I found it fascinating what they are trying to accomplish in Rojava. They are striving for a new kind of democratic government for the Middle East where all religions can peacefully coexist, where women are treated equally and have just as much representation in society. There is so much information in this that is not presented in the 24 hour news channels of the West. It's a fascinating journey that Zerocalcare takes us on.

This was a subject that I knew almost nothing about, making it a pretty compelling read from page one. The art style and dialogue are both entertaining and relatable. The humor is down to earth and self-effacing. And even though it's quite conversational there's a lot of information to absorb.This is a book you could reread several times and always come away with something new.

Being a die-hard fan of Joe Sacco I was incredibly excited to check out Kobane Calling, and Zerocalcare's depiction of the conflict in the Middle East certainly lived up to my expectations. It was gritty, real, and refreshing to see that Zero visited multiple locations and sought to obtain multiple perspectives. It can be difficult to experience, synthesize, and reconstruct such experiences in comics form in a timely manner - so I was blown away with how timely and on point this book remains for today's issues.

My biggest drawbacks were entirely aesthetic and stylistic, in that I was often lost in the mixture of anthropomorphic and human characters. Don't get me wrong, I both understand and enjoy the metaphor of the mother hen and such, but I am a fan of consistency. I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if the characters were entirely animals like Maus, or entirely human.

I did however, really enjoy the frequent asides from the narrator. Not only did they break tension in some incredibly dark moments, but they afforded a massive amount of information to readers who might not be familiar with the facts of the situation being depicted. The inclusion of maps, historical facts, and even personal perspectives from characters on the ground created well rounded and incredibly grounded experience.

I heard about "Kobane Calling" when it was first published in Italian, but I've never read it. Now I had the opportunity to read it in English and I think Kobane Calling is a very intriguing graphic novel. It's about Zerocalcare journey to Kobane, in northern Syria. Kobane is in the border between Syria and Iraq. It's a place that was inhabited mainly by Kurds, an ethnic minority that was declared a 'terrorist group' by the Turkish government. During all his journey, Zerocalcare gives a series of explanations about what happened before and after the invasion of Daesh, the Arabic name of the Islamic state. So many people gathered all over the world and joined the Kurds resistance to fight Isis and liberate Kobane. Kobane was liberated after four years of fighting but what is left is only rubble and silence everywhere. Zerocalcare describes Kobane as 'an open-air museum of the shame of humanity of what people allowed to happen'. It is a critic against all those governments that did nothing to prevent the invasion of the region, mainly the Turkish government that helped Isis fighters with arms to defeat Kurds. Now it is clear that what Kobane needs is not words, but economic aid. No one can clean everything and pretend nothing happened. Kobane is now becoming a symbol of resistance all over the world, because of Kurds' democratic organization and military capacity and because women had a great role in the resistance. To sum up, this graphic novel is very interesting, but sometimes there are too many digressions.

I started this book and put it down, not because I was confused and thought this was going to be about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Although that may be why I put it down after all. I put it down because the frenetic narrator who is almost sneaking off to Syria and creating alternative worlds for his mother in order to go to Kobane at first reminded me of the drug addled Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Even in its graphic form, I am not really a fan. So maybe the whole Cobain, drugs thing got me connecting Zerocalcare with someone whose motives are fueled by paranoia and alcohol. Yes, the character seems addicted to chai, but other than that, once he left for Syria, I was hooked.

Let me back up and let the publishers talk about it. Like the middle east itself, it's complicated. What helps is that the cartoonist is not American so his lens is less, well, American, which right now, is a fabulous thing.

From the publishers:
KOBANE CALLING is the autobiographical memoir of a young Italian cartoonist, writing and drawing under the nom-de-plume Zerocalcare, who volunteers with the Rojava Calling organization and heads into the Middle East to support and observe the Kurdish resistance in Syria as they struggle against the advancing forces of the Islamic State. He winds up in the small town of Mesher, near the Turkish-Syrian border as a journalist and aid worker, and from there he travels into Ayn al-Arab, a majority-Kurd town in the Rojava region of Syria. As he receives an education into the war from the Kurdish perspective, he meets the women fighting in the all-female Kurdish volunteer army (the Yekeineyen Parastina Jin, or Women's Defense Units), struggling to simultaneously fight off the Islamic State even as they take strides for Kurdish independence and attempt a restructuring of traditional patriarchal Kurdish society. In a story and style at once humorous and heartbreaking, Zerocalcare presents clear-eyed reportage of the fight against the Islamic State from the front lines. Originally published in the Italian weekly INTERNATIONAL, and then collected and expanded in an edition by Italian publisher BAO Publishing.

My thoughts:
This feels authentic, unfiltered by censorship and propaganda. Maybe I am naive but I think it just tells his story in panel form without agenda except to tell the truth. I was especially interested in the YPJ, the all-female Kurdish volunteer army. What we would call them in the Pacific are mana wahine which represent those powerful females who can save themselves, and their men too.

I like how confused the author is when it seems like the enemy is the neighbor is the ally. I also have been shying away from watching and reading too much news, so Kobane is new to me and I just found this story both wrenching and heart affirming at the same time. I started re reading certain passages just to hold onto these people's stories, knowing that many of them will not live to see an end to this battle and will not live to go back to their homes just across the fence. In the end, the dead are still buried together, but in life, it is so very complicated.

For those students in the middle, this is living history told by the people on the front lines. This is happening now, not centuries ago. They need to know that people canot be lumped in together and stereotyped because all we see are certain views from the media. Kobane Calling: Greetings from Northeast Syria is a portal in.

This is an important book but I fear that there is alot lost in translation. I really recommend this book and believe that it is an important piece in the tragic history that still writes itself in the Middle East and Europe.

I really enjoy comics journalism and especially when the topics are otherwise hidden aka we don't really hear about them on the news or we only hear some. You get to know so much more and there's always a humane touch to it compared to traditional news. Kobane Calling dives into Syria, its current war and the Kurdish troops and the political atmosphere around this all. We get to know more about the geography and how things really are from the normal people, who have to live trough it all (and fight for their rights). We get to hear real voices and the voices that are otherwise suppressed. We get to see the other picture. I actually enjoyed that Zerocalcare isn't neutral and blames the West quite often and himself too for the situation. The structure of the comic isn't perfect though and it was kind of hard to see the bigger picture, since it's just full of stuff happening, but no real direction. I'm not saying we would need a plot, but structural order would make this better and Zerocalcare could read his Sacco better. The messy approach makes the comic lose some of it power, which is a shame.

The art works very well although there's that same face problem especially when Zerocalcare draws women. There's that "who is who" problem, which makes the comic hard to follow, but isn't lethal. The style and line art works otherwise well and the inking fits well with the gravity of the story and compliments it. The cover is great and it was a good call to make this black and white. The panels are slightly too stuffed though, which makes the art look heavy at times, but otherwise the art works very well. I'm glad we have cartoonists who are brave to report us things we need to hear, but no one is telling us. These types of comics show us so much more and I do hope we get more and people will read these in order to educate themselves and perhaps do something about the whole situation.

Sometimes it is much easier to understand a dramatic situation through comics and graphic representations. This book offers an accessible outline of the last years of fighting and deterioration of the human environment in Syria.

I am very interested in history, so this is one I really enjoyed. A lot of history lessons can be dry and boring, but I find that many graphic novels have a way of overcoming that. I think it has to do with the art. It adds another dimension to the story. Kobane Calling was no exception. I thought the art was interesting and eye catching. It was crisp with clean, bold lines.

I knew very little about Syria, and the Kurds who have fought for autonomy and independence. This was a great introduction. I think the author did a wonderful job telling their story. It was such a good job that I researched more on my own. A definite recommend.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2154532516
https://thebookobserver.blogspot.com/2017/10/review-13-kobane-calling.html

Kobane calling documents the experience of Italian cartoonist Zerocalcare as he visits Turkey, Iraq, Syria, to document the life of Kurdish resistance and help those in need caught between the conflict.

The book reminds me of a modern day 'Maus' and has a very important subject matter which should be documented and put to the mainstream media much more.

Zerocalcare looks at the victims caught up in the war, the people trying to help out those in need and the difficulty involved in trying to bring aid.

I went in really excited to read this but unfortunately it left me forcing myself to finish it due to the writing style. I found that the story line struggled to hold onto one thought and bounced between internal and external narratives which distracted and put me off as I read it.

I really wanted to enjoy the novel but unfortunately the writing style was just not right for me, I loved the idea of it along side the art but I felt it needed to rein in the focus to the story line.

I would say to give it a read due to the message and experiences within the story but I felt that it lacked in the storytelling.

Superb marriage of imagery and text make this a powerful consideration and also a gripping one - i wanted to know what happened, and enjoyed the expressive drawings which did their job better than could be expected. Refreshing and I hope the publisher can reach a wide audience. This should win awards.

This was another 'Read Now' graphic novel that I requested from Net Galley, and for which I thank the publisher. I like to look at the 'Read Now' because while material in this category can sometimes mean a novel is not doing well and for good reason, it can also mean that something worth reading is being overlooked. I've seen many examples of both, and I am sorry to have to report that this one, for me, was not a worthy read.

There was a prologue. I never read prologues because they're tedious and antiquated. My advice is that if you must have one, then include it in chapter one or somewhere in the story, preferably not as a flashback. I routinely skip all prologues, prefaces, introductions, forewords, and so on.

In this case this created a problem because there was no obvious beginning to the story itself, so I skipped past page after page looking for a start or a chapter one, anything, and there was nothing to indicate where the actual story began!

This lack of organization was rife, and the total lack of respect for trees irked me. I don't think comic book writers in general ever consider how many trees they're going to destroy if their story takes off as a print edition. I wish they would. In this case, this book had a title page (which may have been a place-holder for the cover we don't get in the review copy), followed by a blank page, followed by another title page, followed by a credits page, followed by a small print page, followed by an extravagant two-page map, followed by a blank page.

This was followed by yet another title page - like we don't already know the freaking title of this work by now? Seriously? How many title pages do we need? Does the publisher think we're that stupid, that we can't remember the title page? Maybe so - because I did have to swipe past page after page, after endless page to get to the story, so it's entirely possible, by by the time I've waded through all these extraneous pages, that I could well have forgotten the title!

That was followed by a black page and then the story began, but this was not the prologue! This was the pre-prologue! Fool that I was, I read this thinking that the actual story had started, but no! After two pages, then began the prologue! I am not sure where the prologue ended. We got some more titles, but they were so odd and random that it was never clear if the story had started or if this author was totally enamored of prologuing.

I know there are in-a-rut publishers who are mesmerized by the library of Congress 'rules and regulations', but I say screw them. When did Congress ever care about trees unless it's how much money can be made and profits taxed from cutting them down? This wasn't even an American publication: it was, I think, but am not sure, Italian, and was revamped and translated for English speakers, so there's even less reason to concern ourselves about antiquated Congressional ideas about publishing.

I read seventy-eight pages of a tree-slaughtering 288, and I decided I had better things to do with my time. At no point did the author actually explain why this guy had decided to go to a kill zone. From the story it looked like all he did was it around staring at the fighting going on over the border, and then once in a while put together food packages. The packages, it seemed to me, could have been put together somewhere a whole lot safer and simply shipped to where they were needed instead of shipping the raw materials there. Why this was not done wasn't even addressed, let alone explained.

For a story that I requested because it sounded interesting, it was not. It was tedious. The writer seemed much more in love with how wonderful he was to go somewhere dangerous, than ever he was in explaining anything about why he went, why things were how they were, or how it really felt to be there. The story made the whole experience (at least as far as I could stand to read) out to be a joke and it seemed to me not a joking matter at all. The story therefor was neither engaging nor educational much less entertaining, and I gave up on it because life is too short to waste on something as dull as this. I cannot recommend it.

This book will stand out for years. If you can make your way through the denseness, you will see the strength of people labeled terrorists. You will see the cowardice of people labeled heroes. You will see the conflicts that are constantly in the media in a drastically different light. This book will open your eyes and your heart, as cliche as that sounds.

This book did not read smoothly, it read as a history lesson for the most part. There was a lot of education that had to be done to get the reader to the point that author needed us. The author learned a great deal on the way as well. He was also able to break up the history lessons with some lighter plots like his obsession with slice olives and lentils. If it weren't for those breaks, I don't know if I would have been able to handle reading this book in one sitting. 

If you have read Persepolis, then you may have an easier time jumping into this book. This is much denser and has more of a macro approach than Persepolis but they are both eye opening. They are both necessary for people to read if they want to say they understand the world. 

On a lighter note, I am in love with the way the artist drew the teeth. No idea why, but they were so aesthetically pleasing.

On my television screen, and on my mobile device, are pictures of the distrusction of Hurricane Irma. The areas that are hit look as though a bomb was set off. Flattened houses, desolation everywhere. And then I look down, as I read this graphic novel about the ware in Syria, and parts around there, against ISIS. Burned out buildings, destruction. It seems as though the whole world is in trouble.

This is an amazing story about a young Italian cartoonist who wanted to see what was going on Kokanee. Have you heard of Kokane? I have not, but apparently it is a town in Syria where the people managed to liberate themselves, with a fighting force of men and women who were working for a more decommocatic world. A world where men and women could learn together and work together, and fight together as well.

The author gets to go there, and meet these men and women, who are decicating their lives to having a homeland. Zerocalcare introduces us to people we, in the West, have never heard of. Things are not as simple as they seem. An amazing journey, highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Italian author/artist Zerocalcare has written a memoir of his time with Kurdish groups in Northern Syria which is both highly educational about the historical and ongoing conflicts and the groups involved, but also tells stories about individuals and groups involved. In one of the most poignant moments of his tale, he is back in Italy and realizes how his Western privilege distances him from the important work that the Kurds are doing to preserve their freedom in the region. He is also able to create the sense of constant flux and change going on during the fighting with his map updates throughout the book. An important and educational volume. Highly recommended to those interested in justice issues or world politics.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. There is a lot to love here!