The Best Thing I've Read All Year: "Pride of Baghdad"

Fans of graphic fiction, go out and get yourself Pride of Baghdad, the new graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon. It's the most affecting piece of comic art I've read in a very long time.

Pride tells the story, based on real events, of a small group of lions who were freed from the Baghdad zoo by U.S. bombs. The four lions, unexpectedly liberated, find themselves roaming the war-torn streets of Baghdad. It is an amazing piece of work, one of those rare times in graphic fiction where writer meets artist in a perfect union, both of them combining to create a story no one else could have told nearly as well. With only cameo appearances by human characters, it is a unique piece of work, expertly creating characters that are accessible to human readers but still unmistakeably leonine in their behavior.

Please, if at all possible, buy it from a comics store, not a book store. This is one of those pieces that's going to be on "Best Graphic Novels of All Time" lists. It's also one of the only times a comic has made me cry.