Johnny Jihad

Inspired by the experiences of John Walker Lindh and the Columbine shootings, this fictional exploration of our culture's casual acceptance of violence tells the story of a young martyr-in-training. Originally from New Jersey, John Sendel narrates the story as he's about to die in an American bombing run in Afghanistan. In a flashback we see Johnny in the early '90s as an unhappy suburbanite with a nowhere job, no girlfriend, an abusive, profane ex-military father, and a remote, drug-dependent mom. He's drifting through his non-life until a fellow employee shows him the Koran and involves him in an Islamic activist group. The terrorist training camp provides a family for him, while anti-Americanism provides a purpose to his life and something to blame. This is a common cultural explanation for otherwise inconceivable actions, but the treatment here pushes coincidence too far, as when Johnny manages to run into Usama Bin Laden. The story is very text-driven, with the images simply illustrating the narration instead of supporting it in a more integrated form. The expressionist art appears to be done with scratchboard, a dark, moody technique that resembles a woodcut, and paints a picture of an emotionally disconnected kid who engages in self-destructive behavior with no concern for the bigger picture. The heavy-handed indictment of all forms of violence that concludes the book will make this distasteful to some readers. Some will applaud the book for daring to challenge the conventional wisdom of the roots of terrorism; others will find it opportunistic and overly sensational, with insights that need to be more deeply thought about before being presented to the audience.