Brought to Light (graphic novel)

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Brought to Light is a graphic novel published by Eclipse Comics in 1989. It is a flip-book; opening the book from one side provides the story “Shadowplay: The Secret Team“, and flipping the book over to what would have been the back cover is another front cover, leading to the story “Flashpoint: The La Penca Bombing”. Both stories are based on the investigative work of The Christic Institute.

The book seems to be relatively difficult to find, but not exactly rare. Copies surface on eBay from time to time; a hardcover edition was printed, and this is seen with far less frequency. Even more elusive is a CD version made by Alan Moore, among others; it has ambient music and Moore reading

“Shadowplay” was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Bill Sienkewicz, after an introduction by Daniel Sheehan (general counsel of TCI). Credits for “Flashpoint” list Jonathan Marshall on the introduction, Joyce Brabner writing, and Thomas Yeates illustrating, with letters by Bill Pearson and painting by Sam Parsons. Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan are credited with having told the story to Joyce Brabner. In the center is a comic by Paul Mavrides, and a two-page spread, "World Map of 30 Years of Covert Action" committed by the CIA (election tampering, drug trafficking, assassination, etc.). Joyce Brabner was the overall editor, Catherine Yronwode was executive editor, and Dean Mullaney is listed as book designer.

The story of "Shadowplay" is of an unseen character (presumably representing the oblivious American public in first-person view of the reader) in a bar, where he is approached by a man-sized, walking, talking eagle. The eagle, from the emblem of the CIA, proceeds to drink alcohol and, in a drunken stupor, divulge all the bloody details of The Agency's sordid past. Early on a reference is made to the number of gallons an olympic swimming pool can hold, and the fact that an adult human body has one gallon of blood; from then on, the victims of CIA activities (directly or indirectly) are quantified in swimming pools filled with blood. Sienkiewicz's dark, erratic, and blurry images keep the mood of Moore's narration (through the boozing eagle) unnerving, and hazily nightmarish.

The look of and storytelling in "Flashpoint" are a far more traditional comic book style, relating the incident of a key defector from Los Contras (the deposed National Guard of dictator Anastazio Somza's Nicaragua) being bombed in a failed assassination attempt. The Christic Institute's detective work led them to make a criminal case that the would-be assassin-bomber was equipped and sent by the CIA, to silence Edgar Chamorro.