Uncle Sam (graphic novel)

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"It's a strange and frightening thing — to see yourself at your worst."

Uncle Sam is a two-part comic book series published by DC Comics in 1997, later published (beginning in 1998) as a graphic novel. It was writen by Steve Darnall with art by esteemed artist, Alex Ross. The graphic novel version also includes an essay on the history of Uncle Sam as well as several pages of art by Ross.

1 Story
2 Themes
3 Critical Reception
4 Awards
5 External links

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story centers around Sam, an a obviously distressed homeless man, wandering the streets of an unnamed city, at first speaking mostly in odd quotes and sound bytes. As he wanders, he has disturbing visions of events in American history (dealing with Indian Wars, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and others). Throughout his wanderings, he occasionally encounters a woman named Bea, and has conversations with Britannia.

Eventually he comes to the remains of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he sees Bea once more, now recognizing her as Columbia. He has further encounters with Britannia, Marianne and the Russian Bear, before he confronts a dark, corrupt, overtly capitalist shadow version of himself. He eventually defeats this figure, by accepting all its blows, recognizing that he's made mistakes, and learning from them.

Towards the end of the tale he thinks to himself: "It's a strange and frightening thing — to see yourself at your worst."

In the end we see him again as a homeless man, but instead of wildly hallucinating, he's now chipper and optimistic, ready to face the future.

[edit] Themes

The book was heavily influenced by Howard Zinn's work, A People's History of the United States. There's a clear and unapologetically liberal lean to the story. Most of the central theme of the story seems to be that the only way the people of the United States will ever learn to better themselves is by confronting the mistakes of their country's past and working to prevent making the same ones in the future.