WASHINGTON — On a road somewhere in Iraq, a Marine Corps convoy grinds to a halt — not because of a roadside bomb or an ambush, but because in the middle of the road walks a white donkey, and it refuses to budge. In one of the vehicles, a Marine gunner laughs, caught up in the absurdity of the situation.
That’s the scene that gave “The White Donkey” its name. The graphic novel — the first of its kind about the Iraq War written by and for veterans — tells the story of two Marines’ emotional, at times surreal, journey through Iraq and their return home.
Written by Marine Corps veteran Maximilian Uriarte, author of webcomic “Terminal Lance,” the book began in 2013 as a crowd-funded project and is now atop various best-seller lists.
“It’s not a war story in the same way that a war movie usually is, with an epic gunfight and things exploding,” Uriarte says. “It’s really more of a war story in the sense that I’m getting at the heart and soul of being in the Marine Corps, enlisting during a time of war, and really figuring out what that means to the person.”
Origins
When he first got the idea for “The White Donkey,” Uriarte didn’t have a graphic novel in mind.
“I wanted to make a movie,” Uriarte says. “But I can’t do that by myself. I can make a graphic novel by myself, and I wanted to do it the way I think a graphic novel should be made.”
That meant starting slow, and working on a related project — a webcomic, slightly more forgiving artistically than the more-detailed graphic novel format.
“Terminal Lance” began in 2010, when Uriarte was still on active duty as a Marine Corps lance corporal. Initially a gag-a-day strip poking fun at the more absurd aspects of military service, the strip soon introduced some continuing characters: lance corporals Abe and Garcia, the enlisted protagonists of “The White Donkey.”
Uriarte says this is because even at the beginning, he was already starting to write “The White Donkey.”
“I put the characters in the strip so people could become familiar with them,” Uriarte says.
And Marines loved their tongue-in-cheek banter, and the strip, enough that The Marine Corps Times picked up “Terminal Lance” as a featured comic. Uriarte’s audience grew rapidly — from about 80,000 page views in 2010 to several million in 2015. The whole time, he worked on “The White Donkey” quietly in the background.
In 2013, Uriarte knew he couldn’t finish the project on his own. After some hesitation, he put together a Kickstarter, aiming to raise $20,000 for production costs.
“I felt like a hack asking for money, but I also knew that this book was never going to get done unless I had the money and resources to get it done,” Uriarte says “I had one of two scenarios in my head: Either it’s going to be terrible or it’s going to raise so much money and be so successful that I’d have no idea what to do and have to make the book.”
The project exceeded all expectations, raising more than $162,000.
“The idea that somebody trusted me with that much money, and trusted that I’d be able to pull this off, was really flattering,” Uriarte says. “I was very humbled knowing I had that much support and that much love from the readers of ‘Terminal Lance,’ who really made it happen.”
The Book
Weighing in at 288 pages, “The White Donkey” is less a traditional comic book and more a feature film that happens to be presented in graphic novel format.
It’s a serious piece in the same category as graphic novels like Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a story about the Holocaust told with talking animals, and Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis,” which talks about growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution (the latter was Amazon’s top seller in the category until “The White Donkey” surpassed it in May).
“I’ve read ‘Persepolis;’ I know it’s a very ubiquitous, literary graphic novel,” Uriarte says. “I’m happy ‘The White Donkey’ is well received in that category, because those are a higher tier of graphic novels that I really respect personally. I’m not really interested in trying to compete with Batman, even though Batman is beating me on the New York Times best-seller list right now.”
But only by one space; in the hardcover graphic novel category, “The White Donkey” is in second place on that list, behind “Batman: The Killing Joke.” That may be that Batman is written for a wider audience, while “The White Donkey” is intended, first and foremost, for Marines.
“That’s who I create for,” Uriarte says. “The webcomic itself really is for Marines.” But Uriarte also thinks it’s valuable for civilians who want to understand Marines as people.
“You don’t need to be a Marine to read it and appreciate it,” Uriarte says. “I think civilian readers can get a better understanding of what it means to be a Marine, to go to Iraq, to come home from that — and a better perspective on what veterans go through when they come home.”
Uriarte says the story is ultimately about what it means to be human, and how war changes us and the way we view ourselves as humans. “It’s about the quest for personal enlightenment, it’s about love, it’s about depression.”
And it doesn’t shy from tackling difficult topics, from loss and post-traumatic stress to depression and suicide — topics Uriarte said he wanted to get right because of personal experience, both first- and second-hand.
“I’ve personally lost four Marines to suicide since I left the Marine Corps, and I wanted to tell the story of how a Marine might get to that point,” Uriarte said. “I think that can help people get a better understanding, and maybe inspire other veterans struggling to get help.”
“The White Donkey” was released in February 2016 to Kickstarter backers. After widespread positive response from readers, the book was picked up by Little, Brown and Co., and released commercially in April.
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