Henry Johnson, and: Mary Walker by Chuck Dixon (review)

Comic books or graphic novels are often dismissed as the purview of children, having little or no educational value. Neither assertion could be further from the truth as Medal of Honor Volume 2 proves. This set of four books is an engaging read for adults as well as children and thanks to an extensive network of researchers who contributed their knowledge so Chuck Dixon could write the four stories that make up this volume, eminently educational. Dixon, most famous for his stint writing Batman and other comic books, proves to have an excellent ability to pivot from the fantasy world of superheroes to the gritty nonfiction stories of real heroes.

This volume contains the stories of how four people earned their Medals of Honor: Mary Walker, Henry Johnson, Daniel Inouye, and Tibor Rubin. The stories of Inouye and Rubin are vastly interesting. Inouye was a Japanese American man who served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II and earned his medal during the Italian campaign. He would go on to become a senator from Hawaii. Rubin was a young man when the Nazis placed him in a concentration camp where most of his family was killed. Rubin survived, migrated to America, and joined the army in time for the Korean War. Rubin fought two separate one-man rear guard actions that saved thousands of American soldiers at the cost of being captured by the North Koreans. Rubin earned his medal not only for his fighting but for his efforts to keep his fellow POWs alive in the prison camp.

While Inouye and Rubin's stories are fascinating, the other two stories in the book are of particular interest to students of New York's history. The first is the story of Mary Walker, born in Oswego in 1832. Walker graduated from medical school in 1855 and, with the Civil War looming, tried to volunteer as a surgeon. Rejected for the post, she accepted an appointment as a surgeon's assistant before striking out on her own to act as a surgeon closer to the battlefields of the war. She eventually earned her official commission as a surgeon. She was captured by the Confederate Army and held for four months at Castle Thunder prison camp in Richmond before being exchanged. After the war was over, President Andrew Johnson signed a bill making Walker the first female recipient of the Medal of Honor. As the book shows, she went on to become a suffragist and a dress reform advocate, seen frequently in the book wearing pants.

The second story of a New Yorker is that of Henry Johnson. Born in North Carolina, Johnson spent his formative years in New York working shoveling coal and eventually as a redcap at the Albany train station. In 1917 Johnson, an African American, signed up with the 369th Infantry, the Harlem Hellfighters, and was sent to Europe. While manning a forward listening post in the trenches of France, Johnson held off an attack by German forces with his rifle, grenades, and a knife all despite being wounded several times. Johnson was a national hero but was not honored at the time. It took until 2015 for Congress to officially recognize that Johnson had earned the Medal of Honor.

The true beauty of a book in graphic form is that not only does one read the stories of these brave men and women, but they get to see them, too. Artists John Higgins, Karl Moline, Peter Pantazis, P. J. Holden, Christopher Ivy, Rick Magyar, Troy Peteri, and Le Beau Underwood combine to create realistic representations of the worlds these men and women...