I *appreciated* what this was. I did not enjoy reading it.

My wife didn’t like this at all but she never read it. And she loves everything Quaker. She just couldn’t get past the art and layout. I thought it was great, especially the art and layout. Divorce papers have been served.

3.5 stars. It was an interesting glimpse into the difficulty that the Civil War brought into Quaker meeting houses and homes. Staunch abolitionists and staunch pacifists, their closely held values collided with one another. Each Friend found themselves challenged by the choices they faced. Some, like the main character, went to war for the Union, leaving behind fractured communities and families. The book embraces Quaker simplicity and silence. The story is bare and quiet. The reader must draw t...

This graphic novel. based upon true accounts, is the story of a young Quaker man who, despite his religion's pacifist teachings, runs away to fight for the Union during the Civil War. His early fervor and naivety are tested as he experiences firsthand the horrors of war, including being jailed in a Confederate prison camp. The story and history are gripping, but I did have to squint to read much of the cursive, handwritten text, and the sketchbook-like line drawings didn't always make clear what...

During the Civil War, many Quakers were caught between their fervent support of abolition, a desire to preserve the Union, and their long-standing commitment to pacifism. When Charles Cox, a young Quaker from Indiana, slips out early one morning to enlist in the Union Army, he scandalizes his family and his community.Discipline is told largely through the letters exchanged between the Cox siblings—incorporating material from actual Quaker and soldier journals of the era—and drawn in a style that...

Brilliant and deeply moving. A young Indiana Quaker joins the Union Army during the Civil War. Only the second graphic novel I've read (other is Fun Home). Powerful graphics and a compelling story that raises important questions about pacifism and disaffection. Highly recommend.

One thing you can expect from Dash Shaw as you encounter a new work from him: Surprise, and Discipline is no exception. Shaw is an experimental animator and cartoonist, who has done a lot of sort of strange comics. I like narrative, I really do, but I also feel like I learn about the nature of narrative from folks like Shaw who challenge the very nature of narrative. Some of them work for me, and some of them don’t, but if he has a new work out, I want to see it. Shaw has done playful things lik...

Read this for my MFA, but the annotation makes a pretty good review as is, so I'm just posting a gently edited version.Discipline by Dash Shaw is a 2021 graphic novel following a young Quaker, Charles, who leaves home to fight in the Civil War despite the peace testimony, the ideal that Friends hold to that they should work towards peace and against war.This is something that is particularly interesting to me. Even though I find a lot of Civil War history unnerving and discomfiting, it’s somethi...

Not really as advertised. It doesn't really grapple with the slavery/pacifism question that every bookflap summary or review mentions.It reads like a family history. "Here's what happened to these people chosen for no particular reason."Because life doesn't really have structure, neither does this.

A 17-year-old Quaker boy from Indiana forsakes the pacifism of his religion to enlist in the Union Army and take up arms against the South as part of Sherman's March. In this historical fiction, he and his sister exchange boring letters full of angst and religious claptrap with an excess of -eths, thees, dosts, and thous lifted from actual letters from real people written during the war. Much of the story is told in pantomime around the blobs of cursive text, often contrasting or unrelated to th...

DISCIPLINE is about a Quaker man who goes off to fight for the Union in the Civil War, against the wishes of his pacifist family and Quaker community. The loose, sketchy style and lack of regular comic book panels and page layouts briefly seemed unfinished to me, but didn't take long to make a certain narrative & emotional & historical sense. There's not much text here, and what little there is appears in letters between the man and his sister, or as monologues from Quaker congregants speaking u...

I don't often read about Civil War Era Quakers, although I'm loosely familiar with their anti-war and anti-violent stance. The well-researched effort into that alone was very interesting. The style of art is quiet and untraditional-- simple line drawings and interesting framing and use of text or lack of dialogue.

4.5Another masterpiece from comics genius Dash Shaw, based on factual accounts of Quaker soldiers fighting in the Civil War. Shaw delivers this haunting and beautiful graphic novel with simple black and white drawings, and no panels, dialogue balloons or sound effects, relying solely on actual letters from soldiers to tell the story. Highly recommended for fans of John Porcellino and Frank Santoro, Terrance Malick’s film The Thin Red Line, and stunning, experimental comics in general.

Dash Shaw's absurd but deeply touching vision is turned towards more explicitly human and humane subjects and themes then I think I've read from the author previously. I think Dash's maturity as an artist and writer shines through, and comes together in a work that radiates the best that the comic medium has to offer as a unique and incomparable visual storytelling form. Our characters move through time, space, emotion, and thought in transitory and often collaged images that communicate more th...

More like a 2.5 for me but I am probably not the right person to review this book, not being a graphic novel connoisseur. I love Spiegelman's Maus books, however, and found that to be a rich reading experience. This book just didn't pack the same kind of punch for me, despite the compelling subject matter.

Stark line drawings and cursive writing fit the nature of this book, which explores Quaker pacifism in wartime.

At first, I was comfortable with the format of the novel, but by the 2nd chapter I was able to let go of my uneasiness. The simple sketches, the cursive text, and the thee and thou language of letters between Quaker siblings, Fanny and Charles Cox, drive the narrative. Shaw drew inspiration from a text called Fighting Quakers by Duganne (1866) and other Quaker writings. He explores the conflict between pacifism, a Quaker testimony, and abolitionism. Charles leaves home to fight in the union army...

A bit hard to follow, but interesting account of a Quaker young man who is torn between pacifism and patriotism. Charles wants to fight for the union, to abolish slavery but must go against his Quaker church and parents and join the army to do this.

I think I would've understood what was going on better if I were better at reading cursive. But cursive is just a way to torture left-handed children, so I purged it from my brain. Unfortunately, it meant it took me a long time to interpret the text. Besides the cursive, which is a scourge on humanity and left-handed people such as myself and is rightfully stricken from general use, the imagery in this book is spectacular. However, if you don't know a whole lot about Quakers, you might be confus...

I was enraptured by the first fifty pages or so, but then couldn’t follow the narrative at all. The characters just merged into the many, many twisting, curling lines of cursive. The idea behind this project, an epistolary comic inspired by real letters from the 19th century, is a good idea but it's not quite pulled off.