CHE

Revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara becomes a graphic hero in Jacobson and Colón’s latest (After 9/11: America’s War on Terror, 2008, etc.).

Che has long since been appropriated as graphic icon, festooning T-shirts and posters around the world, thanks to his handsome look and jaunty beret. Odds are that most Che-sporting hipsters have only the vaguest idea of just who is accessorizing their look, however. Here Jacobson and Colón, a top-drawer writing and art team, perform a useful service, incorporating material from weighty tomes such as Jon Lee Anderson’s life of Che and technical writings such as Guevara’s own handbook on guerrilla warfare. In a nod to The Motorcycle Diaries, Jacobson and Colón begin with Guevara’s motorcycle journey across southern South America of 1952 and beyond, when Guevara’s eyes were opened to the pernicious effects of U.S. domination of third-world economies (reads one caption, “Though Bolivians ran the mine, to Ernesto the Americans were once again the moving force”). The authors chart Guevara’s growing radicalism and his partnership with Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, while providing a surprisingly thorough survey of South American history, a tale of caudillos and exploiters. Throughout, the tone is respectful but not hagiographic, and Jacobson and Colón take pains not to gloss over a signal moment in Guevara’s role in the Cuban revolution: his ordering of the execution of some unknown number of supporters of the previous regime. (Citing Anderson, however, they suggest that no one who was killed was “innocent.”) The narrative continues to embrace the history and aftermath of Che’s storied martyrdom, a term that the closing graphic would seem to suggest.

A lively, well-drawn rendering of Guevara’s eventful life—not out of place in a fashionista’s handbag, but worthy of a more serious audience as well.