By Bruno Savill De Jong — For many the past is another country, and war is a different world. WW2 is a thoroughly-documented period, but one fast fading from living memory, remaining unknowable to those not there. Joseph Sieracki adapts his grandfather Lenny’s real-life letter home from the frontlines in A Letter to Jo, a January graphic novel from IDW / Top Shelf. Sieracki does so to revive WW2 from being a historical artifact and illustrate his frontline experiences, becoming a bridge across time and continents. Lenny had only just graduated high school before he enlisted, as well as gotten engaged to Josephine, Sieracki’s grandmother and the letter’s recipient. Like these young men, A Letter to Jo is admirable but also premature, taking readers to the frontlines of warfare, but not crossing beyond them.

The blunt fact is that Lenny’s letter is not that unique. A copy included in the book’s backmatter totals only four pages, with Lenny detailing his physical trajectory but being reserved in emotional or personable experiences. Sieracki admits that the storylines filling up the panels in-between the narration-captions are fictionalized. One of the most famous graphic novels ever, Maus, was also a second-hand autobiography of WW2, and the tale of Vladek Spiegelman was also (tragically) commonplace. But Art Spiegelman recreated a detail-rich tapestry by pressing his father for specific memories, and exposing the strained contemporary relationship between the two. Sieracki only has the letter as the basis from his grandfather’s service, and despite mentioning Lenny’s characterization as an “abusive drunk” in the prologue, leaves his presentation within A Letter to Jo fairly uncomplicated. Although there are displays of wartime cynicism and teases of moral ambiguity (with Lenny confessing how much he enjoyed firing his squadron’s machine-gun), Sieracki leaves these threads unexplored, using Lenny as a prism to examine WW2’s battles rather than its impact. A Letter to Jo is a straight-forward illustrated memoir, focused around a desire to escape from the horrors of war, rather than confront them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with simple stories, particularly if viewed as a sweet, heart-warming romance. Sieracki also shows Josephine on the homefront, re-reading Lenny’s letter as she waits for him to return home. The letter is not ‘intimate’ exactly, but there is a certain reserved honesty to it, and a palpable sympathy from seeing the two estranged lovers wishing to reunite. Lenny’s wartime experiences were relatively un-extraordinary; he had no special mission or daring escapes. But perhaps this commonness is a point within A Letter to Jo; it being only ‘a’ letter, one of many stories from WW2, which was composed of millions of ordinary soldiers like Lenny, for whom regular life was put on hold so that it could be secured for everybody.

The story is also elevated by Kelly Williams’ artwork. He portrays Jo with lovely soft watercolors, using a crisp and pastel template, while also displaying the destitute and muddy terrains of WW2 Europe, complete with surprisingly graphic amounts of gore. It mirrors the pleasant setting being interrupted by brutal violence. Some of the best sequences in A Letter to Jo are when the narration fades away, leaving daunting compositions of tanks and trees. As you would hope for in a comic based off a letter, Taylor Esposito provides impressive lettering, with handwritten notes for Lenny’s letter and vintage background songs being illustrated in fading cursive, with sound-effects being immediate and imposing. These particularly make the book’s battle-sequences engaging and intense, even if they can often feel like a checklist from Lenny’s letter instead of their own section.

Despite the structure being skeletal, A Letter to Jo is a well-made comic. It may not bring anything new to depictions of WW2 or its veterans, but the effort put in is evident (particularly with Williams’ sketchbook in the backmatter). For those interested in these experiences, or those wishing to communicate with others who underwent them, A Letter to Jo is a solid and accessible place to begin, even if it is only a slim chapter in a far bigger story.

A Letter to Jo
Writer: Joseph Sieracki
Artist/Colorist: Kelly Williams
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: IDW Publishing / Top Shelf
Price: $9.99 Digital, $19.99 Print
As Leonard fights on the frontlines of World War II, memories of Josephine and home help keep him alive. As Josephine contends with life, family, and work in Cleveland, letters from Leonard sustain her. But official censorship forces him to leave out much of the most significant action he sees. Finally, with the war coming to an end, Leonard is able to tell his full story. In a quietly beautiful letter to Josephine, Leonard writes of the loneliness he felt, the camaraderie he experienced, and the terrible violence he witnessed. Now, Josephine and Leonard’s grandson Joseph Sieracki has carefully researched the battles Leonard describes and expanded the letter into a moving tale of a young man’s fears and bravery far from home. Brought to heart-wrenching life by the paintbrushes of Kelly Williams (Creepy, Eerie), A Letter to Jo is at once a tender love story and harrowing battlefield memoir.
Release Date: January 22, 2020
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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.