The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation Into the Kennedy Assassination HC
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Release Date: September 16, 2014
Price: $29.95 (HC); $17.95 (TP)
Creator(s): Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon & Jerzy Drozd
Format: 160 pgs., Full-Color, 6" x 9", Hardcover & Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1230-2 (HC); 978-1-4197-1231-9 (TP)
Age Rating: N/A
ICv2 Rating: 4.5 Stars out of 5

Whether you were alive to see and hear the news reports, or merely came to exist in the post-1963 world, the assassination of JFK had an influence on your life.  This book is not just the story of his death. Instead, it is the story of the ways in which the death of a president were handled [or mis-handled] by the authorities who may have been more interested in societal closure than in determining the truth of events.  This rush has been fodder for rumor mongers and conspiracy theorists for decades.  As this book points out, there were too many fingers in the pie, all wanting to come out unstained.
 
The book shows how the investigations were bungled on every possible level, partly due to competition between departments and organizations, all of which were embarrassed by their initial failures. This was hardly conducive to good investigative work, and the mangled results have left no way of reconstructing what should have been learned at the time.
 
This graphic volume examines the deaths of both Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as the structural failures in the investigation.  It is not a conspiracy theory book, other than in pointing out the reasons why the Warren Report was not truly conclusive.  The book is a serious indictment of how the investigation and the report were handled, and should be used in the classroom at a high school level as serious non-fiction.
 
The smirking, cartoony illustrations of Lee Harvey Oswald were a little distracting.
The book is for adults and older teens.
 
--Nick Smith: Library Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.