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David Axe writer of War Fix
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jun 26, 2006
After finishing the graphic novel War Fix, I immediately jumped on my computer and emailed the publicist to schedule an interview with the writer, David Axe. I was that impressed by the book. Axe and his artist Steve Olexa have taken Axe’s account of his first trip to Iraq as an embedded journalist and turned it into a compelling tale of why these same journalists keep going to these dangerous war zones and how it affects them on a daily basis and once they get back home.
Buy War Fix
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
David Axe: I’m at the Book Expo of America in Washington, D.C.
DRE:
Are you there with NBM?
Axe:
Yeah, tomorrow I get to meet Harvey Pekar.
DRE:
Harvey’s great.
Axe:
Oh you know him?
DRE:
I’ve interviewed him a few times.
Axe:
He’s moderating this panel we’re doing. Publisher’s Weekly is hosting a graphic novel memoir panel and Harvey’s headlining it.
DRE:
That’s cool.
Axe:
Yeah I’m looking forward to it.
DRE:
Whose idea was it to do War Fix as a comic book?
Axe:
Mine I guess [laughs]. But the artist, Steve Olexa, and I seem to have a pretty close collaboration. It’s not like I’m feeding him real precise instructions for what to do and also the book evolved out of our discussions. When I was headed to Iraq for the first time, in the fall of 2004, I knew I wanted to put some things into motion for a book. So Steve and I sat down and we said that assuming that this whole Iraq adventure pans out a certain way, how can we make this into a story? We actually started shaping the thing before we even knew exactly what was going to happen which is a funny way to write non-fiction. But since I knew I wanted to turn these experiences into a graphic novel it provided me a filter by which to look at events and my surroundings. So I spent a month in Iraq on that first trip and it was a really rich experience. Far more happened than you’ll see in War Fix but knowing that I wanted to turn this thing into a graphic novel helped me mine the material as it was happening. The actual writing of the book was done pretty much by filing dispatches from the front. I sent Steve emails, postcards and letters from Iraq. Then together we figured out the main story. Then Steve actually started a proper script while I was still in Iraq and when I got back in February 2005 we sat down and produced a polished script based on the material. He’d also been doing concept art which helped me shape the writing.
DRE:
How did you hook up with Steve?
Axe:
I knew Steve’s brother. I’d heard that Steve did a strip for a college paper at University of Tennessee called Everyday Joe. I could see that his style could evolve into something to tell a bigger journalistic story. It took some persuading because he’s a picky guy. He’s got high standards so he won’t tell just any story. But I worked on him and by the time I was at the end of the final planning stages of my first Iraq trip he was on board and that was the beginning of our collaboration.
DRE:
I was blown away by Steve’s work. It’s outstanding.
Axe:
One of my favorite pages of his is the nightmare sequence. It’s horrifying and when Steve first delivered that spread for me to check, we ended up not changing it one bit. It was perfect from the outset. I slapped that thing up as my wallpaper on my computer for a while and the damn thing would startle me whenever I looked at it. That’s borne out of real nightmares that I was having in Iraq. Every time I looked at it, I would be reminded of that stuff and it was just horrifying. The most amazing thing about Steve is that with limited material he produced something that is truly journalistically accurate.
DRE:
What made you think the graphic novel format in the first place?
Axe:
Ted Rall is one of my journalistic heroes. I read To Afghanistan and Back when it was out in hardcover. I wanted to do something just like that and it’s great that I wound up with NBM because that’s Ted’s publisher too.
DRE:
The book seems to imply that you’ve been waiting to do something like going to Iraq your whole life.
Axe:
That’s not wrong to say, but to a great extent my own motives are a mystery to me. In War Fix I offer some potential explanations for why I do what I do, but I don’t feel like they’re definitive. I’m still on the Iraq beat and I’m headed back in the fall. I simultaneously loathe and love the place and I don’t exactly know why I can’t quite shake it. I can look back on the first trip and it makes more sense, but that’s probably because I’ve turned it into this thing I can hold in my hand.
DRE:
Are you addicted like the journalist Pratt who’s been covering wars for 20 years?
Axe:
God I hope not. He seems like a miserable fucker.
DRE:
Yeah, but who knows what will happen to you if you do this for 20 years.
Axe:
I really hope not and I don’t think so. I’m not real good at this Iraq thing because it hurts. Maybe that I keep doing it is a testimony to my gluttony for punishment but every time I go it’s harder and it’s harder to fit back in at home. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up and what scares me is that the itch will be there but my willingness or ability to scratch the itch is going to go away.
DRE:
When did this idea of going to war as an embedded journalist as addiction strike you as a good theme for the book?
Axe:
There is a scene in the book where I wake up and Pratt is powwowing with an army psychologist in our room. He was a med student at some Ivy League university who got commissioned and thrown into uniform and shipped out to Iraq but is bewildered and out of place. He was interested in how journalists deal with combat stress because they don’t have the support infrastructure that soldiers do. Soldiers belong to big units and everyone’s all in the same boat and they spend a lot of time together so you’ve got a lot of folks watching your back. But journalists dive into a situation largely unsupported and they deal with all the same dangers but they’re essentially alone and they don’t get a long transition period to the next dangerous situation. They just go from danger to danger to danger. So he was interested in the war correspondent stress as a subset of soldier’s combat stress. He was interviewing Pratt and diagnosing him there and I woke up right in the middle of this conversation. I ended up sharing a couple of meals with him and talking about the idea of war correspondent and why people do it and why they tend to get hooked.
DRE:
Did you find that you had all the “symptoms”?
Axe:
It was a bit early for that. But he did say some things that I think have become true for me. He really had a chemical basis for his theories on stress. He believed that the adrenaline and the chemicals associated with danger and excitement are truly addictive and if you get them in large enough doses over a long enough period you would suffer withdrawal and then crave it. I didn’t know if that would be true for me until I got home from my first trip to Iraq but it didn’t take long for me to get antsy. I never really intended to do this Iraq thing forever. I went the one time and I thought, “Hey it’ll be a nice boost to my career.” But I couldn’t help it. I’d get home from Iraq and I’d immediately start planning the next trip and while I’m in Iraq, I’m like, “God this sucks, I can’t wait to get home, I’m never going to do this again.” Then I do [laughs]. My last trip was miserable. I ended up getting kicked out of Iraq by the army for supposedly publishing military secrets and it was just a huge mess. I came home pretty badly traumatized and just swore up and down that I was not going back, but here I am just a few months later and already looking forward to getting back.
DRE:
Some people would say that you’re suicidal.
Axe:
Well, let’s be realistic. Plenty of journalists have died in Iraq, but their death rate is lower than the death rate that soldiers suffer. I don’t think I’m facing certain death. I just got to know when to quit because if I make a career at this, it will it kill me.
DRE:
Are you and your girlfriend still together?
Axe:
No, we’re not.
DRE:
For the same reasons she left you the first time?
Axe:
I don’t know.
DRE:
[laughs] Hey, listen, you write an autobiographical comic, you’re going to get these kinds of questions.
Axe:
I know. My love life is a fucking mess and I don’t know whether to blame Iraq or blame myself because I’m not sure that Iraq is the cause or a symptom. When I’m in Iraq, I feel useful and I feel like everything makes sense. As miserable as I am, as filthy as I am, when I’m in Iraq I’m happy. I know why I exist, everything makes sense, I’m useful. In the terms of the skills that I have, I’m right for it, I’m good at it and it’s blissful.
DRE:
Are you planning on doing another graphic novel?
Axe:
I am. I’m currently planning it to be a three book cycle. From my perspective the shit only got worse and more interesting so I headed right back to Iraq. I was up in the north in December for another election. I spent a great deal of time in southern Iraq with the British army in the summer of ’05. Then I got arrested by the US army and booted out this year. The shit only got worse and by worse, I mean better in terms of the story. The trick is getting Steve on board because I don’t want to work without Steve. He’s too good not to work with. Book number two would be called Love and Terror and book number three would be Iraqniphobe.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
After finishing the graphic novel War Fix, I immediately jumped on my computer and emailed the publicist to schedule an interview with the writer, David Axe. I was that impressed by the book. Axe and his artist Steve Olexa have taken Axe’s account of his first trip to Iraq as an embedded journalist and turned it into a compelling tale of why these same journalists keep going to these dangerous war zones and how it affects them on a daily basis and once they get back home.
Buy War Fix
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
David Axe: I’m at the Book Expo of America in Washington, D.C.
DRE:
Are you there with NBM?
Axe:
Yeah, tomorrow I get to meet Harvey Pekar.
DRE:
Harvey’s great.
Axe:
Oh you know him?
DRE:
I’ve interviewed him a few times.
Axe:
He’s moderating this panel we’re doing. Publisher’s Weekly is hosting a graphic novel memoir panel and Harvey’s headlining it.
DRE:
That’s cool.
Axe:
Yeah I’m looking forward to it.
DRE:
Whose idea was it to do War Fix as a comic book?
Axe:
Mine I guess [laughs]. But the artist, Steve Olexa, and I seem to have a pretty close collaboration. It’s not like I’m feeding him real precise instructions for what to do and also the book evolved out of our discussions. When I was headed to Iraq for the first time, in the fall of 2004, I knew I wanted to put some things into motion for a book. So Steve and I sat down and we said that assuming that this whole Iraq adventure pans out a certain way, how can we make this into a story? We actually started shaping the thing before we even knew exactly what was going to happen which is a funny way to write non-fiction. But since I knew I wanted to turn these experiences into a graphic novel it provided me a filter by which to look at events and my surroundings. So I spent a month in Iraq on that first trip and it was a really rich experience. Far more happened than you’ll see in War Fix but knowing that I wanted to turn this thing into a graphic novel helped me mine the material as it was happening. The actual writing of the book was done pretty much by filing dispatches from the front. I sent Steve emails, postcards and letters from Iraq. Then together we figured out the main story. Then Steve actually started a proper script while I was still in Iraq and when I got back in February 2005 we sat down and produced a polished script based on the material. He’d also been doing concept art which helped me shape the writing.
DRE:
How did you hook up with Steve?
Axe:
I knew Steve’s brother. I’d heard that Steve did a strip for a college paper at University of Tennessee called Everyday Joe. I could see that his style could evolve into something to tell a bigger journalistic story. It took some persuading because he’s a picky guy. He’s got high standards so he won’t tell just any story. But I worked on him and by the time I was at the end of the final planning stages of my first Iraq trip he was on board and that was the beginning of our collaboration.
DRE:
I was blown away by Steve’s work. It’s outstanding.
Axe:
One of my favorite pages of his is the nightmare sequence. It’s horrifying and when Steve first delivered that spread for me to check, we ended up not changing it one bit. It was perfect from the outset. I slapped that thing up as my wallpaper on my computer for a while and the damn thing would startle me whenever I looked at it. That’s borne out of real nightmares that I was having in Iraq. Every time I looked at it, I would be reminded of that stuff and it was just horrifying. The most amazing thing about Steve is that with limited material he produced something that is truly journalistically accurate.
DRE:
What made you think the graphic novel format in the first place?
Axe:
Ted Rall is one of my journalistic heroes. I read To Afghanistan and Back when it was out in hardcover. I wanted to do something just like that and it’s great that I wound up with NBM because that’s Ted’s publisher too.
DRE:
The book seems to imply that you’ve been waiting to do something like going to Iraq your whole life.
Axe:
That’s not wrong to say, but to a great extent my own motives are a mystery to me. In War Fix I offer some potential explanations for why I do what I do, but I don’t feel like they’re definitive. I’m still on the Iraq beat and I’m headed back in the fall. I simultaneously loathe and love the place and I don’t exactly know why I can’t quite shake it. I can look back on the first trip and it makes more sense, but that’s probably because I’ve turned it into this thing I can hold in my hand.
DRE:
Are you addicted like the journalist Pratt who’s been covering wars for 20 years?
Axe:
God I hope not. He seems like a miserable fucker.
DRE:
Yeah, but who knows what will happen to you if you do this for 20 years.
Axe:
I really hope not and I don’t think so. I’m not real good at this Iraq thing because it hurts. Maybe that I keep doing it is a testimony to my gluttony for punishment but every time I go it’s harder and it’s harder to fit back in at home. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up and what scares me is that the itch will be there but my willingness or ability to scratch the itch is going to go away.
DRE:
When did this idea of going to war as an embedded journalist as addiction strike you as a good theme for the book?
Axe:
There is a scene in the book where I wake up and Pratt is powwowing with an army psychologist in our room. He was a med student at some Ivy League university who got commissioned and thrown into uniform and shipped out to Iraq but is bewildered and out of place. He was interested in how journalists deal with combat stress because they don’t have the support infrastructure that soldiers do. Soldiers belong to big units and everyone’s all in the same boat and they spend a lot of time together so you’ve got a lot of folks watching your back. But journalists dive into a situation largely unsupported and they deal with all the same dangers but they’re essentially alone and they don’t get a long transition period to the next dangerous situation. They just go from danger to danger to danger. So he was interested in the war correspondent stress as a subset of soldier’s combat stress. He was interviewing Pratt and diagnosing him there and I woke up right in the middle of this conversation. I ended up sharing a couple of meals with him and talking about the idea of war correspondent and why people do it and why they tend to get hooked.
DRE:
Did you find that you had all the “symptoms”?
Axe:
It was a bit early for that. But he did say some things that I think have become true for me. He really had a chemical basis for his theories on stress. He believed that the adrenaline and the chemicals associated with danger and excitement are truly addictive and if you get them in large enough doses over a long enough period you would suffer withdrawal and then crave it. I didn’t know if that would be true for me until I got home from my first trip to Iraq but it didn’t take long for me to get antsy. I never really intended to do this Iraq thing forever. I went the one time and I thought, “Hey it’ll be a nice boost to my career.” But I couldn’t help it. I’d get home from Iraq and I’d immediately start planning the next trip and while I’m in Iraq, I’m like, “God this sucks, I can’t wait to get home, I’m never going to do this again.” Then I do [laughs]. My last trip was miserable. I ended up getting kicked out of Iraq by the army for supposedly publishing military secrets and it was just a huge mess. I came home pretty badly traumatized and just swore up and down that I was not going back, but here I am just a few months later and already looking forward to getting back.
DRE:
Some people would say that you’re suicidal.
Axe:
Well, let’s be realistic. Plenty of journalists have died in Iraq, but their death rate is lower than the death rate that soldiers suffer. I don’t think I’m facing certain death. I just got to know when to quit because if I make a career at this, it will it kill me.
DRE:
Are you and your girlfriend still together?
Axe:
No, we’re not.
DRE:
For the same reasons she left you the first time?
Axe:
I don’t know.
DRE:
[laughs] Hey, listen, you write an autobiographical comic, you’re going to get these kinds of questions.
Axe:
I know. My love life is a fucking mess and I don’t know whether to blame Iraq or blame myself because I’m not sure that Iraq is the cause or a symptom. When I’m in Iraq, I feel useful and I feel like everything makes sense. As miserable as I am, as filthy as I am, when I’m in Iraq I’m happy. I know why I exist, everything makes sense, I’m useful. In the terms of the skills that I have, I’m right for it, I’m good at it and it’s blissful.
DRE:
Are you planning on doing another graphic novel?
Axe:
I am. I’m currently planning it to be a three book cycle. From my perspective the shit only got worse and more interesting so I headed right back to Iraq. I was up in the north in December for another election. I spent a great deal of time in southern Iraq with the British army in the summer of ’05. Then I got arrested by the US army and booted out this year. The shit only got worse and by worse, I mean better in terms of the story. The trick is getting Steve on board because I don’t want to work without Steve. He’s too good not to work with. Book number two would be called Love and Terror and book number three would be Iraqniphobe.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
