Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

THE POEM
While recuperating from shell-shock (and from having his best friend blown
to pieces right beside him, the young British poet turned-soldier began writing
unflinching, unromantic verse about the realities of war. No visions of grand heroics
here – just brutal reportage of young men sent into a slaughterhouse. (“I have
suffered seventh hell,” he wrote to his mother.) After recovering for a year, during
which he wrote most of his mature poems – including “Dulce et Decorum Est” and
“Anthem For Doomed Youth” – Owen was sent back to the front. While taking part
in an assault on German lines, he was killed exactly one week before the Armistice
that ended the war. He was twenty-five.
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Only five of his poems were published during his lifetime, the vast majority arriving
posthumously, including “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” written in 1917 but not published
until 1920. Collections of his poems (and several biographies and studies) remain
in print to this day, testifying to the unfortunate timelessness of the subject of war’s
horrors.
Adapter Jason Cobley, artist John Blake, colourist Michael Brent, and letterer Greg
Powell put forth a team effort to provide this gruesome adaptation of Owen’s
unsparing account of watching a comrade die horribly from an asphyxiating gas
(most likely chlorine, which forms hydrochloric acid when coming into contact with
moisture in the lungs and eyes.
Source: Hibberdi, Dominick.
Wilfred Owen: A New Biography. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER TEN