Non Fiction

This book is The Great War by Joe Sacco. 

Who was this book intended for?  This is a book illustrated to depict the first day of the Battle of the Somme and stands at 24 feet long, folding up into a concertina. This book could be aimed at someone particularly interested in the first World War and the Battle of the Somme, or it could just be for someone who would appreciate the craftsmanship going into making a product like this.
What drew you to the book? The sheer size of it was what first drew me in, the fact that you could fold it out to see even more when you thought surely it must stop here? At first I started reading it like you would a normal book, just by turning the pages one by one, but then when I realised what it was, we folded it out the whole way to look at it as a whole. This was when I really fell in love with it, each section had almost its own separate mood over it, like the soldiers marching into war or the no mans land section in the middle. I especially liked the sections which had grey tones layered over the normal line drawing as it helped it to look more moody and atmospheric as well as breaking the continuous image up a bit. 
What makes it a success? The idea is such a unique and fascinating one, which is what I think makes it so desirable, it has great societal value as something that depicts a part of history we often only see or hear about in history books, and making it both more visually and chronologically understandable without the use of heavy language, as well as making it look visually stunning. Its visually really easy to read but you could still get lost in the image, where theres about 1000 different things to look at in each segment. It could be argued that to use colour could have looked more effective, however I think it really echoes the bleak mood of this image.
What failings does it have? It could seem a little too confusing and chaotic to some people as there is a lot going on, and the line quality means you have to look quite closely to distinguish certain people and objects, however, I'd argue that this is no different from having to read a long history book very closely to make sense of it.