Brought to Light: A Graphic Docudrama. Two Books in One: Flashpoint--the La Penca Bombing/Shadowplay--the Secret Team

Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action is an anthology of two political graphic novels, published originally by Eclipse Comics in 1988, with a Hardcover version published in 1989. Both stories are based on material from lawsuits filed by the Christic Institute against the US Government. The two stories are Shadowplay: The Secret Team by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, and Flashpoint: The LA Penca Bombing documented by Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan and adapted by Joyce Brabner and Tom Yeates. Brought to Light was edited overall by Joyce Brabner, Catherine Yronwode acted as executive editor, and Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney was the publication designer.

In this long-awaited documentary comic book, Brabner, co-author of the comic book Real War Stories , and political illustrator Tom Yeates have produced a straightforward and competently illustrated journalistic account of the CIA's pivotal attempt to assassinate independent Nicaraguan contra leader Eden Pastora in a bombing at La Penca. The second story, Shadowplay , by celebrated comics writer Moore, and the acclaimed illustrator/author Sienkiewicz, is a masterly satiric expose of "The Secret Team" that came to direct the Reagan administration's covert war in Nicaragua. Moore, in combination with Sienkiewicz's viciously parodic drawings, has produced a scathing black comedy documenting the CIA's long history as a criminal shadow government. The wretched choice of format--the two stories are bound back to back, upside down--defeats easy reference between the two related works, all the more galling since Shadowplay provides a broader context for understanding the La Penca bombing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.