The slaughter on campus was 55 years ago…
By PETER BOSCH
It was 55 years ago, May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University who were protesting the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon’s expansion of it into Cambodia, and the Guard’s presence on their campus.
At the end of those 13 seconds of fire by more than two dozen soldiers, three unarmed students — Jeffrey Miller, age 20; Allison Krause, age 19; and Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20 — were dead. A fourth student, William Schroeder, age 19, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital soon thereafter. Nine other students were wounded.
The tragic event was turned into a deeply researched graphic novel — Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, written and illustrated by Derf Backderf in 2020 (Abrams ComicArts) and is a must-read today. The four days leading up to and including the massacre are covered in detail and every scene within the graphic novel’s 251 pages is documented with 26 extra pages of footnotes about research, interviews, and sources.
Kent State must never be forgotten and this important graphic novel helps in that regard.
Derf also discusses the event and the making of the graphic novel in this one-hour video:
—
MORE
— RETRO HOT PICKS: On Sale This Week — in 1970. Click here.
— The Singularly Inventive EC COMICS Art of BERNIE KRIGSTEIN. Click here.
—
13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is due in 2025. (You can pre-order here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.
May 4, 2025
An excellent graphic novel. Backderf’s footnotes are as interesting as the book itself. Much of the incident was covered up and the guilty officers lied about it, so reconstructing what actually happened and how things got so out of control must have been a monumental task. A heavy read, but a necessary one.
May 8, 2025
A necessary book. We are on the cusp of an era of our history being forgotten or swept under the rug.