Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is a harrowing, semi-autobiographical war story originally serialized in Japan in the 1970s, now collected and published in English by Drawn & Quarterly in 2022. Based on Mizuki’s own experience as a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, it follows a young infantryman facing the brutal absurdity of a doomed unit ordered to fight to the last man. The single-volume edition distills Mizuki’s stark, expressive art and unflinching anti-war stance, cementing the work as a vital, humanist classic of the graphic novel form.