MTSU Professor, Artist Team Up on Civil War Graphic Novel to Show ‘What War Really Looks Like’

BYLINE: By Nancy DeGennaro

Newswise — MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Instead of a conventional textbook, Middle Tennessee State University associate professor of history Andrew Fialka has taken an innovative approach to recounting Civil War violence through a gripping graphic history format.

Teaming up with award-winning artist Anderson Carman, Fialka has released, “Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War,” featuring hand-illustrated panels and compelling storytelling that shed light on a brutal and often overlooked side of the conflict.

“The graphic novel format is increasingly used by professors to share historical narratives in ways that are engaging, insightful, and accessible to a wider audience. They offer a powerful tool for exploring the past and encouraging deeper engagement with history,” said Fialka, who procured an MTSU grant to partially fund the book’s illustrations by Carman.

Published through the University of Georgia Press in early 2025, the graphic history illustrates two incidents of occupational and guerrilla violence in Missouri during the Civil War. The first is a U.S. spy’s two-week murder spree targeting civilians and the second is pro-Confederate guerrillas mutilating almost 150 U.S. troops.

The men leading the atrocities (Jacob Terman, alias Harry Truman, and “Bloody” Bill Anderson) weren’t so different. Both the Union spy and the infamous Confederate guerrilla claimed to be avenging the deaths of their families, operated under orders from military officials, and were hard drinkers. Their acts outline the terror inflicted on both sides of the struggle.

‘This is what war really looks like’

The book doesn’t shy away from the harshness of murder, torture, blood and guts — far from anything that would be considered cartoonish — and the stories behind those gruesome scenes.

“This is the gnarly stuff that was hidden for a long time. And when you read it, you very quickly understand why it was hidden, because it’s disgusting,” Fialka said. “So we weren’t gory just for the sake of being gory. This is what war really looks like — and people need to understand that.”

Fialka stumbled upon the little-known stories through research and knew the hidden history needed to be told.

“White veterans on both sides compiled the federal government’s official recordsof the war in the national archives. Because the Southerners didn’t want racial violence in there and the Northerners didn’t want how they treated Southern civilians in there, a whitewashed history is what we were left with,” Fialka said.

Fialka felt a visual representation would help tell the story most effectively and Carman agreed. 

“Comics, as a medium, give the reader the chance to control the pacing, unlike a movie, which doesn’t pause, while also including the visuals that are missing in a written word book,” noted Carman, a Savannah College of Art and Design graduate and former student of MTSU art professor Doug Dabbs.

Readers can move quickly through wordless pages, skim text-heavy sections or rely on visuals to convey tone and context.

“So many academic papers and journals go unread or even unseen by the general public, either because they are bogged down in academic jargon or because they are presented in a stale format,” Carman said. “It was my goal to present a well-researched true story in a manner that is engaging while also not compromising its historical accuracy.”

Balancing academics, artistry

To prepare Carman for the project, Fialka compiled a collection of photographs that represented all the aspects of the Civil War, from battlefield scenes and weapons to the horrors of the enslaved.

“Historians often struggle with the graphic form because they force illustrators into their world. I stepped into the artist’s world instead. I chose an artist with a gritty style and formatted the story into 22-page chapters, later adding endnotes that could still pass peer review,” Fialka said.

The result has been a labor of love to bridge the gap between visual storytelling, evocative artwork and academic rigor so that the average reader can engage with the storyline.

But it wasn’t without a few stumbling blocks.

The book took roughly five years to complete, starting with Zoom conversations in the middle of a pandemic and back-and-forth exchanges with visuals and text. A breakdown of the multilayer process Carman went through to envision and then execute each illustrated panel is located in the back of the book under “Artist Sketchbook.”

Another challenge the pair faced was citing references suitable for academics without being overwhelming for the average reader. Within the 40-page notes section, Fialka combined jargon-free explanations printed in bold type with more detailed citations on primary sources and archives printed in smaller fonts.

“I’ve tried to make the story more accessible. But for those people who get hooked by the story and say, ‘I want to learn more,’ I’ve tried to make the scholarship accessible, too,” Fialka said.

“Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War” can be purchased locally at Crying Cat Books & Records in Murfreesboro, The Great Escape: Murfreesboro and Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as all major book retailers.

— Nancy DeGennaro (Nancy.DeGennaro@mtsu.edu)