GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

Leave it to the Japanese, who take their meticulously drawn adult comic books seriously, to publish the first cartoon treatment of the war. Japan's newest best seller is Iraq vs. U.S.-Led Multinational Forces, which features a variety of war scenarios. Released on the day the war started, the 300-page collection was an immediate hit. But some of the scenes of combat are improbable, showing Japanese and German soldiers participating in the conflict and U.S. forces staging a fake attack on fellow warriors to jump-start the war. The Japanese, however, prove to be inept on the battlefield. In one scene a band of soldiers engrossed in pornographic magazines take a wrong turn in the desert and manage to get out of their explosives-laden truck just before it accidentally blows up.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart