The 'Stan is a collection of short comics about America's longest war. Individual stories highlight different perspectives--including a Taliban ambassador and Afghan and U.S. Army soldiers--but every account highlights the human element of war. The tales in this book--based on reporting by David Axe and Kevin Knodell and drawn by artist Blue Delliquanti--are all true and took place in roughly the first decade of the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan....

"Lapis Lazuli is a rich blue semiprecious gemstone found deep in the Sar-i-sang mountains of Afghanistan's Badakhshan province. For thousands of years it has sustained the nearby mining villages, whose inhabitants lived peacefully in the mountainous landscape--until the Taliban, known in the region as the Horsemen, came to seek the riches stored deep beneath the earth. Taliban rule has turned the stone into a conflict mineral, as they steal and sell...

Shares the stories of men, women and non-binary people who struggle to reconcile their wartime experiences with their postwar lives, revealing how America's endless entanglement in wars has affected the psyches of the people who wage them.