SAN DIEGO – War correspondent Robert Young Pelton approached Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary company Blackwater, with a bold proposal in late 2004. Pelton, a veteran who's covered more than a dozen conflicts, wanted to ride along for a month with the toughest for-profit soldiers in Prince's outfit, in what was then the most dangerous place in the world: Route Irish, the 12-mile stretch of highway connecting Baghdad's airport to the Green Zone, the fortified neighborhood surrounding the U.S. embassy.

In exchange for unprecedented access, Pelton would tell the real story of Blackwater's security contractors, men that Pelton and his co-writer Billy Tucci later described as being "attacked by terrorists, hated by the media [and] loved by the troops and the men they protected."

Pelton's upcoming graphic novel The Blackwater Chronicles is the result. Based on Pelton's book Licensed to Kill and co-written by Pelton and Tucci, with pencils by Tucci and colors by Brian Miller, The Blackwater Chronicles is a gritty, unflinching portrait of hard men in a hard place at a moment in history that most Americans would probably prefer to forget. Wired met up with Tucci at Comic-Con International for a preview of the graphic novel, slated for a 2013 release.

Page 1 of The Blackwater Chronicles announces itself in no-bullshit terms. A man with piercing blue eyes scowls from underneath a military-style helmet. He's sitting in the cupola of an armored vehicle with one gloved hand resting on a pintle-mounted machine gun.

paints a gritty portrait of military contractors. Art courtesy Billy Tucci

The sun is hot and high over his shoulder. He's kitted up for combat but his facial hair and civilian clothes hint that he's no typical soldier, rather a contractor hired at great expense to reinforce an overwhelmed U.S. military. The man's scowl, powerfully rendered in Tucci's expert pencils and Miller's subtle colors, speaks to terrible, unspoken experiences.

Two panels down, something reflects in the goggles attached to the man's helmet: mutilated bodies dangling from a highway overpass – an obvious reference to the 2004 killing of four Blackwater employees by insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq. Their burned corpses were hung from an overpass as a statement of terror.

What follows these striking panels is like combat documentary in comics form. It begins with Pelton, who narrates and appears as a character, meeting the Blackwater team tasked with escorting American personnel along the deadly Route Irish, the target of 17 bombings per week in 2004. The hellish vision in the contractor's goggles tell us where the story will end.

The Blackwater squad at the heart of Pelton's comic book is typical of the tens of thousands of private military contractors who have fought alongside U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones since 9/11.

"What a rogue's gallery," Tucci tells Wired. "You got some real great guys, some not-so-great guys and some real bad guys."

But they're all complicated human beings caught up in a complicated war, says Tucci, who interviewed many of the men he drew in The Blackwater Chronicles. Tucci, whom Pelton describes as a "major researcher," manages to capture the mercenaries' complex motives in his detailed art and naturalistic dialog.

They rib each other over botched haircuts and their Rambo-style combat gear. They bitch about the military's strict rules. They talk big before a mission but, once they're driving down Route Irish facing the statistical likelihood of an attack, their tones change.

"I hate this fucking road," one contractor mutters, cigarette burning itself to the filter between his lips.

Tucci says he was surprised how willing the contractors were to talk about even their worst experiences. "Some have been blown up, seen guys get killed, been shot up – a lot have been shot ... what struck me is how open they are about it," he says.

But many Americans, soured on the seemingly endless reports of atrocities committed by U.S. troops and contractors, don't want to hear about mercenaries' humanity. The Blackwater Chronicles is still months away from publication, and already Tucci is drawing flak: He's been accused of creating pro-Blackwater propaganda.

>"A lot of people don't want to put a human face on Blackwater."

"A lot of people don't want to put a human face on Blackwater," Tucci says. "A lot of people don't want to know what their government does."

For his part, Pelton welcomes the pushback. "Artists should challenge people's perceptions," he tells Wired by e-mail.

By that standard and others, The Blackwater Chronicles excels. At a time when comics are still dominated by busty babes, zombies and superheroes wearing tights, Pelton and Tucci's gritty, journalistic portrayal of America's fighters-for-hire is a profound departure.

Which is not to say it's not also exciting, funny and simply gorgeous to look at. Buy this book. Learn something about America's wars that might make you a little uncomfortable. Way less uncomfortable, however, than a man encased in armor, riding along a highway primed to explode, doing his country's dirty work for a paycheck.