A fighter pilot with an instinct for aerial combat, Billy Bishop racked up seventy-two officially confirmed victories and was awarded every major medal including the Victoria Cross. By the end of the First World War, he was considered so valuable as a symbol of the war effort that Canadian authorities insisted he be grounded: his loss would have been devastating to civilian morale. John Lang's graphic biography touches briefly on Bishop's fortuitous beginnings in Owen Sound, Ontario and then shifts smoothly to the early years of the war and Bishop's emergence as a leader and warrior among his fellow infantry recruits. In a famous, revelatory incident, the Earth-bound Bishop, mired knee-deep in mud, looks up to see a plane belonging to the Royal Flying Corps soaring overhead. That, he decides, is the element for him. Over the next couple of years Bishop tested himself repeatedly against the best German pilots—and always won.