The Bodyguard Unit

July 3, 2023
In this high-energy work, Xavier highlights Edith Garrud (1872–1971), a self-taught British martial artist dedicated to educating women in how to protect themselves amid a fraught period in early 20th-century England. During the suffragist movement, activists often faced brutal retaliation such as beatings by police, violent mass arrests, and forced feeding when jailed. Believing self-defense to be an essential life skill and hoping to generate more business for their financially struggling dojo, Garrud and her husband William offered to train the members of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union in jujitsu. Employing retro superhero comics style and fluidly rendered, cartoony, mostly white characters, Lugrin breathes life into the pursuits of the self-named Bodyguard Unit. The kinetic narrative traces the 1910 formation of this little-known group, leading up to a climactic confrontation in the 1914 Battle of Glasgow. The overarching narrative and concluding resources gloss over jujitsu’s Japanese roots. By emphasizing Garrud’s pursuit to instruct women in how to turn their “opponent’s physical superiority against him,” the creators present an empowering work both in content and visuals, about the figure who taught women how to take back their power. Ages 13–up.