During her residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, cartoonist Thi Bui came upon GB Tran’s graphic novel Vietnamerica. Bui herself was hard at work on a graphic novel that explored the legacies of the Vietnam War, but unlike her project, Tran’s novel was already completed and ready to hit stores.

San Francisco-based Bui contacted Tran, who lives in New York City. Here, in this collaborative graphic essay, the two cartoonists discover that the coincidence between their work, rather than representing one artist’s individual loss, is actually a larger step toward bringing to light the difficult and often overlooked historical details of the Vietnam War.

View the full graphic essay by Thi Bui and GB Tran here.

Read our web-exclusive interview between Thi Bui and GB Tran here.