The research aims at introducing a formalist reading of the American graphic novel The Pride of Baghdad (2006) knocking heavily on defamiliarization as a guiding term of reference. The research deals with how war is defamiliarized through the use of the graphic narrative form, on one hand, and the use of animal allegory, on the other. Implied in the very core of the graphic novel is the idea of form that delves deep through an impressionistic technique clearly assisted by ellipsis, to foreground freedom as a major theme from which sprouts the theme of ‘otherness'.  In the novel, the American invasion of Iraq is reformulated and re-presented from the vantage point of a pride of lions. Ellipsis is given a due analysis as an important artistic technical component of the novel. It is employed in such a way that arouses the role of the pictures in completing the meaning and complementing the mental images in the minds of the readers. The Pride of Baghdad proves to fit perfectly into a formalist literary context of analysis through tracing how it defamiliarizes war through graphically encoding its effect in its influence on a pride of lions.