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Powell, Nate – Save It For Later
If you’re not political, if you’ve somehow managed to maintain that state of blissful ignorance into 2021 after everything that’s happened the last several years… well, shame on you, but this is also a note to say that you won’t be interested in this review. I will say that maybe reading this book will get you off your ass and you should give it a shot, but if you’ve convinced yourself that everything is going to work out, nothing I say here is going to change your mind. So what’s this book about? It’s an unapologetic call to action (whatever that means for each person) and an unflinching look at what’s happening in our country, which covers quite a bit of ground. I think it’s Nate’s best work, and the guy has been around for ages, so that’s saying a lot. Yes, March was amazing, but that was John Lewis and Nate, this one is all Nate. After a brief introduction where he goes into what the book is and isn’t, he starts the first chapter with a quick punch to the face: the day after Trump’s election in 2016. I’ve seen books reference this, sure, but it’s a clear indication right off the bat that he’s going to dig into everything. The first chapter is devastating, as it details Nate’s depression, how quickly the white supremacists came out of the woodwork to celebrate, and what small measures they could take in their lives to make any kind of a difference, or at least to make their voices heard. The second chapter shows them making the choice to explain to their young child exactly what type of a person Donald Trump is, how he’s constantly lying and without any redeeming qualities, but how she shouldn’t worry, as his opponent was obviously going to win. This also led to them having to tell her what happened the next day, and their daughter ended up having to comfort them after the conversation. The third chapter is “the parenting chapter,” I guess, as they watch old footage of John Lewis getting assaulted by cops and some white nationalist marches with their daughter, leading to an awkward conversation where Nate has to defend the cops as not all bad (despite what he’s thinking as he’s saying it) and explaining to her why it’s wrong to ever use a swastika, even when playing. He also tells the story of his first time seeing the Ku Klux Klan having a demonstration in his home town and how his parents tried to laugh it off at the time. The fourth chapter is almost sweet, as it tells the story of how he took some friends with him to a comic convention in 2011 and how seeing it through their eyes gave him a new appreciation for cosplay. That was the case, anyway, until the Nazi cosplayer showed up, all smug defiance, and how he eventually chose not to confront the guy. The fifth chapter is the densest in the book, and it should be required reading for anybody who wants to get into the head of a white supremacist, as it’s unsparing in its descriptions of who these people are, how they justify their actions and how the bleeding of colors from their chosen flags means a whole lot more than some bullshit “blue lives matter” nonsense. For the sixth chapter we get the coronavirus, which tied neatly into the theme of manchildren who are contemptuous of science and want praise for doing exactly what they want at all times. Finally the last chapter is a small guide to what anybody anywhere can do to protest whatever is important to them and how it’s important to design your sign so that anybody objecting has to side purely with evil; “No Nazis anywhere,” for example, is tough to get too mad about without really telling on yourself. I don’t usually go into this much detail in reviews, but I’m still just scratching the surface of what he’s accomplished here. It’s not a bullshit message of “we’ll get through this together” without details, and he readily admits that he doesn’t even know how much worse things are going to get by the time the book is published. It’s a clear-eyed look at how perilous the current moment is and should frankly be given to anybody who’s too complacent in their life. If you don’t try to get them to be better, who will? $25
Lewis, John; Aydin, Andrew & Powell, Nate – March Book One
Website (for Congressman John Lewis)
Website (for Nate Powell)
It always amazes me that I can be so wrong about a subject where I like to think I know pretty much what happened. Before I get started I should point out that this is written by Congressman John Lewis, the last surviving speaker Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington. Which you should already know by his name, but if there’s one thing this country is good at it’s forgetting its history. Anyway, I had a number of assumptions about the upbringing of John Lewis, purely based on seeing him speak here and there. For example, I assumed that his parents had been the victims of some particularly awful racism, and this at least partly led John to take his life in the direction that he did. But that wasn’t the case. While I’m sure his parents were the victims of some awful racism (pretty much every black person was when John was a kid), they were very much the types of people who were happy to keep their heads down and try to lead normal, quiet lives. I also foolishly assumed that non-violent protestors just showed up to protests with the patience of saints, but in reality members of the groups would do training sessions where they taunted each other, spit on friends and generally tried everything they could think of to get the other person to lash out. Not everybody could do it, which makes sense, as I don’t know if I’d have that kind of tolerance in me either. Oh, and the law that desegregated the schools, the decision that is considered such a landmark today? It took a good decade before any kind of justice was able to come from that decision, and it wouldn’t have come at all without people like John Lewis. John grew up on a farm and was fascinated by chickens as a kid, getting a little too attached to them (he was on a farm, after all, and things rarely end well for chickens on a farm), but he generally had a good life. His life changed when his uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, which let John see the reactions of his uncle as they drove through several states that were not safe for black people. And hey, there’s no reason to keep them a secret, if you don’t know them already: Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. Gee, what do those states have in common? Anyway, he saw how his uncle visibly relaxed when they finally got to Ohio, and when John got to Buffalo he saw things that he had never seen before, like black people living next door to white people with no problems. This set John on his path, as he knew that he wanted something more for himself than a life on the farm, and the rest of the book tells the story of his sneaking off to school when his parents wanted him to stay home to work on the farm, starting to preach, getting noticed by King and participating in sit-ins at lunch counters at stores. There’s at least one more book in this series, and it was smart of them to release it in stages like this, as even this much racism is a lot to take in all at once. John and Andrew do a ridiculously thorough and engrossing job of telling John’s story, which is something I was a little worried about with two people so new to the comics field. Really, they make it look easy. As for Nate Powell, he outdoes himself again here, and I’m thrilled that he’s finally going to get some small amount of fame and recognition for his work. It’s a fascinating story, and if you don’t know it you owe it to yourself to learn all about it. $14.95
Powell, Nate – Any Empire
I should start this off with a disclaimer: I haven’t read Nate’s “Swallow Me Whole,” and this is listed as a follow-up to that book, so it’s entirely possible that I’m missing a lot of context here. What can I say, the man has put out all kinds of graphic novels over the last ten years and I’ve its own way. Things start off bouncing around between Lee, Purdy and Sarah, three kids who are each doing their own thing. Sarah is trying to figure out which kids have been hurting turtles, Purdy is a budding crazy person who is still looking for something resembling friends, and Lee bounces seamlessly back and forth between reality and his fantasies while playing with his toys. Lee’s bits hit the hardest for me, as this was set around the time that I was a kid and I vividly remember going from bored to totally immersed in the intricate imagined happenings of whatever toys and accessories were around at the time (there were all kinds of G.I. Joe/Transformers/He-Man crossovers when I was playing). School is included as well, but just barely. It’s mainly all about how these kids interacted with each other and how every little thing was crucial and fundamentally meaningless at the same time. A number of years pass quickly to the to the second part of the book (maybe ten years?) and we see snippets of what our heroes have been doing with their lives. (THIS IS THE PART WHERE I SPOIL BITS OF PART 2, IN CASE YOU DON’T WANT TO READ IT) Lee is wandering a bit, Sarah is established in a good job but bored silly, and Purdy is off in the armed services. Sarah and Lee have some catching up to do after losing touch since their childhoods, and things get downright weird when Purdy enters their lives again. Your childhood may play a role in how much you enjoy/can relate to this book, but it triggered all kinds of memories in me. I think you’d still get something out of this even if you were raised in a nunnery away from all other kids, but that’s because it’s a fascinating story that’s expertly told. What can I say, I’m biased towards such things. $19.95
Powell, Nate – Sounds of Your Name
If you’re a fan of Nate Powell, this is the book you’ve been waiting for. It collects all sorts of bits from his old Walkie Talkie series, shorter pieces from a variety of sources, and unpublished pieces. If you’re not a fan of Nate’s work, it’s probably only because you haven’t seen it yet. It’s impossible to lump this book into one blanket statement, but I’m going to make it anyway: this book is the moment when you start the car and leave your hometown forever with only the clothes on your back and the moment you decide to turn off the car and stay where you are. It’s living the dream, waiting for death, fighting off boredom and giving in to it. It’s trying to make sense of it all while knowing deep down that there is no sense to be made. That was my reading of it anyway, but I will get into specifics for you people who hate dealing in the abstract. Hey, I usually do too, but Nate brings it out of me. Longer pieces in this book include Scrubs (involving a couple who are already sick of living life as defined by the alarm clock and how one of the character takes the lyrics from that song “Scrubs” personally), Conditions (dealing with a boy and girl pair of best friends, how they both seem to want more but are afraid to make the first or even the second move, and how they both desperately want to get out of their small town), Frankenbones (showing two house cats, their past history on the streets and how the plot to destroy some unwelcome house guests), Pulling Teeth (showing how a lodged bit of cracker in the gums can ruin a nice kiss and the constant terror that is small town thugs with nothing to do), and Satellite Worlds (spanning across different lives, how they see the world and the thin line between sanity and insanity). There’s also the title story from It Disappears, but I talked about that elsewhere on this site ages ago. Shorter pieces include Company (showing a car wreck and the mild chaos that followed the developmentally disabled man in the car walking away while the driver was knocked out), Invisibilities (in which two guys try to reinstill some magic into the town),and The Defeatist (dealing with cheating at an early age, before even knowing that it is cheating). There are many more, as this book is 300+ pages, but I’m leaving most of the layers of this onion for you to peel. Also, I usually link the graphic novel to Amazon for the pennies they throw my way when people occasionally click on the link, but I saw that Microcosm publishing has this on sale for a measly $12 at the moment, and that’s too good a deal not to link to it. If you’ve never questioned a goddamn thing in your life, this comic will fly right over your head. For the rest of us, you may find a few of your questions about life answered in these pages, but you’ll also find many more questions. In times as shitty as these, it helps to at least take a look around you. As a wise man once said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and this comic sums that up beautifully.
Powell, Nate – Please Release
Please Release
Top Shelf needs to put out crappier comics. It’s no fun when I can’t do anything but praise their books. There, you’ve just read the biggest complaint I have about this book, such as it is. This is a collection of 4 stories by Nate, and I can’t think of the last time 4 stories in a comic connected with me emotionally as much as these did. First up is The Phantom Form, which deals with constantly moving from place to
place, saying goodbyes and trying to remember the value of constantly being on the move rather than settling down. Next up is The Old Haunts, where Nate deals with coming down after seeing a horror movie while also being completely alone and unable to sleep. It’s a bit more introspective than all that, going into little things like how the height from the bed to the floor stays mostly the same from when you were a kid, but you get the idea. Work At It is the story that hit me the hardest, as it’s essentially a day in his life as an assistant to developmentally disabled adults, something I did in some form or another
for years. Nate goes over the extreme highs and lows of the jobs beautifully, as well as dealing with the perception that he’s not doing much real good when looking at the big picture but still feeling essential in their day to day life. Or maybe I’m projecting a bit.
Finally there’s Seriously, where Nate tries to reconcile the meaning of still being a punk at 27 with the option of just being another generic has-been. When is it time to give up on that lifestyle and “grow up”?
He had already mostly stopped going to concerts, but what about the rest of it? It also goes into Nate teaching a bunch of young kids (8-14ish) about comics and marveling at their constant, effortless creativity. This comic is brilliant, plain and simple. It’s one of those rare reads that sticks in your head, forcing you to pick over choices made in your own life and where things are headed. Buy it already. $5
Powell, Nate – It Disappears
You ever have one of those books where you really don’t have that much to say about it? Well, probably not, unless you’re a reviewer too, but there are certain things that should stand on their own. Of course, you could also say, correctly, that all comics should stand on their own. Mostly I’m just stalling to avoid showing my lack of insight into this. It’s a book about trying to reconcile past experiences with present reality, and trying to make that work with the potential for the future and the ability for action of inaction. Make sense? Well, if it doesn’t, you should probably read this, as he’s able to say it all a lot better than I can. It’s a constant question, as what the hell are we all here for anyway, and anything that adds to that discussion in a meaningful way is indispensable to me. I hadn’t seen anything since the comic up there from Nate, and that was a couple of years ago, and it’s gratifying to see that he took all that potential and has put together one singular reading experience. It’s $7.95, click on the title if you want to learn more about it, and read it, why don’t you?
Powell, Nate – Walkie Talkie #4
Walkie Talkie #4
Three cheers for another brilliant comic by somebody I’ve never heard of. I caught part 2 of a 2 part story, so I missed a lot of the necessary information to make this make any sense, and I still loved it. The writing is incredible, the art is damned near flawless, there’s just nothing to complain about here. Has this guy been doing comics for years with me missing out, or is he just an amazingly gifted newcomer? I don’t know how much I should tell you about this because I’m sure to give a lot away for people who should really buy this (and, I’d guess, the other issues) for themselves. My take on it is that it’s about regret, a dog, a bird, loss, and a prophecy. And melting, but not really. Look, just buy it. If you trust my judgment yet, just trust me. If you don’t, well, buy this and you can decide if you like the same stuff as me, OK? Send him money ($2.95) at: 7205 Geronimo N. Little Rock AK 72116. Or e-mail him to see what he has available.
