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Nod Away Volume 2

(Sorry about that crappy scan, but I don’t want to break the spine of this book to get a better one. Too much information!) So you know that thing I said (and other, smarter people have been saying it too) about how this might end up being one of the better comics series ever after it’s all said and done? Well, after two volumes, I have to say that that instinct was correct. Once again, I say that you, person reading this who loves comics, should buy this right away, knowing as little as possible about it. Once again, if you need more convincing, I’ll try to hit some of the high points without ruining too much. Things start off with the squiggly lines that were so prevalent in the first volume (and which get a lot more context this time around) zooming in to a busy airport. This isn’t particularly relevant to the story, but it helps to know what kind of an artist Joshua is. A whole lot of people would show a vaguely busy scene with the main characters in focus and just leave everybody else in the image as blurry faces. Not this man; everybody has an expressive face, you can tell from the posture and expressions of these people exactly what they’re each going through at that moment, and there are instantly recognizable clues that tie back to the first volume (signs of the innernet). Again, not particularly relevant to the overall story, but it was impressive enough to stop me in my tracks. Then we see that this plane is in the air during the events at the end of the first volume, meaning everybody gets that awful feedback from the innernet at the same time, which is not at all a good thing to happen on an aircraft. From there we’re taken back in time to see a young bearded dude who looks a bit like the mystery man from the last volume, but in this case he’s living in a big city. His marriage has fallen apart and he meets a young French woman who’s intense but irresistible to him, and she’ll also be pretty damned familiar to everybody who read the last book. They both go about their lives, we get a few more of the silent flashes to the bearded man trying to navigate a strange land, and eventually our hero ends up on his family farm after his dad passes away unexpectedly. He gets into this sudden change in his lifestyle, but eventually Eva (the French lady) comes for a visit, which is when he gets a clearer picture of the mental issues she’s going through. It’s probably appropriate for a trigger warning here, because it’s some pretty brutal stuff, and it somehow manages to escalate throughout the book as he’s increasingly unable to help her. Eventually he’s offered an experimental treatment to help and, since he can’t afford anything else, he gives in. The rest of the book is them both dealing with the consequences of this decision before eventually getting back to the events at the end of the last volume. Again, it’s riveting stuff, and this is definitely one of those series where I’ll be reading each volume again for every new one that comes out, because they’re both packed with tiny details. Is it a bad sign if those squiggly lines have started making an audible sound in my head when I see them on the page? Yeah, I imagine it it. Anyway, I can’t recommend this book highly enough, and if you have a few bucks to help him on his way to 7 volumes, just throw $5 or $10 bucks at the guy, would you? The world needs this entire series in it. $30

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Nod Away Volume 1

Full disclosure time: I didn’t have any idea that Joshua was working on this series until I saw a depressing Twitter thread about it. His second volume (which I’ll be reviewing toot sweet after the ending of this one) came out right around the time the pandemic started, which severely impacted his ability to promote it, to the extent that it sold something like 4 copies. Not a typo, sadly. I remembered his work from Skyscrapers of the Midwest, a fantastic series I reviewed in the early days of the website, and bought copies of the first two volumes of this series immediately. Quick spoiler-free review: you should too! Or at least the first one, because that’s all I’ve read so far. If you read his stuff back in the day, or if you’ve kept up with his career better than I have, go into this as blind as possible. For the rest of you, I’ll talk some specifics. Things start off abstract, with a series of words turning into sentences, jumbles and finally a person. It’s an unnamed dude that we follow sporadically throughout the book, but the specifics of his purpose are left a mystery. Unless I missed something, which is always and forever a possibility in my reviews. The bulk of the story deals with something called an innernet, which I originally thought was a play on the regular internet, but it’s so much more. A certain percentage (I think it was around 60%) of the population is able to get an implant that lets them keep constantly connected to what is basically a hive mind. The specifics are vague at first, but eventually (keep in mind what I said about spoilers; you can always stop now) we learn that it’s hosted by a young girl who’s kept under constant supervision. Once that comes out the group redoubles their efforts to find a more humane and universal method for keeping people connected, which is when their troubles begin. But that’s towards the end of the book, so I’m keeping that vague. Before then we spend most of our time with Dr. McCabe, a woman who’s taken a job on what is rather casually revealed to be the space station that houses the young woman who hosts the innernet. Dr. McCabe is trying to keep up a long distance relationship, so we gradually watch that fall apart as she tries to keep up with her work. There are bureaucratic troubles galore, we see her get to know the rest of the staff, and things stay more or less calm (with a steady undercurrent of menace) until their big attempt to activate another way to host the innernet. The southern general who speaks at that thing, by the way, is one of my new favorite characters in comics, and I hope we end up getting more of this man that I would never want to meet in real life. I can’t emphasize enough how full of plot and potential this thing is, despite being compellingly readable throughout. Joshua is planning 7 volumes, and from what I’ve seen I can already say that the comics world would be a poorer place if he doesn’t make it. Buy his book, it’s your duty as a comics fan! If that doesn’t work, he’s also doing a fundraiser so he can get through 7 volumes, and he’s only about 1/3 of the way to his goal as of this review, so at least throw some money at the guy. $25