Review time! with ‘Fall Through’

“But the bandwagon’s parked up in another town, we hope tomorrow it’s heading out our way”

Abrams ComicArts brings us Nate Powell‘s latest, Fall Through, and you know when you’re a National Book Award Winner, we have to pay attention to your work!

This is the front inside flap of the dust jacket of Fall Through:

I assume y’all can read that, even if you’re looking at it on your phone (for shame!). It sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? A punk band called Diamond Mine from 1994, traveling through time to 1979, spellbound by their vocalist, who wove something into their big song, jumping to different dimensions where the band might not have existed, but the legend of Diamond Mine lives on. Well, that sounds keen. I’ve been a fan of Powell for years, and I’ve called him a cartooning genius (which some people have taken exception to), but I always find something off about his actual comics – the art is where his genius lies, and even in his ideas, but his execution feels off sometimes, and I honestly don’t know if I’m too dumb to get it. I joke about that a lot, but in some cases – Powell included – I’m honestly not sure. I read about this comic, though, and thought, “Well, I know I’m going to buy it, so let’s see!” I knew Powell had been in a band back in the day, so I thought he would nail that part. The time traveling stuff might be wonky, buy I was willing to take that chance!

And here’s the thing: that dust jacket description? I don’t know what book it’s describing, but it ain’t this one. Very little of it takes place in 1978 (not 1979), and while Diana – the vocalist – does put a spell into the song, it’s extremely unclear what happens when the spell activates, and there’s never any mention of different dimensions. This is one of the problems I have with Powell, frankly – occasionally he’s too oblique, so we’re supposed to infer what’s going on, and we need to infer quite a bit, and maybe we’re getting it wrong? So the book is frustrating, because I kept expecting it to be something different, and it never is. Is that my fault? I guess, to a degree, it is … but I didn’t write the dust jacket blurb, did I? I want to look at this book as it is, not as the dust jacket tells us, but that’s hard to do with that description in the back of my mind. It seems like Powell goes kind of halfway toward making that blurb a reality, but doesn’t quite make it. Even though I try to view the book on its own, I feel that Powell either changed his mind about the book from its inception to fruition, or he doesn’t quite pull off the actual time travel well enough. Let’s see what’s what!

The book starts off intriguingly and perfectly well: it’s New Year’s Eve, and 1994 is imminent. Jody, the bassist of Diamond Mine, is narrating (although it’s unclear for a while who’s narrating, which isn’t as confusing as it might be), and the first words of the book are: “Every year it happens here.” See? You’ve read the dust jacket (I assume; doesn’t everyone?) and now you’re primed a bit for time travel, so Jody’s first words are intriguing. She’s at a New Year’s Eve party, and she’s narrating somewhat vaguely, in a way that might mean this has happened before very literally or might mean “this has happened before” because the scene is so familiar. That’s part of Powell’s genius as a writer – he’s very good at folding different meanings into occasional banal prose (he’s not the only one, of course, but he’s good at it) – and it makes this beginning fascinating, because (I know I’m repeating myself!) we’re just not sure how literal Jody is being. The art helps, too, as the title page is Jody “falling through” the floor, another image that certainly feels metaphorical but could also represent her falling through time. A few pages later, we get a marvelous image of Jody reaching down through a fractured sky, trying to grab hold of the band’s van as a smaller version of herself, having fallen through the floor, falls into the van. It’s really amazing storytelling, visually, but is it supposed to represent something actually happening to Jody or a way to “fall through” to her memories?

We get a standard few “on the road” pages, as Jody narrates about how tough life is for a touring band. They vow to never go home again, which Jody say is a “careless” wish, as Powell shows her, once again, falling, this time, it seems, through time to 1978. She’s a teenager who’s being driven to a concert by her dad, who supports her punk lifestyle pretty coolly for a father in 1978 Oklahoma. Fairly importantly, she’s seeing the Sex Pistols, and it changes her life, naturally. This is where the book gets confusing. So far, we’ve gotten the band in 1994 and then time travel to 1978, and it’s all well and good. But then, there’s these pages:

So, what’s going on? She meets Diana, and they decide to form a band, and it’s clear this is happening in 1994 (which is a bit hard to track, but that’s what’s going on). We’re introduced more properly to the band – Napoleon the guitarist and Steff the drummer – and we’re off. Crucially, Napoleon has a brother with autism, so that takes up a lot of his time. They write songs, do shows, and cobble enough money together to release a 7-inch with “Fall Through” on it, and Napoleon figures out immediately that Diana did something to the track (which makes his boyfriend feel “altered” and “displaced,” giving us a clue about the spell she put in it). They go on tour, and Powell makes it clear that when they play the song, something … happens. But what? Again, supposedly they’re shifting dimensions, and the characters occasionally come close to saying that, but again, it could all be metaphorical. Until it isn’t, when something late in the book happens that seems to confirm the dust jacket … but it’s still unclear exactly what happens. The book actually ends in 1978, with Jody, seemingly stuck in a loop, coming across someone who’s important to her future. It feels like Powell wraps it all up, but I’m still not sure what’s going on. Frustratingly so.

So, obviously I hate the book, right? Well, of course not. It’s frustrating, but only because of the seeming dichotomy between what is promised on the exterior of the book (which Powell may or may not have anything to do with) and what’s delivered inside. And perhaps the vague hints about what is happening to these characters is enough for some people – it’s not a superhero book, after all, which tend to be very obvious about things, so maybe the people who read Powell’s stuff like the ambiguity. If you read this and just ignore the time travel/alternate dimension stuff, this is a terrific portrait of a band and what that means to them. Powell gets into the very DIY aspect of being in a band, and it’s fascinating reading how Diamond Mine cuts its record and does the artwork for it. The dynamic of the band is great, too, with Diana obviously taking it much more seriously than the others, while the others love it but try to get through to her that there are other things in life. This is particularly pertinent with regard to Napoleon and his brother, as he knows that there are more important things than the band, but because Jody is the main character, Powell spends more time with her correspondence and subsequent friendship/romance with Syl, the drummer of another band, who offers her a slightly different perspective on life in a band than Diana does. Powell shows that these people love each other but might not be best for each other, as Diana drives them too hard and they feel like they need an out (Steff, as the drummer, doesn’t get much “screen time,” but he has one powerful moment in the book when he finally gets to say something). About halfway through the book, Jody and Diana have a long conversation about what’s going on and why Diana is pushing them so hard and what the others might do about it, and while we can read it as something to do with the sci-fi elements of the book, it can also simply be about life on the road and what it does to people when they have no home to return to. There are many beautiful and powerful moments in the book, and if you choose to ignore the more metaphysical aspects of it, you will still get an emotionally charged comic.

As I noted, part of Powell’s genius is in the way he tells the story visually, and that’s on fill display here. His art has always been brilliant, and it’s so immersive, so while you’re reading the story, you get lost in his worlds. His basic color scheme uses the complementary colors of purple and yellow, with purple the foundation for most of the book. In 1978, it’s all black and white, and he uses a lot of browns when the band isn’t touring so that the “real world” seeps in a bit, but purple is still dominant. Except when the band plays, especially “Fall Through,” and then he ramps up the yellows to magnificent effect, giving us the feeling of a frenzied punk show simply through the hot yellow and orange touches blasting away the cooler purple. It’s simple, but it works very well. The colors are a soft watercolor (whether it’s because Powell actually uses paints or just a cool digital effect, I don’t know), which adds beautiful nuance and texture to the line work. Powell’s lettering has always been stunning, too, as he varies forms, from hard-edged, “loud” letters to beautifully ornate “quiet” cursive lettering, and in some places he adds splotches of color to the dialogue boxes to make them feel more subdued. It’s amazing work. Of course, this is all in service to his line work, which is superb as usual. His fluid style makes his characters “move” well in the panels, and they turn his concert scenes almost into intense action scenes, as the band seems to be tearing through barriers that only they can see. He turns the music into a tangible thing, with jagged ribbons of light and note shards pummeling the audience, and thanks to Diana’s spell, occasionally some of the characters become less (or more?) than human, as Powell mutates them into strange and creepy creatures before our eyes. He uses the entire page and panels, so the book is packed with visual information, and while his panel-by-panel layouts aren’t revolutionary in any way, he can break convention very well and very effectively at times, which makes it all the more memorable when he shifts perspective abruptly. His designs are excellent – all the characters (and there are many) are unique and interesting, and Powell gives us a great sense of the small towns and venues they play and the houses in which they crash. Due to the frenetic nature of the shows, even the weird, esoteric stuff fits in nicely (visually if not exactly narratively), and Powell shows very well how strongly this stuff affects the characters. This is, like all of Powell’s works, an artistic feast, and there’s something delightful on almost every page.

I still recommend this, pretty strongly in fact, because for most of the book, Powell is writing about characters struggling to create something meaningful, and that’s not a bad thing, especially in the hands of someone as talented as he is. The fact that I don’t quite get what’s happening except that the dust jacket tells me so doesn’t bother me unduly, although it does keep this from being a straight-up masterpiece. Maybe I am just that d-u-m, and the time travel/dimensional hopping will be obvious to others. It just feels like Powell is hinting too much about it without coming out and saying it, and therefore it can all be read metaphorically, and when he does come right out and say it (Jody, it’s clear, lives in both 1978 and 1994 during the book and doesn’t seem to age), he doesn’t go far enough with it (like how she doesn’t age, or why her father doesn’t seem to notice anything unusual). That, for me, was just a minor part of the book, though, which is why I still liked it so much. Maybe it will bug you more, or maybe you will understand this far better than I do. What is clear, though, is that Powell continues to create comics with fascinating characters, and his art continues to dazzle. That’s … almost enough for me!

(You can get the book here, by the way. At the top of the Amazon page, the reviewer for the New York Times Book Review seems confused about it too, but I’m man enough to admit it and discuss it, dang it!!!)

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆