“In the town they’re searching for us everywhere, but we never will be found”
Jason McNamara is a good dude and a good writer, so I like to support his work. He ran a Kickstarter for his comic, Ghost Band, and earlier this year, it arrived! 
In the package was a copy of The Cicada, an earlier work by McNamara, so we have a bonus review here, too! Ghost Band is lettered by McNamara himself, drawn and colored (mostly) by Vincent Gladnick, with additional colors by Paul Little. I’ll write more about the other artists below!
I have a confession to make: I don’t really like “end-of-the-world” fiction. I just find it all too plausible, and it makes me uncomfortable. Like, I know zombies will not happen, but somewhere deep down in my soul, I think “Yeah, that could happen.” Other fiction that posits the end of the world usually makes it frighteningly plausible, and as I don’t really want to die and I am sure when the apocalypse starts I would be one of the very first victims as I’m so inept at everything (although I suppose I’d be one of those dead the survivors always envy, so I’ve got that going for me), I get uncomfortable whenever someone starts doing fiction about the end of the world. That doesn’t stop me from reading it, of course, and I certainly can review it with a fairly objective eye, but it still bugs me. And when we get a story like this, where society has fallen apart but the actual end of humanity is nigh and there’s literally nothing that can stop it, well, that bugs me even more. In some post-apocalyptic fiction, there are attempts to rebuild society. McNamara scoffs at your optimism, other apocalyptic literature!!!!
We begin in San Francisco, as Sven and Jo drift into the bay and discover that there are still people in the world. They’re living on a raft in the bay, the better to stay away from the marauders on land, who are up to something that seems bigger than just plunder (and they are, of course). Jo and Sven are attacked by said marauders, but they manage to make it to the raft, where they’re celebrating the last day of human existence. 
Yes, apparently, not only has the world gone to shit, but the people on the raft know that tomorrow, it’s all going to end. Sven and Jo are a bit upset by this, naturally, but the “party-at-the-end-of-the-world” attitude of the raft’s inhabitants means they’re not getting many answers. However, they do find someone willing to talk, and they find out … well, that would be telling, but McNamara keeps it fairly generic – it’s an interesting conceit, certainly, but he doesn’t get too into the specifics, which is probably for the best. Meanwhile, we eventually learn that the marauders are trying to save humanity … with a bit of a twist, of course. Will they be able to do it? Will Jo join the imaginary rock band that one of the raft’s inhabitants is setting up? Will our heroes get killed because the people on the raft aren’t quite stable? So much intrigue!
Sven has a tougher time adjusting to the raft than Jo does, and it turns that the laissez-faire attitude of the raft doesn’t extend to everyone, as Sven breaks one of their rules (it’s unclear which one, as they seem somewhat nebulous and even arbitrary), but before anything bad can happen to him, something bad happens on the raft, and the survivors end up in San Francisco, on the run from the marauders. That’s when they find out the marauders’ scheme, and it puts them in a quandary. Do they help out and “save” the world, even though saving it doesn’t sound like the greatest idea? Or do they simply embrace what time they have left and put on a (fake) rock show, which suddenly has the prospect of being real when they find instruments. It’s a conundrum!
Like most good apocalyptic literature, this isn’t really about the end of the world. McNamara makes it even less about the end of the world by stating throughout that there’s literally nothing anyone can do about it, even if the “villain” of the piece claims that he can. 
There’s a clock, and as it ticks down, things feel more and more inevitable. In not-good apocalyptic literature, there’s a deus ex machina that saves everything, and McNamara gives us that feint with the villain, who says he has a plan, but ultimately, the end of the world can’t really be stopped. So, in the grand tradition of apocalyptic literature, McNamara turns this into a big ol’ metaphor, with the idea of living fully in the time you have clashing with the idea of not enjoying the time you have because you’re so worried about the future. The characters don’t have a future, so they try to live fully. But even that doesn’t work as well as it might, as McNamara shows with the odd, occasionally bloodthirsty commune floating in the bay. When they end up in San Francisco, they embrace that ethos even more, and it leads to the “shocking” ending of the book. Meanwhile, as any good artist, McNamara is mistrustful of technology, and his apocalypse has something to do with technology, so even though modern stuff still exists, nobody trusts it. The book is more about ditching the tech – they don’t actually have any instruments on the raft, so the band is entirely fake until very late in the book – and learning to be human again and what that means. It’s an age-old conceit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Jo, specifically, is carrying around a lot of guilt about the apocalypse, and she needs to let that go and learn how to interact with people again, which she does over the course of the book. McNamara doesn’t push it too hard, which is nice, so it becomes a bit more of a subtle book than you might expect, as the characters accept what’s going to happen but find something beautiful in that fate. It is fatalistic, of course, but McNamara does a good job adding humor and humanism to the book, so even if we’re moving toward tragedy, the characters don’t allow it to drag them down.
Unfortunately, one big issue with the book is the artwork. Not exactly the quality of it, but the inconsistency of it. 
As McNamara was (presumably) financing the book himself, it seems like he couldn’t keep Gladnick around, so the end of the book becomes a hodgepodge of artists, all of whom do pretty good work but which makes the book lose its coherence, to a degree. Gladnick has a solid, rugged line and a rough inking style that works well for an apocalyptic book, as everything looks a bit ragged. He doesn’t do anything spectacular, but he does nice work, and his “apocalyptic” scenes – when we see what happened to the people and what continues to happen – have a creepy, haunting quality that works very well. Gladnick draws the first 57 pages of the book and three pages after that, but then a succession of artists take over, and the book loses its visual coherence. It’s too bad, because none of the artists are bad – I’ve liked the work of Justin Greenwood, Rahsan Ekedal, Tony Talbert, and Paige Braddock in the past, and the others are fine, too – but they have such different styles that it occasionally becomes hard to keep track of the characters. Not Jo and Sven, necessarily, but some of the others. And the styles clash, from Ekedal’s more painted look to Greenwood’s more rounded look to Braddock’s more cartoony look, and it’s a bit jarring. There’s nothing wrong with the art, it’s just that I do wish Gladnick had been able to finish it all. It’s frustrating.
It doesn’t matter too, too much, because it’s a good comic that delves into plenty of interesting ideas about humanity, and McNamara is able to keep it from being utterly depressing while still dealing with some important issues. Yes, the apocalypse is nigh. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some rock and roll, right?
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Meanwhile, Jason also sent the first issue of The Cicada to people who supported the book, and I’ll write a bit about that. It’s a bit of a bummer that only one issue of this comic has come out, and I’m unsure if any others will ever come out, because it’s intriguing. In this Year of the Cicada, it’s particularly relevant! This is an intriguing set-up, as it takes place in 1993 but flashes back a lot to 1980. In 1993, a girl named Emma keeps getting in trouble with the law, but the cops are sympathetic because she has some serious issues at home. She also has a prosthetic leg, and it seems some hinky things are happening around town to people with special needs. We get a few scenes in 1980, in which a school bus full of children gets hijacked and ends up in a pool with all the kids dead inside. One of the cops investigated that case, and now, in 1993, the cops are getting threatening notes that makes him think the killer is back (like a cicada – every 13 years!). There’s a lot going on in just this issue, and it’s very interesting, and Alberto Massaggia does nice work with the art, and … I don’t know if we’ll ever see a second issue, much less the complete story. Dang. Still, it’s a cool introduction.
You can get all of McNamara’s comics at his web site, to which I linked above. If you want to read some neat comics, you should check it out!
