“We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn”
Living the Line is starting to bring out more books, which is nice, and House on Fire by Matt Battaglia is one of them. Let’s have a gander at it!
As I have often said, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I don’t “get” esoteric books/movies/television shows as much as smarter people, like you guys. I was with this book until the end, when … I think something symbolic happens? 
If it’s reality, dang, that sucks, but I think it’s more metaphorical. Either way, it doesn’t wreck the book, just makes me think I’m not as smart as I wish I were. Woe is me!
Before that, Battaglia gives us what is described in the pull quotes on the back as a “post-apocalyptic” and “dystopian” world, which sounds bleak, and it is. I’m not so sure it’s “post-apocalyptic” (and that’s someone else describing the book, not Battaglia or even the PR people at Living the Line), but it sure is dystopian, boy howdy. The story is simple: a man who lives in the country heads into New York to find what is presumably oxygen for his ailing wife, and he has to run a tense gauntlet to get it. That’s it. It’s not exactly a convoluted plot, people! In one of the pull quotes, Dave Sim calls it “Photo-Impressionism,” but that’s because Sim likes to smell his own farts. It is far more “impressionistic” than we might expect, as we never learn anyone’s name and Battaglia paces the story glacially so that we have to simply sit with the art and contemplate this world (if we want to, that is). The man leaves his wife, gets in his truck, drives to the city, bribes a checkpoint guard to let him in, meets his contact, barters with him, has a spot of trouble (which I won’t spoil), and heads home. Then he sits on his porch and recites the Lord’s Prayer. And … curtain!
You might think, Well, what’s the point? That’s where the “impressionism” comes in, of course! Battaglia is certainly making a connection between a standard dystopian future – the wreckage of cities, the poisonous air, the heavy military presence, the economic collapse – with the situation the world finds itself in right now, in our dystopian present, but unlike most creators, he doesn’t make a big deal about it. 
He simply shows a tiny part of life in this world and allows us to extrapolate outward. There’s nothing unique about this world, but because Battaglia keeps it focused on just this person, it becomes more personal. There are not a lot of words in this comic – several pages are completely wordless – and so we watch the man complete his task without any authorial interference, and Battaglia does a good job bringing us down to his level, so we experience it from his point of view and see how terrible things have become. It’s a world with rules, certainly, and even kindness, but there’s still both the potential and the actuality of sudden brutality, and it’s a tense narrative simply because we never know where it’s going to come from. It’s certainly not a coincidence that both the police and crooks wear masks in this book, as Battaglia is definitely making a connection between crime perpetrated by criminals and crime perpetrated by those in authority (the cop in this book isn’t a thug, but he does take a bribe, so he’s not above bending the law). Battagla gives us a world full of pollution, so in-story, it’s not surprising that a lot of people are wearing masks, but he does a nice job linking the two people who try to take advantage of our hero’s desperate and tenuous state. The one person he actually can trust in the book goes maskless, needless to say.
Battaglia’s art has that rough beauty that works really well with a brutalist story like this. Everything is thick lines and harsh brushstrokes of color, making the world a sickly, harsh place that defeats humans as easily as the military or the criminals do. He does a nice job contrasting the rural with the urban, even though the rural isn’t terribly idyllic – he still uses thick lines, but he eases slightly on the lurid orange, allowing the white to creep in a bit more, and there’s a bit less of the frenetic black brushwork that characterizes a lot of the urban scenes. 
It’s a nice way to show that things might not be great in the country, but they’re still a bit better than in the city. He uses gouache to show the lights in the city, dripping some hither and thither to show even the lights are sickly, and later he links the scattered light to drops of blood quite well. There’s a fight in the middle of the book, and Battaglia gets in close and shows the brutality very well, reminding us that fights are rarely the balletic, graceful things we see in movies. He also shows the effect this world is having on people, as both the man and the sick woman show the pain they’re experiencing as they try to wring what they can out of life. As the man recites the Lord’s Prayer, Battaglia does a superb job showing how hard it is for the man to say the words, as his faith is dwindling if it hasn’t gone altogether. It’s a fascinating book, art-wise, because Battaglia relies on it so much to set the mood for this book, which is very important to the overall thrust of the narrative.
House on Fire is more interesting simply because of the way Battaglia tells the story than for the strength of the plot. It’s an interesting look into a man’s soul and why he’s feeling bereft, set against a world that looks far too much like our own. Despite some problems, it’s a promising first graphic novel for Battaglia. It will be interesting to see what he does next.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
