In Review Of: Local Hardcover by Wood and Kelly

I came to the Local series in the middle, and made a totally 2008 decision: to not search out the back issues but simply wait for the trade. Except that the trade isn't a trade, but a beautifully produced hardback . And the series holds together exceptionally well. The issues that I had with it when it first came out are the same that i have here, with all the supplemental material in one spot.

The series was a good idea, one that allowed for some fascinating vignettes in the life of Megan. Stories like "The Last Lonely Days at the Oxford Theatre" don't have to go too far to wallow in the level of fucked-upedness that so many of us felt at that age. Wood has captured it beautifully; the hopelessness, the subtle treachery of the minimum wage worker, the small victories that the lost feel with the subtle deception of the switching name tags. There are other standouts here as well: the abject hopelessness of Megan's cousin as a teenager, and, best of all, the real coda of the series, issue #11.

Wood had taken a pretty unflinching look at Megan and her immediate family: her father and brother's alcoholism, her own inability to make commitments or to have any empathy for others in her travels, her cousin's casual violence. After suffering through all the growing pains and intransigence of her earlier years, the story actually opens on Megan in a good space, perhaps the only time that any of the stories have, and puts her into a story headlong with a younger self, and not a carbon copy but simply another young woman with with as little empathy as Megan ever showed in any of her earlier relationships. It not only lets us revisit the small bits and pieces of her past as they're shown on display in the gallery, but puts us in the position of being both voyeur and sympathetic friend. We have been there as Megan ran out on roommates, blew perfectly healthy relationships, lied casually to anyone that she had run into and yet we're to feel her violation as her things are stolen and held up as fictional items for everyone to see. It is both a betrayal of trust and a suitable comeuppance to her. And it helps her take one more step forward in her level of maturity.

If there is any problem that I had with the series, it really is only in the last issue. The story tries to follow Megan back home to the house that she ran away from 20 years earlier, and tries to answer the nagging questions that we all have as we get older: am I just the sum of my experiences, the sum of my parents longing for me to become something else, the sum of my own mistakes? For most of us, and for Megan, the we're left with our own answers, since the ghosts and wall don't talk. But the issue is oddly overly sentimental, and, in returning Megan to the old house, seems to betray the growth that we had finally seen from her in the last issue. Megan steps back, and seems to be going back to nothing particually interesting. It serves the authors needs, but not Megan's needs, and that's an issue. There really is nothing there for her, at least not for the character thatwe've been seeing, the walls won't talk, and her mother's decision to leave the house to her may not have anything deeper to it at all as much as Wood might wish to pretend.

The package of the book is superb, with great design and all the bits and pieces that made the series interesting to pick up along the way. The guest pin-ups in the back are all included, and I'm sorry taht I didn't get mine in in time to be included! I had a neat one with Megan and her shirt is a map that was kinda neat. While i doubt that I'll need to go back and reread all the text pieces for each issue, they are an intersting slice of time when each issue was created. I specifically like the "soundtrack" portion, since I tend to have different CDs that I can recall listening to as I worked on each page. Practically every comic that i ever drew has its own soundtrack. Overall the hardback is essentially better to have, in my mind, than the original issues. It sits better on the shelf and reads well, since this is a series that works as a thematic whole, despite being a collection of single stand-alone stories.

In Review Of: Local #11 by Wood and Kelly

With the penultimate issue of Local, Kelly and Wood have given us yet another interesting slice of Megan's life, this time one in which I'm sure many other reviewer will point out that she appears to almost be an ancillory character in, when in reality she is there from the cover.

Megan for all her travels, her of the small rucksack and the desire to bolt at a monents notice, has been always had things with her, psychic and physical baggage, that she has lugged around from city to city, place to place. The girl least likely to be tied down by posessions is, in fact, defined by stuff. The postcards from her brother, the polaroids from the guy in issue #2. More than that, we're with her, and we have defined Megan by her loot as well, so we feel some of her pain at having her life pinned like a dead butterfly up on a gallery wall. Very few of us would like to have that happen to us. Its an act of violation.

And yet, as the finale shows us, its also an act of freeing her from her past. Much like spring cleaning with a disinterested 3rd party who can really be brutal, Megan has chunks of her past taken away... and its liberating in its own way. Kelly's art if quite good; he's grown tremendously as a storyteller from the first issues, and in subtle ways. Wood's story and dialog is on, and conveys quite a bit without overplaying his hand in any one scene.

Local has been a really nice read, and I'm quite happy to pick this up in the trade so that I can have it on the bookshelf. I liked this series enough to violate my "pamplet" policy, which says something. I have no doubt that it will read even better as a trade actually. The chapters will flow together and there will, no doubt, be better continuity that in the irregularly spaced floppies. If you've not been buying this, then wait and pick up the trade. Its worth the money.

In Review Of: Local #8 by Woods and Kelly

Been catching up on some of the comics that slipped a little under the radar, and I'm working my way through the issues of Local that my LCS has on hand. I know that I'm only getting part of the picture, but that is also part of the fun here as well.

Digression here: does anyone remember coming into a series in progress, in my case the 1970's Avengers and Defenders, and hearing the characters talk about past adventures and finding my imagination racing as I would think about those stories, stories that i haven't read and, back then, would likely never read since the back issue market was decidedly underdeveloped for 7 year olds. Invariably, when I did read them, much later in some cases, some of them were not nearly as good as I had imagined, but some were better than I had thought as well.

Brian Wood has his stories to consider, and here, after last issues digression into her family, we catch up with Megan working as a waitress, but more importantly, working on her relationships with men. Whether getting banged in the backroom of the restaurant, or in a rich man's apartment, she's learning that sex isn't actually the goal here. Love is. Its not a novel story, nor is it a novel ending, which makes it all that much harder to make the damn story work.

Wood and Kelly make the thing work because they're so damn sincere about it, and pull no punches when it comes to showing us Megan's search for love, sex and/or an interesting mixture of the two. Is this not what our 20's end up being? Sometimes a scary mix of relationships that we want to remember and bad decisions that we are more than happy to forget. Megan epitomizes just about everything that I can remember and wish to forget.

From getting screwed on a futon surrounded by empty beer bottles to every roommate that she's run out on, Megan is a mess, but she's a realistic mess. And in the final panels of the issue she makes choices, choices that are less about right and wrong and more about who she is. And isn't that what its all about?

I'd be remiss not to mention how much I enjoy the economy of story that Woods is using to give us single issue stories. Read the whole series and we get to see the macro story arc, but far more important is getting a great 22 page story in a single issue. Very few people are doing that, and it bears mentioning and supporting the beauty sometimes of that single short story. Well done.

In Review Of: Local #2 by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly

Have been catching up on some reading recently, and realized that I've been spending a lot of time absorbing work and looking over the racks, trying to get a handle on the current zeitgeist in comics. Local #2 came my way via Sam at Blue Moon Comics after a spirited discussion about Paul Pope that ended in a sematic draw.

Local works in stand alone stories, so they're easy to review, easy to read and that makes them damn hard to draw and write. After all, lets face it, while there may be a bias against craft among certain elements in the comic book world, it takes real craft to make things look easy. (You want an example? try to write a good Beatles song. Maybe been done 10 times since 1970 total.) Kelly's art, echoing Pope, certainly works on its own merits without him being a total stylemonger, and has a nice feel for the negative and positive elements of the art. In a black and white book, that is absolutely key.

Local #2 is located in Minneapolis, Kelly's hometown, and he draws with a great feel for the locale obviously. Megan, obstensibly the book's protagonist (or at least re-occuring character), has an interesting flirtation with a guy who sneaks into her apartment and leaves her notes and polariods. And, no, she does not know him. From one odd little set up we get a tasty little slice of life story, one that rings true in the final panel when it ends. I won't spoil it for you if you decide to pick it up, but its a fun little read that, really, seems inevitable that it can only end the way that it does. That is, I tell you, a nice bit of writing, and, given the amount of silent sequences that need to convey the story, some nice drawing by Kelly.

While there have been more than a few discussions about what makes comics 'tick', one of them being the telling of stories that contain a mix of pictures and words unique to the graphic medium. This is one of those that verges on fitting that definition. The is a great degree of information and mood given in single horizontal panels that allow our eyes to linger across the cinemascope presentation before moving on. There are, really, three characters in the entire story, and as such, we're given a minimum of talking heads to present who these people are.
You could make a nice little art house vingette out of this issue.

Coming up, more issues of Local soon.