Powell, Nate – Sounds of Your Name

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Sounds of Your Name

If you’re a fan of Nate Powell, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.  It collects all sorts of bits from his old Walkie Talkie series, shorter pieces from a variety of sources, and unpublished pieces.  If you’re not a fan of Nate’s work, it’s probably only because you haven’t seen it yet.  It’s impossible to lump this book into one blanket statement, but I’m going to make it anyway: this book is the moment when you start the car and leave your hometown forever with only the clothes on your back and the moment you decide to turn off the car and stay where you are.  It’s living the dream, waiting for death, fighting off boredom and giving in to it.  It’s trying to make sense of it all while knowing deep down that there is no sense to be made.  That was my reading of it anyway, but I will get into specifics for you people who hate dealing in the abstract.  Hey, I usually do too, but Nate brings it out of me.  Longer pieces in this book include Scrubs (involving a couple who are already sick of living life as defined by the alarm clock and how one of the character takes the lyrics from that song “Scrubs” personally), Conditions (dealing with a boy and girl pair of best friends, how they both seem to want more but are afraid to make the first or even the second move, and how they both desperately want to get out of their small town), Frankenbones (showing two house cats, their past history on the streets and how the plot to destroy some unwelcome house guests), Pulling Teeth (showing how a lodged bit of cracker in the gums can ruin a nice kiss and the constant terror that is small town thugs with nothing to do), and Satellite Worlds (spanning across different lives, how they see the world and the thin line between sanity and insanity).  There’s also the title story from It Disappears, but I talked about that elsewhere on this site ages ago.  Shorter pieces include Company (showing a car wreck and the mild chaos that followed the developmentally disabled man in the car walking away while the driver was knocked out), Invisibilities (in which two guys try to reinstill some magic into the town),and The Defeatist (dealing with cheating at an early age, before even knowing that it is cheating).  There are many more, as this book is 300+ pages, but I’m leaving most of the layers of this onion for you to peel.  Also, I usually link the graphic novel to Amazon for the pennies they throw my way when people occasionally click on the link, but I saw that Microcosm publishing has this on sale for a measly $12 at the moment, and that’s too good a deal not to link to it.  If you’ve never questioned a goddamn thing in your life, this comic will fly right over your head.  For the rest of us, you may find a few of your questions about life answered in these pages, but you’ll also find many more questions.  In times as shitty as these, it helps to at least take a look around you.  As a wise man once said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and this comic sums that up beautifully.