Nate Powell interviewed about Fall Through, his punk rock graphic novel (UPDATED)

Interviewed by CT Lim

 The March trilogy, written by the late civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, and illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell, was one of the most acclaimed series in recent years. It is the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award and there is even a sequel now called Run. But most readers of that series will not know the artist of the books used to be in a punk band, ran his own punk label, and drew comics about the life. 

When I had the opportunity to review his new book, Fall Through and to interview him via email, I knew this is what I wanted to focus on. Reading Fall Through is like reading issues of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and thinking about 'what is punk?', 'what is authentic?', and 'how does one carry on in your 40s and 50s after a lifetime of listening to rock 'n' roll, subscribing to its ethics and ideals when you have been working a 9 to 5  job for the last 20 years?' You realized there is a cap to what you can achieve in the rat race, in climbing the corporate leader. There are some things you just won't do and don't believe in. You can only be 'good' for so long, then you just got to throw a spanner in the works. Because it makes life more interesting. Some of these dilemmas are discussed in Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture by Stephen Duncombe. 

I thank Nate Powell for his illuminating and generous answers to my questions. I learn that his punk characters are connected in his own story universe. I look forward to reading his new books.

How does one go from being a punk rocker to being an award-winning comic artist?

I began my active involvement with both communities simultaneously; In September, 1992, my band Soophie Nun Squad started writing songs as my bandmate and I published our very first comic book, D.O.A. #1. My comics pursuits were initially separate from my more personal fanzine creations, slowly merging as I realized that comics could be used to express whatever I wanted. Soophie Nun Squad’s first tour in 1997 doubled as the first time my comics were sold outside my hometown, and more importantly, read by any audience who didn’t already know me. These creative and social networks in punk and comics are both parallel and interconnected, and I’ve simply continued doing what’s been so meaningful for the past 32 years.

What are the lessons that you have learned from punk rock in general, and those that you have applied to being a comic artist?

Punk can be understood as a lens through which to navigate one’s surroundings and to better understand one’s relationship to the world. It can also be a means of problem-solving, figuring out ways to make things real on one’s own terms, and often with limited resources. It’s a test of faith in strangers and their intentions. It’s a crucial exercise in the value of critical thinking skills.

What we call punk is also a double-edged sword: it’s eternally defined and redefined by young people, and the older one gets, the more important it is to reevaluate those self-imposed values and structures we set in place as teenagers. The most enduring of these values in my middle-aged life are a strong do-it-yourself ethic, the necessity of community engagement and faith, and the unique strengths of comics’ democratized accessibility as an expressive medium. 

What I like about Fall Through is that it is not a straight narrative of a band on the run. It attempts to capture what it is to be on tour, the constant gigging, to be skint all the time and you feel you just can't get off the road. It's like reading an issue of Cometbus, more akin to George Hurchalla's Going Underground than Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could be Your Life. The latter is more structured while the former is more shambolic and a bit all over the place. 

Or am I reading it all wrong?

That’s definitely a big part of it. On the surface level of the plot, that disorientation and closed perspective is a powerful force when touring with the kind of band-family we see with Diamond Mine. But the tour aspect of the book is really just the scaffolding that holds deeper themes and feelings in relation to each other. A deeply personal creative collaboration like a punk band often carries a dynamic tension between band members’ perceived unity of purpose and the individual visions and motivations of its members. We sometimes lie to each other about these intentions, just as we lie to ourselves.

How much of the magic realism was there when you first outlined the story? Was it something that you had in mind or something that came along the way? (I thought it was a good way to make tangible the lure of the road, to keep on going and going and to put aside reality and the real world)

All of my solo fiction is magical or supernaturally-tinged, and it all takes place as isolated tales within a shared universe, allowing me to explore different aspects of my beloved hometown, its unique culture and people. So for Fall Through, magic was a given possibility during the early problem-solving stage of writing. Diamond Mine first appeared as a band in my 2018 book Come Again, performing in a weird mountain town in 1979. As I was developing these characters and their stories for Fall Through, which takes place in 1994, I embraced the fact that they simply don’t make sense in either era, and realized that this was a central mystery to help unlock the larger story. Finding a way to reconcile this without overexplaining it required reverse-engineering the band’s appearance in 1979, piecing together details which directly revealed the central plot issue, and allowed me to build around that mystery.

Are you still in a band? Will you form another one? 

I have been a parent for the last 12 years, and that takes up every second of my life. I’m also geographically separated from the people with whom I’ve been involved in all of my bands—when I say “band-family,” I really mean that. It’s proven to be very difficult to play music outside of that family, but has made any reunions very welcome. From 1992 to 2010 I was in the bands Soophie Nun Squad, Gioteens, Boomfancy, Wait, Divorce Chord, and Universe, all with overlapping membership. In 2023, I reunited with three other members of Soophie Nun Squad to play a tribute set to a beloved hometown punk band, Trusty, doubling as a memorial to their drummer Bircho, who passed away at the beginning of the pandemic.

What music are you listening to these days? What would you recommend? What would be a playlist to accompany the reading of Fall Through?

When I draw, I often listen to ambient electronic and minimalist albums on repeat—a lot of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, OK Ikumi, Oneohtrix Point Never, Philip Glass. I certainly spend a lot of time listening to emotionally vulnerable hardcore of the mid-80s to mid-90s—that’s my home planet. Lately, I’m constantly listening to Cocteau Twins, Prince, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Hugo Largo, and The Cure, as well as stellar new albums by Hammered Hulls and Scream.

I actually made a soundtrack accompaniment to Fall Through, which is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF5hlx163lp15p6uNFVRtlIcKy3-81i3d

Some friends of mine (old punks) in Singapore are talking about planning for punk lives after 50, 60. Those who are not married or have kids, is there a retirement home for them so they can take care of each other. A punk house but with the old people safety features. This could be a real concern as people expect punks to 'grow up', settle down, have a proper 9 to 5 job, establish their careers. (one became a lecturer in an arts school and doing her PhD now on punk culture in Singapore, mining her own past) But some don't and there is some talk about punk old folks' home. 

Are there similar issues in USA? 

This is a good example of the importance of reevaluating how we apply these lifelong ideals crystallized as, and by, young people. There is not a serious issue with settling down and growing in different directions as we age. It’s simply what people do, and denying that requires an increasing denial of our relationships with the world—which is precisely how Diana has painted herself into an ideological corner with her own misapplied, self-serving idealism.

Punk is a way of approaching what we do, how we do it, and how to best look out for each other. There is no dichotomy-crisis outside of young adults who don’t yet understand this—and older people who refuse to acknowledge it. Punk is very real, and also a fabricated misnomer.

What's next after Fall Through?

In April, my next nonfiction book will be released. It’s a full comics adaptation of James Loewen’s influential Lies My Teacher Told Me, which is essentially a history book about intergenerational misunderstanding of US history through our history textbooks. The original version of this book was very influential on me as a young adult, and it has only become more significant as the power-hungry, reality-averse far right in the US have pursued organized campaigns to ban books and control information and diverse voices within the American experience. As for what’s on my drawing table right now? I’m finishing pencils on the prequel to Fall Through, which is both a stand-alone character study centered around Diana and the connective tissue fusing Come Again to Fall Through. It’s been a blast to dive so deeply into these characters’ lives and psyches, and will be heartbreaking to reach the end of the journey again.

Fall Through
BY NATE POWELL
Abrams Books, 2024
ISBN: 9781419760822

 $24.99

https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/fall-through

 

(Updated 3/2/24 with introduction)

Book Review - Fall Through by Nate Powell

 reviewed by CT Lim

Nate Powell. Fall Through. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2024. https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/fall-through_9781419760822/

So what do you do as a follow-up after creating the biggest books of your career? Well, you go for broke as Nate Powell has done here with Fall Through. Let's back up a bit. 

If you have been following comics or comics that have won acclaim and awards, Powell's previous books on American civil rights icon, John Lewis (the March trilogy and its sequel, Run) are as respectable as you can get. Notices in the mainstream media, national TV coverage and good reviews in all the right places. National Book Award winner!

But just like the Sex Pistols, who broke up after releasing one leave it or take it album, and right after their one-and-only shambling USA tour, Powell decided to go back to his punk rock roots which most of us have no clue about and what a story he has to tell. (although like a true punk, Powell, through his lead character, is critical of the Pistols for being the manufactured group they were).

The connections between comics and punk are not new. John Holmstrom, Love and Rockets, that cover of Sub Pop 200 by Charles Burns. Recently, I reread old issues of Peter Bagge's Hate, the run in which Buddy was managing a band and how everything just self-destructed while on tour. The story did not age well. 

The synopsis of Fall Through reads something like that: an "all-new trippy original graphic novel that's a love letter for fans of the indie punk scene of the 90s. Fall Through is one trip after another as a band, held hostage by their lead vocalist, are forced to repeat the same sets, same stops, same tour over and over again until one of the band members realizes what is happening and has to make a choice—the music she's struggled and fought so hard for, or reality?"

So what are Powell's punk credentials? Because it is all about street cred in punk rock. The notes say: "As for his music career, Powell was introduced to the hardcore punk community in 1991, played over 500 shows across North America and Europe in various bands, including underground legends Soophie Nun Squad and Universe, and managed the do-it-yourself label Harlan Records from 1994 to 2010."

Not bad although I have not heard of Soophie Nun Squad and Universe. But then again, most people in Singapore have not heard of the dumbass band I was in in the late 1980s, the Primitive Painters. But punk is an attitude, a way of thinking, an approach that I returned to from time to time. I can be good for only so long, but I can’t be good all the time. Punk prevails.

Fall Through captures that spirit quite nicely. How punk brings us together and pulls us along, but we need to return to real life after some time. But that is also not forever as the call of the punk goddess sirens will beckon us over and over again. Why do you think after slogging for 25 years as a chump and all burnout at work and having to take a year off of no-pay leave that I am attending gigs almost every weekend? Why would they even tolerate me and let through the door when immediately once I enter, I raise the median age of the room? Why bother when I need to know where the nearest toilet is and always look for the op corner (that's the old people corner). Why bother indeed when I have no chance in hell to chat up the cute punk women no matter what my loins say?

But. Punk embraces and punk can be inclusive.

To his credit, Powell has a compelling narrative (or beat, yes, we got the beat!) that drives the story. Something weird is going on, almost like a curse that keeps the band on the road with no end in sight. It's not all punk philosophy ramblings like what I have written above. I like it but I am not sure those not in the scene can get the references and the drift. But who cares? Powell doesn't over-explain or over-romanticize those days and nights of wine and roses. Being in a punk band can be stifling despite rhetoric of independence and freedom of expression. Pretty much like in a cell group or commune. There are equal parts of love and loathing, much like everything else in life. 

Reading Fall Through is like reading A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 by Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite and Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989 by George Hurchalla. The only thing missing is a 7” as part of the book. 

You just go along for the ride. And it is good to be on the road. While it lasts with the wind blowing against your face. You squint and you drive straight on. 

Stand aside, open wide. 

 

Le Petit Poilu in concert: a fresh take on music and movement in comics

 

Le Petit Poilu in concert: a fresh take on music and movement in comics

A “BD-Concert” at the Comics Art Museum in Brussels, Belgium. June 10, 2023

 

Reviewed by Laurie Anne Agnese

 

 

 

 

 On a Saturday morning in June, in a small room just off the busy and bright majestic art nouveau hall of the Comics Art Museum in Brussels, three rows of small children were sitting on the steps in front of a stage with two musicians and a screen.  Their parents, seated in chairs behind them, were coaxing them to be quiet and still.  For some of these children as young as 2 or 3 years old, this was their first live concert; for nearly all, it was their first BD concert. 

 

 The BD concerts were programmed for the museum’s temporary exhibit of Le Petit Poilu (on display until August 15 2023), the popular wordless bande dessinée series that the Belgian cartoonist Pierre Bailly and scriptwriter Céline Fraipont created for preschool children. What is special about Le Petit Poilu is how children as young as 3 years old can read the pictures on their own and understand these complex stories independently of their parents. 

 

 The performance, the first of three scheduled that day, combined projected images from the comic to original live music. The concept leaned into the unique comic forms of Le Petit Poilu, while borrowing cinematic techniques to draw out the tensions and meaning of the story.  Stéphane Arbon, wrote the score, and Christophe Bardon performed the live soundtrack mixing blues, rock and jazz to bring to life one of the older and better known stories in the series, Pagaille au Potager (Garden Frenzy).  The two have been collaborating for more than twenty years, both as TOTOF et le grand orchestre intended for kids, and other collaborations.

 

 In Pagaille au Potager, Petit Poilu starts his day like any ordinary preschooler - waking up and getting ready. But on his way to school, he falls down a mysterious hole and digs himself out into a lush, oversized garden where he has fantastical adventures with a group of friendly insects.

 

The good times are interrupted with the seemingly gratuitous aggression of a bee who attacks and stings Poilu’s red nose that balloons with pain. The group sets out to enact their own revenge on the Bee.  But during the dramatic confrontation, Petit Poilu witnesses the Bee’s troubling situation, pauses and dares to react with kindness, offering the Bee a chance to be friends. This is a classic Poilu story, mixing fantasy together with real world empathy. 

 

 

 Pagaille au Potager was the first Le Petit Poilu series to be made into an episode of the animated series, transforming the twenty-eight page wordless album into a fast-paced seven minute cartoon. This version, with characters sometimes speaking in balderdash and other nonsensical sounds, is entertaining and quick to the point, but more defined and narrower than the comic.

 

 

The BD concert is a fresh interpretation of the story, and rich with the human touch of the expressive line drawings, well-developed plot lines, and the live percussion and stringed instruments. At forty minutes long, the concert significantly slowed down the story, particularly the pacing of the visuals, allowing the audience to linger on the panels for much longer than they would while silently reading. The overall effect still gives enough space for interpretation, and feels true to the comic’s original form. The slide show, for example, played with the concept of the page in comics, carefully timing the display of still images, one next to the other, eventually filling the entire screen.

In other vignettes, basic cinematic techniques such panning, zooming, or animation, brought gentle movement to the characters and textures to the story, and were meant to direct the eye to emphasize beauty of the illustrations or highlight the tensions in the story. The score, however, was the consistent cinematic throughline; the original songs punctuated with sound effects, is playful and resonant, and in itself a reference to the musicality of the original comic.

Because of its use of structure and repetition, Le Petit Poilu is not silent at all, but actually quite musical and rhythmic. Arbon and Bardon’s interpretation and musical performance had much to add to the emotional richness of the story.

 

All photos and video taken by Laurie Anne Agnese

 

 

Book Review - Pearl Jam: Art of Do the Evolution

 

Pearson, Rob. Pearl Jam: Art of Do the Evolution. San Diego: IDW Publishing, 2020.  158 pp. US $39.99 ISBN 978-1-63140-741-3

Reviewed by Cord A. Scott, UMGC-Korea

Media often influence other forms of entertainment in unexpected ways.  People get ideas from one kind, such as film, and after a creation of something monumental may influence other media, such as music videos.  If something is truly effective, it will evoke both homages as well as parodies.  An animated video was produced to accompany the Pearl Jam song “Do the Evolution” from the album Yield, and its impact has been long lasting.  It was the creative process for the video, and its later influence, that is the subject of the book The Art of Do the Evolution published by IDW Publishing (which was reviewed as an incomplete advance copy).

Pearson’s chapters go into the creative process, as well as the production of the video, and finally the editing and resulting corporate censorship process. He also uses production notes, and interviews with the principle players to show the overall impact of the video. 

The song was inspired by the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The premise of the story was a discussion of humanity between a man and an ape named Ishmael, with the ape serving as a Socrates-like figure who notes that humanity has developed along two different tracks: the Leavers, who live closer to nature, and the Takers, who are slowly destroying everything through their own greed.  These story points in Ishmael also figured into the animated music video. 

One of the more interesting aspects of Pearson’s book was his look at how the video came about.  Eddie Vedder wrote the song, but also edited his own homemade video of the song by using the images from Todd McFarlane’s animated adaptation of the comic book Spawn.  This series, which ran on HBO, was far darker and more violent than a standard cartoon and Vedder liked the raw intensity of combining the images and the song. This rough video became the base from which the creative process of the finished video began.

When the video first aired in September of 1998, it was a sensation for a variety of reasons. Simply put, it was called “A four-minute history of mankind for stoners.” (p. 137) While the video may have appeared as a forceful depiction of evolution, the imagery was far more nuanced if one scrutinized it. The video is already striking, but there are even more details when one looks closely into it and this book allows that.

As a continuing theme of the book, the artwork executed under the guidance of Epoch Studios was also a change from the norm.  One aspect of this change was the mixing of animation styles. Jim Mitchell trained in the Disney studio style. Brad Coombs was from the intermediary realm of Tim Burton-style animation, which used both traditional drawings as well as stop-action models. The Japanese animation of Hiyao Miyazaki, as well as the overall style of Japanese and Korean anime, influenced Kalvin Lee, who was the final part of the creative team.  These artists all merged their talents into the production process. By utilizing a series of styles from all the forms, and by using other short cuts, they were able to meet their twelve-week deadline from concept to broadcast.

A substantial part of the book centers on the sketches of the storyboards and how these initial images developed into the final product.  These creative decisions also influenced the development of the video, through the character of the “death girl.”  This character was inspired by the character “Death” from Neil Gaiman’s comic book Sandman, as well as Spawn’s wife in the HBO cartoon.

What was of far more interest to me was how the various forces, such as MTV or the Sony record label wanted alterations of the images.  While some symbols were changed, such as the swastikas from the Nazi soldiers, or the American markings on a strafing aircraft, other images were found to be too disturbing and were therefore removed completely.  The most significant of these was the image of barbarians destroying a bust of a Roman leader. 

What remained even after the corporate censors went through the video was both surprising and curious.  Much of the discussion between the creators centered on the “trailer trash man” watching acts of sexual violence in a virtual reality mode.  As he watches the violence, he squeezes his beer, simulating sexual release.  That this sequence remained in was rather surprising to the creative staff.  The other moment was at the very end, where the screen went black and all that was heard was a cricket chirping.  MTV had a policy of never allowing black screens, but it remained. This simple ending acts to recall the cycle of life. 

The video has had an impact on both the music video industry while also inspiring a wide variety of imitations and admirers.  The animators of the Simpsons took the video and turned it into one of their opening sequence gags with a similar, toned-down version of the song to accompany it. 

Overall, the strength of the book is that it shows how the creative process was an interactive one, especially at a time when the industry was still “evolving” (pun intended).  At the same time, it also demonstrated how Eddie Vedder was far more creative, and knowledgeable, of the video editing process than many may assume.  His singular vision and final cut control were also factors that ensured the desired outcome.

While the book was interesting, there were some issues such as some of the stories being repetitive. Granted, they were from the different creators involved, but tighter editing would have helped. For me, the same issue was the use of storyboards and sketches which were interesting, but redundant after a while. Too many of them seemed repetitive.

In all, the intersection of so many media and influences (music, videos to accompany music, comic books, cartoons, etc.) shows how the process of this short film is itself a type of evolution.  Ultimately, that is a hopeful idea of humanity, as well as the goal of Vedder and all those involved in the creative process.