Customer Reviews

It Disappears . . . (Soft Skull ShortLit)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No, it doesn't have the rhyme or meter of a literary poem. It does have all the mystery, evocativeness, and tantalizing ambiguity that so many people love in poetry. Powell combines past and present with will-be and never-was. He blends gentle fanstasy with the hard gray facts of a world where success is only ever partial, indirect and transient. Events are kaleidoscopic but there's a narrative deep inside, maybe several of them. The black and white art is simple, varied, and without affectation. It carries the text beautifully.

I'll have to go over this again, and maybe again a few more times to tease all the strands apart. It's worth it. If this is what Nate Powell creates, I want more of it.

//wiredweird

PS to people who don't like buying one story twice: This book's content appears again in Powell's later and larger collection, "Sound of Your Name."

IT DISAPPEARS by Nate Powell, Soft Skull Press, 71 Bond St., Brooklyn, NY 11217; www.softskull.com; ammi@softskull.com. 2004. 78 pp. $9.99 trade paper, ISBN 1-932360-37-9. graphic novel.
Powell's graphic, comic-book-like, panels of varying degrees of white and black convey the uncertain, shifting, grounds of existence. When the white predominates, there's an almost mystic feeling of tranquility. When the black predominates, there's a noir-like atmosphere. Most of the panels are in the middle ground of the proportion of the two colors. A man out camping alone in the wilderness when a snowstorm starts up meets a dog-like creature with a philosophical outlook. Identity, one's place in the universe, and modern society are among the topics the two take up as they search for shelter and other characters move in and out of the story. Powell's unpredictable illustrations and reflective dialogue present different angles on the perennial existential questions.