Any Empire
Any Empire Graphic Novel (Top shelf)
Nate Powell is a previous Eisner award winner (for his 2009 book Swallow Me Whole) and he’s regarded as a very fine comic writer by his contemporaries and critics alike. Returning with this beautifully drawn story of War and Middle America this is a fantastic graphic novel. The story encompasses an amazing slice of trailer park life with four kids – Josh, Sarah, Purdy and Lee – growing up in a hazy summer of playing war and make-believe which is punctuated with a string of cruel turtle mutilations by persons unknown, a crime which Sarah endeavours to solve with Lee’s help. The main protagonists are very well characterised, each with their own moral outlook and their own ethics. So as we jump cut from youth to their twenties it’s a sign of Powell’s talent of creating believable characters in how he uses their childhood experiences of casual cruelty and bullying and embosses them upon their adult personalities, this gives him the ability to give the story real emotional punch when he needs too. I feel that Any Empire is a brilliant dissection of the effect of low-income middle American life, growing up lonely, playing war as a child, to the bleak reality of adulthood and the effect of real war on these communities when Purdy –the more army fascinated of the kids- joins up with the Army with some heavy consequences. This whole novel, from youth to adult hood and all of their joint experiences, is amazingly rendered with some beautiful almost woodcut looking artwork. Its sheer blacks and heavy cross shading create an oppressive atmosphere and a bleak feeling of power and loss of it when our protagonists watch tanks roll in to their American back water, perhaps a visual metaphor of how deeply the effect the army has on the lives of the poorer people in America. With a suitably ambiguous conclusion it’s hard to discern an actual tangible outcome (there is no ‘and they all lived happily after’) but that ambiguity is on a par with some of Wil Eisner’s best dissections of what made the depression-hit America what it was. It’s about time we had more comic book creators debating the effects of idolised war on the disenchanted youth of modern society with an ever increasing wage gap, and this work from Nate Powell should be regarded as a seminal comic in that canon. Effortless to read and with a lasting impact it’s well worth reading if you like your comics metaphysical. ALEX
