Fall Through
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Love and Rockets meets Russian Doll in this original, full-color graphic novel about an underground punk band caught in a loop of an eternally repeating tour—from National Book Award–winning cartoonist Nate Powell.
At first glance, Diamond Mine seems to have emerged in 1979 as Arkansas’s first punk band. Instead, this quartet is revealed to be interdimensional travelers from 1994, guided—largely against their will—by vocalist Diana’s powerful spell embedded into their song “Fall Through.”
As Diamond Mine tours the country, each performance of the song triggers a fracturing of space-time perceptible only by the band members as they’re transported to alternate worlds in which they’ve never existed, but their band’s legend has. That is, until Jody, the band’s bassist and the story’s protagonist, finds herself disrupting Diana’s sorcery, even at the cost of her own beloved work and legacy. While some band members perpetually seek the free space offered by the underground punk scene to escape from their mundane or traumatic lives, others work toward it as a means of expression, connection, and growth—even if that means eventually outgrowing Sisyphean patterns and inevitably outgrowing their beloved band-family altogether.
Master cartoonist Nate Powell has crafted a graphic novel that serves as both a brilliant example of circular storytelling, reminiscent of Netflix’s Russian Doll, and a love letter to the spirit of punk communities. Fall Through will stay with the reader long after they’ve turned the last page, asking the impossible question: Would you burn down everything you love in order to save it all?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This paean to 1990s DIY punk from National Book Award winner Powell (the March series) puts a paranormal twist on the intimacies and aggravations of life in a band. Arkansas-based quartet Diamond Mine summon thunderous power from their vocalist Diana's volatile, shamanistic performances. The shows are electrifying—their sound drawn as lightning bolts striking the stage—but there's something more at play. Each time the band launch into their signature song, "Fall Through," it's as though a rift opens in the spacetime continuum, and bassist Jody narrates a quasi-mystical tour diary of the group's seemingly endless six-week van tour. While Diane fights to hold the band together, guitarist Napoleon feels pulled by responsibilities to a brother with special needs back home, drummer Steff powers through suppressed identity issues, and Jody's attention strays to a budding relationship. A musician himself, Powell captures the warmth and squalor of punk house lodgings and the frenetic buzz at each stop along the road, all in vibrant, splashy layouts. "The story of a thousand shows is one of quietly falling out of time... Here we go again." With infectious nostalgia for humid basement shows and 3:00 am revelations, Powell revels in the too-brief moments when music makes life vivid.
