In fiction, when given the choice between utopia and dystopia, I tend to fall into the more pessimistic camp. At the movies, whether it's lighter (as in Mad Max: Fury Road, a film you should see in IMAX RIGHT F*CKING NOW) or a bit darker and sardonic (as in Terry Gilliam's cut of Brazil), dystopian visions seem more realistic. Which is more likely to come to fruition years from now -- the gleaming electronics of Prometheus or the dessicated dank of Alien? The future strikes me as more likely to be parched and rusting, the beginning of WALL-E rather than the end, and while I hope for otherwise, I'm preparing for the worst.
In the dystopian literature that I've actually read, there is only one masterpiece: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Relentless in tone and economical in prose, it's the kind of work that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone despite the knowledge that it might devastate the reader with images that you'll never be able to shake. (I even bought it for my father, which is sort of horrible if you've actually read the book.) To unpack everything that McCarthy pours into nearly each sentence is to admire a master of craft at the apex of his abilities, and I'm not sure I'll ever read anything so moving and memorable again in my life.
Having said that, Black River by Josh Simmons is a new graphic novel that comes as close to McCarthy's magnum opus as any graphic novelist ever will, and it's hung with me all day. Mordantly humorous and bleakly harrowing, with an ending that offers as much hope as one can see with one's eyes squeezed shut, Simmons has written and drawn a richly detailed universe despite the brevity of presentation that a slim black-and-white tome offers. Where ongoing graphic novels such as The Walking Dead detail periods of hope as humans interact within the ruins of civilizations past, Black River offers no such illusions of conciliatory contact. When the shit goes down -- and Black River is snapshot after snapshot of a world of unrelenting and pervasive shit -- you'll never be able to wash the shit stains from your soul. And if you're like me, you can't get enough of these snapshots, even if they can be hard to look at from time to time.
Buy from Amazon here.
In the dystopian literature that I've actually read, there is only one masterpiece: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Relentless in tone and economical in prose, it's the kind of work that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone despite the knowledge that it might devastate the reader with images that you'll never be able to shake. (I even bought it for my father, which is sort of horrible if you've actually read the book.) To unpack everything that McCarthy pours into nearly each sentence is to admire a master of craft at the apex of his abilities, and I'm not sure I'll ever read anything so moving and memorable again in my life.
Having said that, Black River by Josh Simmons is a new graphic novel that comes as close to McCarthy's magnum opus as any graphic novelist ever will, and it's hung with me all day. Mordantly humorous and bleakly harrowing, with an ending that offers as much hope as one can see with one's eyes squeezed shut, Simmons has written and drawn a richly detailed universe despite the brevity of presentation that a slim black-and-white tome offers. Where ongoing graphic novels such as The Walking Dead detail periods of hope as humans interact within the ruins of civilizations past, Black River offers no such illusions of conciliatory contact. When the shit goes down -- and Black River is snapshot after snapshot of a world of unrelenting and pervasive shit -- you'll never be able to wash the shit stains from your soul. And if you're like me, you can't get enough of these snapshots, even if they can be hard to look at from time to time.
Buy from Amazon here.
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