Nate Powell, the multiple award-winning artist of the March trilogy, as well as the creator of Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole and numerous other graphic novels, returns with a new graphic novel next year from Abrams ComicArts.
Fall Through sounds different than a lot of his recent projects, as it falls somewhere in the realm of science fiction and punk rock: “It’s an interdimensional 1990s punk soap opera starring Jody & Diana, whose band Diamond Mine is lost indefinitely on tour— always seeking connection and free space,” Powell said on Twitter.
“I love all these characters— Fall Through is emotional, critical, kinda sexy & funny & queer & idealistic & creepy— and it was the most fun I’ve ever had making a book. And there’s bootleg magic & curses involved! YOU KNOW I LOVE CURSES,” he added.
Here’s the description from the publisher:
Love and Rockets meets Russian Doll in this all-new 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’ 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?
Powell said the project was “pandemic therapy, as it gave him the opportunity to draw “throngs of people— friends & strangers both— touching, sweating, yelling, breathing, singing together in confined spaces. It’s my love letter to these spaces, to the ways it’s shaped me & the power of interconnectedness.”
Fall Through will arrive in stores on Feb. 6.