Broken Frontier

An ex-baseball player and would-be filmmaker gambles on his future in this self-published graphic novel.

Stock clerk Dalton Prior has a dream. He hopes to one day become an independent filmmaker but to accomplish this, he’ll need to raise some cash. Drawing upon his natural athletic skill, Dalton devises a plan that involves gambling on one-on-one baseball games known as "wall ball." Though he thinks this will lead to easy money, he hasn’t counted on the interference of Bags, an embittered former player who lost big to Dalton in the past. And as he focuses on his goal, Dalton begins to neglect the people around him, including his best friend (and secret admirer) Phyllis and an old man who sees something very familiar in Dalton’s plight.

I have to admit, at first I was a little uncertain if I would find this comic engaging. Baseball (and sports in general) has never been an area of interest for me. However, from very early on in Dino Caruso’s script, it’s clear that this is not just a story about baseball. On the contrary, Against the Wall is about dreams—how far we’re willing to go to pursue them and how hard we fall when we give them up. Dalton’s story is sure to strike a chord with anyone who’s ever felt that relentless drive to accomplish something at any cost. Caruso does a nice job of interspersing his cautionary tale with journal entries and flashbacks that give insight into the characters. I particularly liked the character of Posey and her gradual transformation from young, wide-eyed baseball fanatic to jaded adult. I was reminded of Lola from the play Damn Yankees, a cynical femme fatale brought in to take the star player down a peg.

The story is competently illustrated by artist Shawn Richter. Richter has a solid sense of storytelling and realism and for the most part, the book looks pretty polished. His page layouts in particular show rather creative touches, playing with angles and framing the action in scrapbook binding or telephone cords. Now and then, the characters’ eyes look a little odd and there was one flashback (the tragedy in the old man’s past) where the sequence of events was not immediately clear. However, these were minor detractions at best.

Against the Wall is a solidly produced graphic novel that addresses the sometimes tricky middle ground between going too far for your dreams and not going far enough.

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For more information or to order this comic, visit http://www.carusocomics.com/