Broken Frontier

Megan’s journey and story comes to an end. For long time readers it is a walk down memory lane as we say good bye to a close and dear friend.

You can’t go home again. That is almost what Brian Wood says this issue. Megan returns to the house she grew up in and there she confronts all the people we have seen her interact with in the last three years. What is probably more important are the scenes she has with a character we never met before now, her mother.

The introspective turn that Megan takes in this issue is a brave thing for Wood and Kelly to do. They open themselves and the character up to more scrutiny than ever before. This girl that I have come to know, I questioned her sanity several times throughout the series, but she always came back to a point of relative relatablity. It is in this issue that she truly bares her soul. The visits from her friends and lovers and family are more akin to Scrooge’s visits, but by the end Megan realizes that the choices she has made were hers.

Wood is making a statement on the nature of life. That it isn’t what you always expect, but that the experiences along the way make the difference. For Megan, she excises the demons of her past, setting forward in a brave new day. What is most remarkable is that for the first time in the entire series, we see her reach out to another human. Not just the figments of her imagination, but after one particularly disturbing vision, she actually picks up the phone and touches base with someone from her past. She is done running and like the comic that features her story, it grew the way it needed to.

Like Ms. McKeenan, Ryan Kelly’s pencils have grown with each issue. There is a maturity to Megan and to his narrative style. The aged look of the characters evolved just as organically as the story it is telling. His framing has been notched up with each consecutive issue. He knows that he has gotten better and been a part of a once in a lifetime experience, one only needs to read his farewell essay in the back of last issue to see that. He has risen to the challenge of the story that Brian Wood has placed before him.

This book may have fallen off many radars because of its less than regular schedule. However, for any that read it, they know they were part of something special. Stories this powerful and personal don’t happen all the time. Tomine and Clowes and Pekar may struggle with getting to the essence of life, but Wood at his relatively young age has got it. It’s in the palm of his hand, and in his own way he and Ryan Kelly shared that golden glow with us. For those who stuck it out, they were enriched. For those who have yet to discover it, it is there in its entirety. Seek it out. No words I could type would relate the experience you will have with this book.