Broken Frontier

It’s rather ambitious to tell stories about music in a completely inaudible medium like sequential art, but that is exactly what the creators at Panel do with their 6th anthology.

Twice a year, the Columbus, OH comic book collective known as Panel convenes to tell tales about a particular topic. For their Fall/Winter issue of 2005, they decided to go with the theme of music. Each creator or team will get together and tell a short story that conveys a particular feeling about music, how it affects us, and what it might mean to each individual. The stories range from humorous tales of a Homeland Security agent to a real life report of a music festival, each one to varying levels of effectiveness, but overflowing with honesty and enthusiasm.

Right from the moment this book arrived and I opened the package I was impressed. Designed to look like an old EP record complete with slipcase (and hand written price tag for complete effectiveness), as you pull the book from its outer cover you actually will feel more like you’re about to listen to a record rather than open a comic book.

Starting off the book is "Muted" by Tony Goins and Dan Barlow. Interestingly enough, since this is a visually delivered book about audio, this is the first of two tales that are about characters that have lost one of their senses. In this one, the main character is a woman who has lost her sense of sound and her attempts to get as close as possible to being able to notice sound again. The artwork by Dan Barlow is clear and there are some inspired panels, but the story never goes to the next level. It is simple and easy to follow, but at points it seems like Tony Goins is overwriting. For instance, did she really need to lose her hearing in an unspecified "accident?" Did we even need to know why she lost her hearing at all?

I’ll be honest, with the next story, "Effigy" by Tony Williams I feel like I’m missing something. It is almost as if there is a piece of knowledge out there that would make something click and I’d completely understand the story. Instead, this story of a girl searching out a famous musician’s guitar somehow falls flat to me. Williams is a gifted cartoonist whose work is properly stylized (and shows a great contrast with the straight clean linework of Dan Barlow), but there are times when this causes some confusion in storytelling and the flow of the story, which may have lead to my overall confusion but in the end did not diminish my enjoyment and curiosity.

The real star of this book however is the third story, Andy Bennett’s "Jackie Plays Piano," a wonderful little tale about a small girl playing piano and all the imagery and feelings she gets from playing and listening to the magic coming from her instrument. Bennett resists any urge to overwrite as his words and pictures perfectly come together to form the imagery necessary to completely involve the reader.

Craig Bogart’s "Tales of Homeland Security Presents: Operation Stairway" is a nice change of pace from the last few tales. A humor piece about a Homeland Security officer and his flight to a conference that needs protecting, he suddenly looks around the plane and is terrified to find it full of rock and roll musicians, but not because he doesn’t want to listen to their music. Funny and briskly paced, with artwork that is clear and lends a great deal to the story, Bogart takes this theme and runs with it.

The penultimate piece in the book, Dara Naraghi’s "The Gathering" is not so much a story as a recap or report of events. An autobiographical piece about a music festival in New Zealand that Naraghi was lucky enough to attend, one gets the feeling reading this that it could have made a really fantastic sequential story. Instead it starts to feel like a report someone handed in for a class. Sadly, since it wasn’t even a festival Naraghi would normally have chosen to attend the narration almost takes on tones of self righteousness. Even worse, in some cases this makes the disappointment from this piece two-fold, one of being jealous at having not attended the festival yourself and the other knowing that this tale deserved so much more.

The final tale in the book, Sean McGurr and Tim McClurg’s "Man in the Mirror" puts a great final stamp on the book. They take a simple tale of a guy trying to "get some" from his almost girlfriend and make it a funny exploration of the relationship between music and sex. Merging the artwork and story into a fantastic tale, this story breaks up any last feelings of seriousness and leaves the reader with a smile as they turn the last page of the book.

Once again the Panel collective has proven that all you need is enthusiasm and some good people around to do what you want. No one will call these guys the tops in the business, but reading this book, you can’t but smile thinking that they’re having more fun than anyone else.

Panel: Music is the 6th Panel anthology book published by Ferret Press. More information about the books, including ordering information can be found at their website www.ferretpress.com.