Broken Frontier

No matter how fast we’re moving through life, in the premier issue of Local the speed is always the same—ten thousand thoughts per second.

Portland, 1994. Megan McKeenan tries to pass a bogus diamorphine script for her junky boyfriend. The pharmacist smells fraud, then calls her insurance company and parents when the scheme goes bust. With no options, she screams, "No!" Cut to: Portland, 1994. Megan tries to pass a bogus diamorphine script for her junky boyfriend. This time the cops are waiting, and now her only options are the right to remain silent and screaming, "No!" Cut to: Portland, 1994. Megan tries to pass a bogus diamorphine script for her junky boyfriend. The pharmacist instantly understands how trapped she feels. She’ll call the authorities, but she’ll only mention the boyfriend, not Megan. Megan runs, heads for the train station. But still, she says, "Nope," because this way won’t work either. Cut to: Portland, 1994. Megan’s junky boyfriend wants her to pass a bogus diamorphine script for him. He begs and pleads, but she says, "Fuck you," and only asks the pharmacist for directions to the nearest train station. Maybe this time, she’s got it right.

Fate is fiction. The trajectory of no one’s life is a given. The road to who we are is paved with our choices. Motivational speakers make buckets of cash preaching the gospel of personal choice, but like the Gospels themselves, it has much more impact when shown rather than told. In Megan’s story, Brian shows us everything we need to know about where his protagonist is, where she needs to be, and the recurring cycle of alternate choices she makes to get there. In terms of how the narrative is structured, comparisons to everything from Groundhog Day to Nietzsche’s "Eternal Return" will abound, but Local #1’s strength is found more in its tone and the world Wood builds than its structure. That world is familiar to anyone who was Megan’s age or thereabouts in 1994. The Pixies. Superchunk. Bodies, Rest, and Motion. Lots of coffee, lots of cigarettes, and even more talking. Cobain’s death. With the building blocks of that evanescent time, Wood constructs a world that’s more everyday than extraordinary, but "Ten Thousand Thoughts Per Second’s" poignant tone allows the reader to find the extraordinary in the everyday. Local #1 may look like Groundhog Day on the surface, but its heart belongs to Raymond Carver.

The "heavy" realism in Ryan Kelly’s black-and-white artwork plays counterpoint to Wood’s script. Where the story is quiet, the art is intense, in terms of emotion as well as panel construction. Kelly spends a lot of time on faces, his thick linework finding nuances of feeling and reaction, even in extras like an old woman browsing in the pharmacy. He also frames his shots very tightly to keep the focus on the characters. The effect at first is off-putting, until you realize that he’s finding things in the story that the script can’t. Megan’s rough but delicate beauty, for instance. Her boyfriend’s addicted desperation. Or how 1994 time in a Pacific Northwest city feels. It will be interesting to see what other nuances Kelly can reveal in Woods’ script as Megan grows older and Local develops.

Local #1 is a solid debut from a solid writer and artist. Their collaboration heightens each other’s talent and skill.