REVIEW: Fall Through
Fall Through
By Nate Powell
Abrams ComicArts, 192 pages, $24.99
![](https://www.comicmix.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Fall-Through.jpg)
Artist Nate Powell gained international acclaim for his work on the March trilogy of graphic novels recounting the life and career of the much-missed John Lewis. However, he is more than just that; he’s an acclaimed writer/artist, as seen in the just-released Fall Through.
Powell is celebrating the punk aesthetic from the late 1970s and early 1980s, set somewhere between the Ramones and the arrival of the New Wave sound. It’s a narrow slice of music history since the beloved Ramones started in 1974, and New Wave may have first appeared with the Talking Heads in 1977, a year before part of this story is set. He traces the rise of Diamond Mine, a small quartet that struggles to get from gig to gig as they attempt to be Arkansas’ first punk band.While that would have been interesting enough for a story, he layers on the fact that they have crafted a song that propels them through time and space to alternate realities and it then becomes a search for home. They arrive in 1994 and want to get back to 1978 without a pair of silver slippers in sight.While the marketing calls it “Love and Rockets meets Russian Doll”, I call it needlessly confusing. Powell vividly presents the power of music, adding in a layer of lightning to accompany their thrashing. It’s a visually interesting story if the narrative doesn’t quite connect.Of the four characters, vocalist Diana is perhaps the best delineated. It’s her powerful song “Fall Through” that sends them everywhere. Interestingly, this isn’t her story, but it’s Jody, the band’s bassist, who emerges as the protagonist. With the encouragement of her father, she leaves home with her bass, and hooks up with the others, forming the group. Unfortunately, she’s not particularly well-defined, and the other members of the band, Napoleon and Steff, come across with barely acknowledged wants and needs. We get glimpses of what’s on her mind through her tour diary, which spaces six weeks for her, and years for everyone else.
I don’t mind a good circular story (I really enjoy Russian Doll), but visually, it’s hard to parse which reality we’re in or what time period. Had Powell stuck with the punk community the band encounters across the country and the power of music. This could have been a significantly stronger narrative.