MATERIAL VOL. 01 SC (IMAGE COMICS)

PUBLISHER Image Comics
WRITER Ales Kot
ARTIST Will Tempest
COVER ARTIST Tom Muller
PAGES 128 pages.
COLOR Full Color.
FORMAT Graphic Novel

A NEW KIND OF A COMIC BOOK! America is unwinding. The world is undergoing massive changes. Material is a journey through what it means to be alive, today. Collects Material #1-4.

The first book of the sweeping literary graphic novel series crosses from Boston to Los Angeles and from Oklahoma to Guantanamo, through the hidden, unfamiliar and forbidden spaces of the American psyche. Compared to the works of Don DeLillo, Daniel Clowes and Joan Didion, Material is the beginning of a journey into the heart of the newly born century.

Material is an Ales Kot series, and if you're familiar with some of the other works in his repertoire (Change, Zero, The Surface, etc.) you'd probably guess that you're in for some really unorthodox storytelling here. And you would be right, but not necessarily in the way that you might imagine. Because unlike many of his other series, which are certainly weird, yet still focus on a central character, Material sees multiple plotlines developing at once, each having its own main character. One may be tempted to think that these plotlines in question don't have anything uniting them, and story-wise, this would be correct. But what really does unite them is the fact that they all revolve around people who are symbolic of underlying social problems that face America today. There's a struggling actress, an anti-technology university professor trying to come to grips with the paradox of the fact that he both criticizes technology while enjoying its luxuries, an innocent man who has just returned from Guantanamo, and a young black boy confronted with the harsh reality of racial inequality and police brutality in his community.

All of these characters, while their separate plotlines never coalesce, are representative of many underlying problems and controversial topics that are hot talking points today in the U.S. And what Kot is essentially trying to do with each character is to give you a snapshot and insight into some of these topics through them, to give an idea of what it's like to live in America in 2015. To supplement this theme in a way, Kot includes little footnotes at the bottom of almost each page, references to artistic works, quotes from philosophers, names of unarmed black people killed by police, and other things that serve to reinforce the themes he's tackling here. Some may find this annoying, or (the magic word!) pretentious, but really it's a technique that only strengthens the writing by adding relevance to it. After all, when you're tackling real-world issues such as these, why not cite some real world material that readers can further investigate if they're curious about these topics?

And this is largely the purpose of Material. It's not meant to "entertain," at least in the traditional sense of the term. This isn't a series like Saga, or Lazarus, or Sex Criminals where you're meant to get emotionally invested in the characters and share in their desires, motivations, sadness, accomplishments, and so on. Instead it's meant to make you think about some of the troubles we face as Americans today, and some of the root causes behind those troubles. Some might think that this isn't something that comics are "meant for," but hey guys: Kot is definitely being bold here by doing something that virtually NO ONE else in the industry can say they are at the moment, and for that, at the very least, I think he deserves respect.

If the sound of profound sociopolitical commentary in comics tickles your fancy, give this series a shot. It is not an easy one to tackle, and it isn't "storytelling" in our traditional understanding of the word, but it is certainly one that rewards those who are looking for something insightful and out of the box.

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