Anarchy and action

Graphic novelist Nate Powell releases ‘Fall Through.’

“Fall Through,” the swirling, vivid new graphic novel from Nate Powell, expertly captures an era — the mid-’90s American DIY punk scene in flyover country.

But there is much more going on in the book, which is out today from publisher Abrams ComicArts, and it is exactly what we’d expect from the 45-year-old Powell, a sensitive, insightful, adventurous writer and artist who grew up in North Little Rock.

The novel tells the story of Diamond Mine, an Arkansas punk rock quartet made up of lead singer-songwriter Diana, guitarist Napoleon, bassist Jody and drummer Steff. The narrative is told from the idealistic Jody’s point of view and we are taken along as the band takes life. We see their ingenuity as they scrape together money and cheap equipment to record their songs and the relationships that grow (and grow strained) as they go on tour, playing to small, enthusiastic audiences at house shows and anywhere else that will have them.

The story is set in 1994, but things are off-kilter. We learn early on that a teenage Jody lived in Oklahoma and had one of those life-changing experiences after seeing English punks the Sex Pistols perform at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa on the band’s tumultuous, ill-fated 1978 U.S. tour. This is odd, considering that Jody seems to be in her early 20s when she’s playing in Diamond Mine during the summer of 1994.

Close readers will also recognize Jody and her band mates from Diamond Mine’s brief appearance in “Come Again,” Powell’s 2018 horror-tinged graphic novel that was set in 1979 in the Ozarks.

And then there’s this: Every time the 1994 version of the band plays its song “Fall Through” truly weird stuff happens and they are transported, transformed, spellbound; William Burroughs may have even appeared during a Kansas gig. It’s magical and dark, an inexplicable, terrifying, nonstop circle that is controlled by Diana, a Peter Pan sort of character dragging her bewildered band mates along on a journey they might not be prepared to take.

Along the way, Powell skillfully details life on the margins in an idealistic punk rock band and has created a distinct group of characters bonded by life in a group on tour. There is freedom, sure, but there is also monotony, uncertainty, confusion and a tenuous band hierarchy; Powell explores all of these experiences with compassion and understanding.

This should come as no surprise. Powell, who started making homemade comic books as a teen

ager, joined Little Rock punk outfit Soophie Nun Squad in late 1992.

“I would sing and yell and roll around on the floor,” he says of his role in the band. “We were kind of like ‘The Muppet Show,’ and I also did puppets and props.”

There are plenty of references to the ’90s Central Arkansas punk underground throughout the book, whose title is taken from a 1994 single by Little Rock band Five-0.

One scene takes place at a spot similar to the Riverfront Park Belvedere in downtown Little Rock that was the site of many an outlaw DIY show in the ’90s. Beneath the slipcover of the book Powell has re-created the cover of Little Rock band William Martyr 17’s single “The Celebration of Love.” He also uses the image as a cover of a Diamond Mine 7-inch. And there is the part in the novel where Diamond Mine sleeps in a ditch on the side of the road, something Powell and his Soophie Nun Squad mates did while on tour and their vehicle broke down.

The book is also a showcase for Powell’s looping, feverish, energetic art, lettering and layout. Unlike the work of other literary graphic novelists like Adrian Tomine, Nick Drnaso or Alison Bechdel, Powell’s art is loaded with anarchy and action and at times threatens to burst from the page. He credits the superhero comics he devoured while growing up, specifically the work of Bill Sienkiewicz and Arthur Adams, the latter of whom Powell calls “my all-time favorite cartoonist. I’m constantly conjuring the forces of Arthur Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz whenever I’m drawing.”

Powell will be at WordsWorth Books, 5920 R. St., Little Rock, at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 23 to discuss the book and sign copies. At 2 p.m. the following day he will be at Fayetteville Public Library’s Willard and Pat Walker Community Room, 401 West Mountain St., for a book signing and discussion.

Powell lives in Bloomington, Ind., with his wife, Rachel, and their two daughters. After graduating from North Little Rock High School in 1996 he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. His first graphic novel, “Swallow Me Whole,” was released in 2008 and won two Ignatz Awards and the Eisner Award for best original graphic novel.

He illustrated “March,” a three-volume autobiography of U.S. Rep. John Lewis that was written by Lewis and Andrew Aydin. The trio won a National Book Award for the third volume in the series, and Powell contributed art to the follow-up, 2021’s “Run.”

His other graphic novels include “Any Empire,” “Two Dead” and the aforementioned “Come Again.” His graphic memoir, “Save It for Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest,” was published in 2021.

The idea for “Fall Through” dates to the late aughts and the last days of Soophie Nun Squad, which ended after a final show in Germany for eight people in June 2006.

“Back in 2007 I really wanted to return to a ’zinelike multimedia reflection on all those years spent with Soophie Nun Squad as a band/family, reflecting on all of our travels,” he says.

Nothing ever came of the project, but in late 2013 while working on “Come Again,” the idea of Diamond Mine, “Arkansas’ fictional first punk band” crystallized.

“I started developing the characters in Diamond Mine for fun,” he says. “I plopped them into a scene in ‘Come Again’ and I had so much fun with those 10 pages I was like, this can’t be the end.”

He realized that his reflections on his old band would best work as fiction, and in 2019 set out to tell the fantastical story of Diamond Mine and Diana’s “bootleg magic.”

The central theme of “Fall Through” is how unique and spontaneous each performance is, a brief communion of noise and catharsis between a small group of people with shared interests. It’s something Powell traces back to his Soophie days.

“We had constructed this liberated space whenever we would play, and the point was that this is special because this is only happening with these people in this room at this time. It’s the kind of thing that can only happen once.”

“Fall Through” is set in Wormwood, a fictional standin for North Little Rock that Powell has returned to often in his fiction.

“It first established itself in ‘Swallow Me Whole,’” he says. “Each of my solo books since then have taken place in the Wormwood world. A lot of that is continuing my relationship with my hometown. My parents and my brother are all back in North Little Rock. I get to spend so little real time there; getting to play and create in Wormwood is my way to continue to build and grow a personal and creative relationship with the Little Rock area.”