Review: nod away, vol. 1 (2016)
nod away, vol. 1 by Joshua Cotter is an enigmatic and dense science fiction narrative. The story is difficult to condense into a brief review, a task hampered by the fact that this is the first of seven planned volumes. But here’s my brief attempted summary:
The story follows Melody McCabe, an expert in neurometrics, as she tries to fix an ethically compromised system known as the “innernet,” which is basically what it sounds like — the word seems to be a portmanteau of “internal internet,” and it’s a version of the web that connects people’s minds, rather than their digital devices. Such a thing is disturbing enough, but the comic quickly reveals that the innernet can only exist because of a morally questionable sacrifice, a twist that feels reminiscent of Ursula K Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.”
Despite its clear importance to the larger narrative, the innernet is seemingly pushed to the background for much of the story. The main action is psychological and takes place aboard a space station orbiting earth. Melody deals constantly with interpersonal problems, including overly forward co-workers and a spouse back in Chicago who is acting cold and distant. The comic advances largely through dialogue and subtle nuances of character expression — until a shocking, bloody turn about two-thirds of the way in.
But the innernet is more than just a plot device. It also serves as a kind of unifying structure for the comic. Cotter repeatedly includes sequences of tangled lines woven into intricate patterns, and these images often appear during turning points in the story. Sometimes, his transitions between panels will seem to transform or deconstruct characters into a messy net of threads, as if to emphasize the way that the comic weaves together their separate lives into a single whole. If I had to describe nod away’s story structure, I would talk about it as a kind of expanding web: As the comic unfolds, Cotter introduces new threads that take the story in new directions — including an entirely parallel narrative about a man wandering through a forbidding wasteland that never intersects with Melody’s story. The sheer scope of the overall story that nod away, vol. 1 gestures towards is both daunting and exhilarating.
Nothing is resolved by the end of the comic, but I went into the book knowing it was part of a much larger project, so that didn’t bother me. I don’t know how long it will take for Cotter to complete this sci-fi epic, but I plan to read the next volume as soon as I can find a copy.
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