Sounds of Your Name

By Nate Powell and Alex Brown

Book Overview

Nate Powell ( March, Swallow Me Whole, Soophie Nun Squad, Any Empire ) recently won the Eisner for "best original graphic novel" and was the first graphic novel nominated for the LA Times book award since Art Spiegelman's Maus His intricate black and white art focuses on the terrors and pleasures of growing up. Poignantly plumbing the existential angst of youth, he invokes great coming-of-age novels with only a few dozen words. This book collects his self published zines and comics dating back to 1992, his first two graphic novels ( Tiny Giants and It Disappears ), and new work. These stories build vignette by vignette into a rich tableau of lofty dreams and Deep South disappointment, car crashes and love letters, first kisses and four-tracks. Powell's work is a reminder of the persistence of wonder against all odds. Folks who pick this book up can request a (limited to 200) signed and numbered print for the story Autopilot.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1934620793
• ISBN13: 9781934620793
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.2" x 10.2"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 10 and higher

Customer Reviews

Lyrical and enigmatic

Nate Powell creates some of the most incredible comics I've ever encountered. The visual style shifts almost as quickly as the teenaged characters' moods, but never becomes random or incoherent. Some lines flow like Jules Feiffer's scrawl, others jolt down the page in angular tracks that remind me of Sam Keith. Some pages feel light and breezy; other times, broad, dense blacks make even night air feel as dense as a tombstone. A comic really stands on its writing, though, no matter how good the art is. Powell presents some of the finest comic writing around. The scripts bring to life the trials and occasional small triumphs of life as a teen or an adult just starting out. That time of life often rides on emotion rather than reason. He renders that whirl and confusion accurately, something that linear plotting and familiar visual angles just can't do. If graphic novels correspond to literary prose, then Powell's work comes closer to poetry in many ways. Written reviews have no way to capture the look of this book, and its feel simlpy has to be experienced first-hand. Powell became one of my favorite comic artists the moment I first saw his work. This volume cements his reputation as one of the finest creators working today. -- wiredweird PS: This volume includes "It Disappears," which has been published as separately.

An avant-garde collection especially recommended for anyone interested in taking the pulse of the un

Sounds of your Name is a graphic novel anthology of black-and-white zine and comic stories by punk band player Nate Powell. Featuring dark, gritty artwork, dialogue that turns on a dime from casual to deadly serious, and sequences that are likewise drift from day-in-the-life to tense to shockingly explosive, the stories in Sounds of Your Name captivate with underground fervor. From the hard life of an alley cat who longs for the comforts of domesticity, to the simultaneously grim and spiritual insights of a war veteran, to the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, Sounds of Your Name is undeniably a "thinking man's comic" from cover to cover. An avant-garde collection especially recommended for anyone interested in taking the pulse of the underground comix scene.