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Friday, October 31, 2014

MIXTAPE Vol. #1 by BRAD ABRAHAM



Author's Creative Brand:
"Mixtape"
Genre:  Comic Book / Young Adult Existentialism
Length:  issues #1-5, 22 pages each; 110 pages in total
Ardden Entertainment

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1. World's Immersion:

Garrison Creek is the small town where our characters have grown up together.  In this microcosm of the world, friendships have remained close and familiar through the formative years until now...teens about to forge outward by the end of the summer and high school graduation, entering young adulthood.  School hallways of commiseration, house parties of socialization, and the cars some of them are now driving, extend out from the insular bedrooms lined with band posters, and beyond the head-phones of personalized soundtracks.  One of their group has burst the bubble, traveling beyond the Creek.  At this key juncture she has just returned from Europe.

The chosen music in each character's own headspace, defines their moods, following them through the developments in their lives.  This is an early 1990's period piece and writer Brad Abraham has designed stories of expanding YA awareness through the importance of what each young mind was listening to in that time; music as emotional guideposts/gateways of expressing just how big all their personal worlds were becoming...beyond what they knew to be safe.

2.  Characters/Icons:

JIM ABBOTT, 17, "personal soundtrack: Pixies, Sonic Youth, Joy Division." He's absorbed into his music which defines his state of mind.  Jim is obsessed with the untouchable girl, Siobhan, the girl who got away to Europe.  The end of summer party, last one of high school, is where Jim's dream girl unexpectedly returns.  There is a personal connection...and maybe a slim chance...but another girl whom he remembered to be "fat" shows up at his car for a ride to the party, having also, unexpectedly changed.  Choices...

SIOBHAN KING, the girl who traveled out, and came back with a larger awareness of the world. She returns to her hometown, loving how the place and people haven't changed, only to discover a small-town pettiness and judgment that strikes her personally and painfully.  Siobhan's sister, KERRIN, was the parents' golden sister of this golden girl, who ends up rebelling against all expectations...going alternative...and that affects her younger sister's viewpoint about it all.

LORELEI CROSS, "personal soundtrack:  The Smiths, The Cure, Kate Bush."  She is entering a dream internship at radio station WRVR 103, somewhat in line with her aspiration to work in graphic design for the music industry.  She is tossed into a dusty archives room to organize a collection of discarded old vinyl records.  What begins as an  awful bottom-feeder job turns out to be an unintentional bootlegger's treasure-trove of Alt-Rock discovery.

TERRY ALLISON, influenced by "a bunch of bands you'll hear about in about a year," loves his music and maybe uses his superior music tastes as a social shield from being rejected on other fronts.  He doesn't take life very seriously, and is quick to shoot down those who do...with tough truths he observes through his aloofness.  Terry, for his all-knowing stances, finds excuses for the short-comings of his own life.

NOEL, a 17 year old who thinks with a more like an old-soul 40 year old, is painfully aware of change and the passage of time with his friends.  His parents install a car phone, one of those new 'hi-tech' gadgets, just so they can keep tabs on their son, but their son is already hurtling away from their reach.  A young guy who has come from a very affluent background, he yet lacks the confidence to venture out from his comfort zone without his lifelong friends.

TODD GORHAM:  He was never one of them, and never a part of their experiences together...or so it seems at first consideration.  Todd is introduced later on, as a catalyst for self-examination through one unifying event.  Once discovered to connect intimately with each of them, Todd becomes of key importance to this group of friends growing inevitably into their separate adult lives.

3.  Structural Appointments:

This series of five issues, each part focusing on a specific character, in their equal paged format of comic books, are served with 'equal screen-time' in the ensemble.  As a volume collected together, the comic book series weighs in at 110 pages, which interestingly, is the correct length if adapted, for a screenplay.  However, this is just a relative thought.  My understanding is that the writer intends on generating another series continuation, so the fullness of the story would likely have much additional material, if adapted for the screen or television.

4.  "Visuality":

What I enjoyed about the artwork in this series from Marco Gervasio & Jok, firstly, is the black & white treatment, which gives us rich pencil-work or fill-in-the-blank white areas, and those deep shadings for old pop-culture items to hide out around characters in the panels.

The covers are where the color bursts out, and like great posters, capture an essence of the spirit found here.  Mixtape Issue #1 is iconic, like looking at a 90's Breakfast Club, with main characters in their group shot before alternative rock posters and a classic boom-box; issue #2 mixes mediums with impressionistic pencil-work and photographs of pencil and retro tape; issue #3 is my favorite with a great shot of the side-view mirror and savoring the passage of lovely possibilities;  issue #4 envisions a gorgeous isolation or alienation in the high school halls as witnessed by the characters; issue #5 sits in the stands of deep-freeze, classically plunging the ensemble into a shared 'big chill' of their own generation growing up, realizing things will never, ever be the same again.

5.  Thematic/Mythic Appeal:

The myths for us at that time, could be found in the alternative music, films, and books we consumed...our heroes of non-conformism.  In the 1990's, expression grew more skeptical, more angry, more rebellious, and openly being different became a youth culture vibe that broke the material mode of the 1980's.  This series focuses on beginnings for these teens questioning themselves, their place in the world, looking to new cultural icons for a mood to match their feelings.

As in all forms of 'graduation,' the characters are grappling with changes coming.  They all face the same uncertainty as to what their lives will mean or look like, after the ceremony, after the last summer together, the last party, after all they have known...entering the gateway...

6.  Story-Flow:

Each issue carries an effortless weight in encapsulating individual facets of the total MIXTAPE experience.  Each story part reads as a shared one...the music was theirs, not borrowed from their parents...and their bubble of innocence, is shown to burst at the same benchmark: graduation.

The music written into the issues was that same soundtrack the author himself listened to, coming up through film school and those times.  The nostalgia permeates the telling.  This comic book turns out to be a perfect episodic format choice, through a medium that has always held heart with the young or perpetually imaginative.

7.  Innovation/Genre-Blend:

There are no spandex-clad superheroes, here.  Instead, we get a coming-of-age story in a decade that only now, is beginning to be re-examined creatively.  This is a human-size story more in line with what John Hughes might have mined through film story, in his own time.  Here is an ode to the music Brad Abraham was and is inspired by, in his creative writing art.

Now I'll analyze a little deeper for the more intellectual blend I detected: teen existentialism.  Brad Abraham's characters are not simply digging for acceptance, or trying desperately to get laid.  The more superficial aspects of teen examination, although valid, do not take spot-light in this series.  Instead, there is a group awareness for more complex frustrations:  the invisible passage of time, disappearance of familiarity, change affecting steadfast relationships, being left behind, becoming thrust out into uncertainty, dear friends turning out to be so different than remembered...and not understanding 'the why' and 'what it is all about.'

MIXTAPE is a comic book for the more discerning lover of this medium, who cares for a higher quality in Story.  This is a visual reading tended with experience and love for a time of departure in North American alternative music and pop culture.

8.  Author's Voice/Language:

BRAD ABRAHAM writes his way out of an introvert's bubble, and his MIXTAPE characters emerge from their own bubbles with a similar curious headspace.   Other colors include appreciation for well-placed snark, laced with poignant analysis of innocence dwindling.  Language is jabbing or philosophizing, alternating between Young Adult and New Adult sensibilities, right where his characters are...at their own precipices.

9.  The After Resonance:

I love that Brad Abraham went in a different direction in the comic book medium.  I have been reading and collecting comic books all my life, and have noted the divergent direction of alternative comic book writing...as being rare and only taking off again, in the '90's.  Not since the 1960's, has there been such a period of rebellious difference in the medium.  Interestingly, this last great alternative wave in comic book writing is the time period that the writer has chosen to bring to life.

What is significant about Abraham's choice, is a writer actually writing about his own time, and again, 'a spirit' that I perceive as being 'maverick' and 'individualist.'  In the '90's, artists raged against the cage, and stepping out as weird, not hiding it, became the norm.  This was also my time, and I appreciate reading material that doesn't dodge what we came from: the internet was only coming up, it wasn't so instantaneous to reach someone who, likely, didn't have a pager or cell phone, and keeping in touch with people was more direct than an online social network that wouldn't appear for years to come.  The analog experience holding on to its last glorious gasps before entrance of the digital world.

MIXTAPE is a comic book series to savor, nostalgic for a truly great decade of youthful discovery.  Writer Brad Abraham has created his own spirited take for the time-capsule that was the 1990's, and reads as coming-of-age for a TV generation, breaking molds with its own wistful soundtrack.

To discover MIXTAPE issues #1-5 at your own fingertips, download them here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/mixtape-the-comic-1/id721199162?mt=11

OR visit your local comic book store and request the physical copies to be ordered in...I did!

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