Comics / Spotlight

Coming of Age at NBM

By Beth Davies-Stofka
June 4, 2010 - 16:22

Among its many notable publications, NBM has selectively published a handful of graphic novels from young auteurs, some of them first-time authors.  While the results can be uneven, the novels are often engrossing and sometimes quite beautiful.  Two examples, Angel Skin and House of Clay, are reviewed here.  NBM's willingness to publish unknown or unproven voices is one of its most admirable qualities.

Angel Skin (2007) is by first-time writer Christian Westerlund and first-time artist Robert Nazeby Herzig.  The novel tells the story of Joshua Barker, a despairing young twenty-something who commits suicide.  The cause of his despair lies in the desperate sadness of his world, in which isolated people watch television alone in grim apartment buildings that rise above streets populated in pain.  Joshua's innocence, and the innocence of his meaningless society, was long ago lost, poignantly symbolized by wounded and abandoned teddy bears.

What Joshua encounters in the afterlife is not at all what he expected, and his efforts to penetrate the meaning of what he finds, and to finally move on, comprise the bulk of this 80-page story.  The heart of the problem is an absent God, and everyone is looking for this elusive character.  Joshua is recruited to join the search, and what he learns leads him into new perspectives on the world and life.



Like many coming-of-age stories, Angel Skin includes an epiphany that helps the protagonist shake off the past and move ahead.  But Joshua's epiphany, while liberating for him, feels poorly conceived, if not actually trite.  Angel Skin ultimately offers a useless answer to a penetrating question.  But the question is one that needs to be asked, and Angel Skin does that without flinching.  How can we live in a world so lost, and find meaning in such relentless suffering?  The soft colors and painterly style of this captivating story combine to summon powerful feels of loss and yearning in a world where angels commit suicide and the very air seems to weep.



House of Clay (2007) is NBM's second publication from a genuinely unique and breathtaking young artist, Naomi Nowak (Unholy Kinship, 2006).  Nowak is an incredible talent.  She possesses a singular artistic vision and the art of her novels rewards repeated reading.

House of Clay tells the story of Josephine, a young woman whose family, in depressed economic circumstances, arranges for her to relocate alone to a seaside town.  There she will live in factory housing and sew piecework all day.  Her parents' plan is for Josephine to earn enough money to go to nursing school.  But Josephine doesn't want to go to nursing school.  She faints at the sight of blood.



After arriving at her factory job and flophouse room, Josephine makes two friends who will change her life forever.  One of these is an old psychic card reader whose own life story feels eerily similar to Josephine's.  Through the old woman's story, Josephine learns to free herself and take her first tentative step into the unknown with confidence and hope.  This beautiful book ends in a breathtaking surge of freedom that echoes with great clarity in the lives of women everywhere.



One of Nowak's many remarkable strengths is her ability to tell a story with pictures.  While it is not possible to grasp the full meaning of House of Clay without reading the words, it is the imagery that carries the story.  Nowak's original style, part manga, part bande dessinée, yet entirely unique and meltingly beautiful, allows her to communicate mood, character development, major and minor plot elements, foreshadowing, dream sequences, hopes, fears, and disappointments through page design and visual cues.

Nowak's liberal use of pastel colors, flowers, lace, birds, and horses signal a concern to write for young women, aged 16 to 24, whose graphical reading skills have been honed on manga and are now ready for something a little more sophisticated, and a little more adult.  Women in their late teens and early twenties are probably facing their own challenges to come of age, and will find much that is familiar in Josephine's story, and perhaps they will even find a message that is inspiring or comforting. 



House of Clay is a magically and deeply moving story of one young woman's liberation from depression, resignation, and family-imposed expectations.  It will be a friend to those struggling to be free, and a tender reminder for those who, like the old psychic card reader, still remember that struggle well.

Josephine and Joshua, Nowak and Westerlund & Herzig, all began their coming-of-age stories at NBM, and it is a credit to this publisher that it will take risks and make such emotionally resonant stories available.  These deserve a wide audience, and can currently be ordered directly from NBM's website, along with Nowak's latest, Graylight.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12