Review: Nathan Sorry Vols. One and Two by Rich Barrett / Steve K.

Review:

Nathan Sorry Vols. One and Two

by Rich Barrett

Steve K.

(Originally presented on the author’s blog, The Iceberg Lounge, 25 October 2013)

Nathan Sorry, Volumes One and Two (self-published, available from Comixology) by Rich Barrett

The Premise: Businessman Nathan Sorry has a lost evening in Arizona that causes him to miss his flight back to his office in New York the next morning. “The next morning” = September 11, 2001. “His office” = the World Trade Center.

Months later, Nathan is living in a small town with a briefcase containing millions of dollars and a fake ID, trying to puzzle out his next step.

The Lowdown: This series is available in several different formats. It originated as a webcomic, unbeknownst to me, as webcomics are just not my thing. It’s apparently been published in serialized “issues” as well, and more recently it’s been made available in print and digital (via Comixology Submit) as a series of “original” graphic novels. The first two are now available on Comixology and are very reasonably priced, each containing about sixty pages of material. I’ve no idea how far along the print versions are—I met Rich at HeroesCon in June and he had a stack of Vol. 2’s in print, but they only just recently showed up on Comixology. So, long story short: there may be more material out there than I have read, but the first two volumes are available on Comixology and are cheap.

The first volume was a blind purchase for me. I’d never heard of the series but the premise struck me as interesting, and the price was such that there was no disincentive to giving it a shot—and I was hooked almost immediately. This series is an elegantly crafted mediation on identity, the lure of disassociating oneself from previous bad acts, post-traumatic stress disorder and the response of many people’s psyches to a world-altering event. The art is presented in a limited color palette—limited, as in limited to black, white and something kind of similar to aqua. Barrett has a clean, clear style with lots of soft lines. It probably would be described by many as cartoony, but appropriate for the subject matter with which he is dealing.

Nathan, it seems, was not a particularly good person pre-9/11. Exactly how bad he was remains to be seen—we do see flashbacks to his old life, but there are several notable mysteries that have not been addressed, at least not yet. He’s one of these guys who inevitably would become a fall guy for some other lousy person with a higher rank’s misdeeds, and he doesn’t necessarily have a ton of agency over his life. Through the aforementioned set of circumstances, he suddenly ends up with what amounts to a blank ticket to re-write his life, and he takes it almost without thinking. Months later he is (probably) presumed dead (well, maybe) (but he’s not really sure) (parenthetical), and is hiding out in Stallings, North Carolina.

(An aside here. I live about five minutes from Stallings. My in-laws live in Indian Trail, which is right on the opposite side of Stallings and about ten minutes away from me. Stallings is a small place, but it is pretty closely adjacent to Charlotte, North Carolina, which is not an especially small place. Here it’s presented as a one-stoplight town in the middle of nowhere, which isn’t really accurate and, at first, was off-putting to me. Then I turned to the credits and realized Barrett also lives in the area, and undoubtedly knows what Stallings and Indian Trail are like. I still maintain he took a bit of dramatic license with the area, but there’s a reason dramatic license exists, I guess. Somehow knowing he’s from here made it more okay—I think it would annoy me more if someone just threw a dart at a map.)

Aside over, I found this to be a gripping character study with an interesting meta-plot. There’s a larger story being told, but most of the focus is on Nathan, who is utterly paralyzed by the direction his life has taken, and who possibly has had a psychotic break somewhere along the way. He disassociates himself from his previous identity while simultaneously finding ways to re-incorporate it into his world. Peter Milligan did a story kind of like this in his lamented Human Target series, and it was poignant there too, but that one had the limitation of having to be a story about the Human Target. Here Barrett can go in any direction he chooses—much like Nathan—and that infinite possibility is freeing and paralyzing all at once.

The Verdict: Nathan Sorry deftly captures the feeling of being a spectator in one’s own life—the ennui that comes from not being able to move forward and no longer having the option of revisiting the past. It speaks to the vagaries of clinical depression and the difficulty of carving out one’s identity, even when a do-over is granted. It is well worth checking out, in my opinion, and I heartily recommend it—especially the crazy-cheap digital version. Rich Barrett is a talent to watch, and before it is said and done, this may be an epic of note.