Local [Hardcover]

Big, beautiful and hefty. These things come to mind when you're actually holding this puppy and flipping through the pages. The black and white art really pops out and, while reading it, you always get a sense that this could be the best thirty bucks you've spent on a graphic novel. Just an amazing collection of stories.

Megan, our main character in Local, goes through a personal life journey. She is the everyman in a world full of everymen, and I think that's the main appeal of this book. We see abit of ourselves in Megan and in the other characters. We can identify with her struggles, her struggles with her own identity, with her purpose, with her life. It's what everyone of us goes through on a daily basis, and that reason is why we take to Megan's world very quickly.

Patterned after Demo but not quite. These are single issue self-contained stories dealing with different periods in Megan's life (from young adult to adult). Many of them feature Megan as the main focus, while the rest are more about the peripheral characters rather than Megan herself. But one thing's for sure, she appears in everyone of them, and she, I think, is the touchbase on which we fall back on most of the time, thus making her feel real and human.

And the pacing's very suited to that kind of storytelling. Here, like Demo, you'll feel like you're getting to know the characters at a leisurely pace. Every detail in Ryan's art gives you just a little bit more insight into the characters and at the end of it you always come away feeling like you know them like you would real people. Everyone of these characters feel very three dimensional, and I think this is a testament to the level of maturity in both Brian and Ryan. Brian knows how people tick, and Ryan does a good job depicting that here. The result is just a non-stop ride through urban life.

If you're looking to get into the creative process they went through making this book, there are essays, written by both Brian and Ryan, in here which give you exactly that.

All in all, if you're considering getting this book, consider no more, just get it. At the current price these babies are worth every penny. I can hardly find a book as complete a package as this one.

If you like short stories about urban youths this one's for you.
Coming of age - like to read about that? Get this.
This great book offers the entire 12 part series previously published by Oni Press as single books.
Local is the story of Megan McKeenan on her way to find herself.
She meets ordinary people on the way, and lesser ones too. She works here and there, falls in and out of love and lives through all the different stages of happiness and deception in much the same way that we all do.
Very much like in real life every encounter leaves a memory and shapes Megan's character.
As you follow the girl/ young woman on her journey through the different US towns and states you can't stop yourself from remembering your own past and what changed you along the way. Who and what made you into the person you have grown to be?
Although the stories are interconnected, once you finish reading the entire storyline it's just as rewarding to read them crisscross all over again.
The art perfectly fits the scene. Black and white, always moving, with thick lines yet sketchy. Well done Ryan Kelly!
Brian Wood's writing is top notch. Period.
The collection, a perfectly sewn bound HC, comes with tons of sketches, notes from both artists on the creative process and a color cover gallery.
You should also check out these other books: Brian Wood: Demo, DMZ ; Ryan Kelly: American Virgin, New York Four
A must!

Even if this book had kept to its original conceit of a travelogue throughout America, I would have loved it. I might not be gushing about it and wanting to recommend it to all of my friends but I would have been quite happy with it. The first few chapters stay pretty close to the Mission Statement. Every issue has another year passing and sees Megan in a different city. Brian Woods writes it and Ryan Kelly draws and they try to get the details right so residents of those cities can smile with the shout out and debate whether or not they got the character of the cities correct. And the second one takes place in Minneapolis, so I'm cool with it. I live in New York now where EVERYTHING is drawn and photographed for movies and television shows and books; but the novelty of seeing my home town in media still makes me happy. Hell, even that passing reference in the first issue of Buddy Does Seattle (The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from "Hate" Comics, Vol. I, 1990-94) made me happy. And if you are showing Purple Rain, I'm there - happily pointing out that that is NOT Lake Minnetonka. In the back, they talk about what went into the issue. They also talk about how Megan began as an everywoman character to represent most people in their 20s (Generation X put a label on a particular group of former 20-somethings but this is pretty universal) and she is rootless and confused like most people in their 20s.

Many have noted that she's like almost every other main character in Indy comics but that's the problem with the genre. People who write and draw Indy Comics are quite sure that they will have to work several awful jobs simply to pay the bills whilst their friends from high school become doctors and lawyers and rocket scientists. Even if they are successful at writing Indy Comics (ie. can pay the bills solely on Indy Comics) they are still going to relate better to and write more about the rootless wanderers than they are about the doctors and lawyers with families and mortgages. And the first couple of issues sees her as dangerously naive. In the first half, she dates a junkie, encourages a stalker, picks up a hitchhiker and hits on random strangers in a movie theater. But two things happen to mitigate these events. Chapter 3 relegates Megan to a walk-on part in the life of a band that's broken up and trying to get their lives back. Not only is this a great way of showcases the city (per the original conceit) but it also serves to occasionally give Megan a break from the traveling, so in later chapters where the focus isn't on her you can assume that she settled for at least a couple of years. Second, Megan does grow up through her experiences. There are points where she's annoying and places where she acts very stupid, but she's not just a jerk. She's a woman learning how to be an adult. In the roommate chapter, she is at her most obnoxious and even though most of the book is about how her roommate is obnoxious, the way she violates her roommate's privacy and spends most of the chapter talking crap about her roommate proves that she's no saint either. And, of course, it's Park Slope where you have to live with roommates. Her comeuppance at the end in the form of her roommate's friend who says that her roommate always says nice things about her is both appropriate and devastating.

There are more great storylines in this work. Much of it reminds me of Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991 after Scott McCloud eliminated the fantasy elements where the stories are both short and compelling. In comic book form, the writers are not allowed to go on indefinitely about the internal lives of their characters. They cannot go into tangents. They have 22 pages to write a compelling story with characters that are both real and interesting. They can be compared to haikus or noh plays in their surface simplicity that belies a complexity. Writers of these comics have to be subtle and brief and convey a lot with very little. The economy of the form can force some great art and nowhere is that more apparent than in books like this.

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