All politics are Local...

Indeed. That old saw is, of course, right on the money. All politics…especially the intimate politics of the heart…familial, passionate, emotional…are achingly local. Local…written by Brian Wood and featuring evocative art by Ryan Kelly…explores these politics through a series of 12 self-contained stories about people coping the politics of the heart in different communities in the US and Canada. Each of these locations informs the stories with such unique vibes that they are, by design, characters in the stories being told in their own right.

Local, published by Oni Press, has a (kind of) focal character in the form of Megan McKeenan, who we first meet as a restless 17-year-old in Portland, Oregon as she is contemplating the consequences of trying to score drugs for her strung-out boyfriend using a forged prescription. By the 12^th (and final) issue of the series Megan will be 30 (and fairly well-traveled.)

It’s Megan’s journey but it’s not always her story.

In some issues, Megan is in the forefront…issue #2’s “Polaroid Boyfriend”, for example, she is in Minneapolis and engaging in an odd “relationship” by exchanging instant photos with a guy who breaks into her apartment every day while she’s away at work. Issue #4 finds Megan living out myriad identities (maybe searching for one of her own) while she works in a rundown movie theater in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In other issues, Megan is a peripheral character in the stories of other characters we meet along the way. She has a poignant cameo in the 3^rd issue, set in Richmond, Virginia, when she has a disillusioning encounter with a member of a defunct band that she was a fan of. The band…Theories and Defenses…and the reasons for its breakup is at the heart of that issue. In the 4^th issue, Megan is an unwilling bystander as an awful…horrifyingly mundane and inevitably violent and tragic…Cain and Abel tales plays out in a roadside café outside of Missoula, Montana.

Each issue tells a bittersweet…but obliquely hopeful…story of characters trying to make their way in a world that they don’t completely understand. Brian Wood has a gift for naturalistic dialogue and for fleshing out characters and drawing you inexorably, compellingly into their lives. Ryan Kelly’s artwork is a wonderful compliment to Wood’s writing beautifully with impeccable pacing in the storytelling and with wonderful detail and strong pencil and ink work that is, as I said early, incredibly evocative.

I’m sure that this series will be collected when it finishes its 12-issue run (10 issues are out as of this writing) but I think that Local is best savored one issue…one town…one compelling story at a time.