“The fact that we know things will end actually presents each of us with an amazing choice: What will you do with the limited time you get on this spinning rock?”
To kick off Death Month, Mike and Alex are looking into the W. Maxwell Prince-penned anthology comic Swan Songs (issues #1-6) from Image Comics. In each issue of the series, Prince collaborates with a different artist to explore the end of something- the world (Martin Simmonds), a marriage (Casper Wijngarrd), the end of the world (Filipe Andrade), a sentence (Caitlin Yarsky), anhedonia (Alex Eckman-Lawn), and the sidewalk (Martin Morazzo). The guys start by sharing their initial thoughts on the book and each giving a quick personal ranking of the stories, then they dive right into the issues, in order, breaking down the specific variation of the theme presented in that issue, the storytelling choices made to convey that theme, and the work of each contributing artist. They guys try and work through what does and doesn’t work for them in each story and in the end, reassess their initial rankings. Each issue offers a fascinating perspective on the death, or ending, of a thing, and while it’s unlikely that every story will resonate with every reader, we feel pretty confident that at least one of them will hit you in a way that’ll make you stop and think a little longer.
Next week we move back to a more traditional narrative comic for our discussion, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (issues #1-5) by Ram V and Filipe Andrade from Boom Studios, but the specter of Death still looms. So go find The Many Deaths of Laila Starr wherever you get your comics and join us back her next week for another great discussion!