6 months of 'FALL THROUGH'

Today marks six months since the release of my graphic novel, Fall Through— thanks to everyone interested in strange, emotional, subcultural magical stories like this. Thanks to everyone who likes stories that don’t spell everything out for you— for readers who enjoy deepening mysteries which are enriched and transformed by rereading.

These are the stories I like reading and watching, and naturally they’re what I’m drawn toward creating.

Here’s a roundup of some of the praise for Fall Through so far— and I’ll be touring & traveling a lot this fall, so please find me at one of these events and pick up a few books!

• “Devastating and gorgeous… Perhaps it’s a ghost story, perhaps it’s a fantasy story, but it’s refreshingly oblique. The images are heightened and stylized, the better to pass along that frisson so essential to punk art— rock or otherwise.” — New York Times Review of Books 

• “Fall Through is magical…Conjures the fever dream of years spent playing in punk basements, sleeping on floors, driving for hours to play for a few minutes, falling in love with music and people, turning into someone new along the way. Careening in a ride you created, but can barely control.” —Hrishikesh Hirway (Song Exploder podcast/ The One AM Radio)

• “Nate Powell has long been one our our finest cartoonists, and with Fall Through he delivers an emotional and visceral tour de force. You’ll feel more alive. Cathartic and powerful. An absolute masterpiece.” — Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth/ Black Hammer/ Essex County)

•  “Fall Through captures the feeling of ephemera. Like notes reverberating on air, Powell illustrates the intangible. He showcases the stunning power of art to make sense of a fleeting moment— the fleeting nature of love and loss, life and death.” — Irene Velentzas (comics editor & journalist)

• “Fall Through captures so many of the complex dynamics of collaboration that are foundational to the communities we grew up in and continue to inhabit. Nate Powell doesn’t skimp on the joy while remaining true to the contradictions and confusions.” —Guy Picciotto (Fugazi/ Rites of Spring)

• “Equal parts Love & Rockets, Almost Famous, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, this comic is a joy on every single page and a celebration of making things bigger than yourself, being a part of things bigger than yourself, and never losing yourself in all of that.” — Matthew Rosenberg (We Can Never Go Home/ What’s The Furthest Place From Here?)

• “The most accurate depiction of ‘the scene’ I’ve ever seen committed to the page. Highly recommended.” — Gwen Static, Razorcake 

• “As artist and storyteller, Powell is a master of colorful chord progressions that accompany the thump of a punk-rock heart.” — Michael Cavna, The Washington Post

 I’m currently 90 pages finished with Diana, the expansive character-study prequel to Fall Through— just 210 more pages to go. It should be out in 2026, and will complete a trilogy which opens with my currently sold-out 2018 graphic novel Come Again. If you see one in the wild, get it— I don’t have any updates on when/where it’ll be back with a new printing, but expect that to coincide with the release of Diana.

'FALL THROUGH" & 'LIES' in Top 5 new graphic novels at Washington Post

What an honor to have both of my new graphic novels, Fall Through and Lies My Teacher Told Me, in Michael Cavna’s roundup of five of the year’s best new graphic novels over at the Washington Post!

On Fall Through: “As artist and storyteller, Powell is a master of colorful chord progressions that accompany the thump of a punk-rock heart.”

On Lies My Teacher Told Me: “Powell’s visual depth beautifully adds visceral layers to Loewen’s efforts to undercut scholastic elisions.”

Signed/sketched copies of all my books are available directly from me here. Thanks!

MARCH added to Jersey City school curriculum!

In New Jersey news: what an honor to have March included in Kamala Khan’s hometown curriculum (alongside Nikki Giovanni, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Spider-Verse books!) as proof of concept that young people are not afraid to learn accurate history and how to apply its lessons today.

We’ve been saying this for years now: memory laws, “discomfort” laws, and book-ban campaigns seek to exploit the emotions and weaknesses of many white parents who don’t want to answer their kids’ questions, or nurture their curiosity. (Here’s my Washington Post op-ed comic with Andrew Aydin from 2022 about all of this in the context of March and specific cookie-cutter book-ban legislative language.)

But young people want to learn and question— so let’s continue to help them grow. This is the 10-year anniversary of the release of March: Book One— let’s continue to honor the legacies of the civil rights movement, and the late, great freedom fighter John Lewis by keeping this history alive and available.

Fellow pro-democracy, antifascist white people: don’t sit this out.

10 years since finishing MARCH: BOOK ONE.

10 years ago this weekend, I had just finished drawing March: Book One and joined my collaborators John Lewis & Andrew Aydin on a pilgrimage to sites of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Alabama.

It’s increasingly hard to wrap my head around that weekend’s sincerity and sense of reckoning, in the knowledge that the last decade’s rise of mainstreamed fascism and white supremacy— including concrete work to dismantle the entirety of our society’s gains from the civil rights movement onward, as well as consolidated efforts to suppress the history and context of the civil rights movement itself. That includes coordinated intimidation campaigns and legislative attempts to ban and suppress our own work on March, including schools in John Lewis’s own congressional district. (I’ve written about all of this additionally at CNN, the Washington Post, and the Nib.)

Other specific moments, like then-Montgomery chief of police symbolically removing & giving his badge to John Lewis (specifically identifying the white supremacist police forces preceding him as “doing the work of evil”), and then being fired for it shortly afterward— a decade later, this kind of gesture is unthinkable as police have far beyond passed a point of no return.

I’m remembering that powerful weekend through the lens of still being fairly early in our work on the March trilogy, but I’m mostly struck with sadness and anger at a majority of white American adults’ refusal to question, learn, grow, and fight back against the rapidly-consolidating monster of fascism today. Fascism will come for them, too, and you, too— unless we stop it.

Our institutions absolutely will not save us. Only we will save us, strangers as neighbors. All power to the people— and especially all power to the young people.

"Banned Comics & Education" virtual panel July 15th!

I’m proud to participate in this upcoming “Banned Comics & Education” panel this Friday, July 15th at noon Eastern Time alongside the great Jerry Craft, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Tim Smyth! Please register for the panel here.

If you’re interested, I’ve recently made 3 short comics covering interrelated aspects of the mainstreamed fascist right’s very serious push to enact memory laws and limit access (in schools, libraries, AND private businesses) to histories and fiction featuring the perspectives and voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ people:

Part 1— “Shelf It” via The Nib

Part 2— “Divisive Concepts” op-ed w/ Andrew Aydin via Washington Post

Part 3— “Comics and Their Strengths” info-comic via Booklist

New op-ed collab w/ Andrew Aydin in the Washington Post

Andrew Aydin and I got the band back together, conjuring the voice, spirit, and concerns of our collaborator and friend John Lewis, in a Washington Post comics op-ed piece to continue highlighting the dangers of ongoing far-right legislative efforts to diminish and outlaw the inclusion of uncomfortable history (largely through the lens of Black and LGBTQ voices) in school curricula and libraries. Please do what you can where you live to speak up for the importance of including truthful first-person historical accounts in our communities!

This follows a related comic I did called “Shelf It” for The Nib in February, shedding light on the historical context for comics as targets of book bans and challenges— please read that piece as well. Thank you!

I reviewed Jason Reynolds' new book at the Washington Post!

It was both an honor and a welcome challenge to review Ain’t Burned All The Bright, written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jason Griffin, for the Washington Post! Check out the review here, and then definitely get a copy of their ambitious and moving book.

(I think this may also be my first professional writing with zero drawing involved!)

RUN named a "best of 2021" book by NYT & WaPo!

It’s an honor to find that Run has been selected by the New York Times as one of the 5 Best Young Adult Books of 2021, and by the Washington Post as one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2021! Congressman Lewis would be heartened and proud to find his work and personal account of history to resonate so deeply.