It Disappears opens with snow falling: a few large white dots against of a background of black. The drawings close in on a house, well-banked by snow, a boy sitting on a couch. The boy begins a journey, his hand placed on a doorknob. After he leaves the house he begins to grow older. In the mountains one night the smoke from his fire announces “you’re here.” The smoke chases and catches him. A cartoon animal emerges from the gloom. “It’s really not safe here,” it says.
The boy travels with the animal. It has many things to say. “I have a friend who only reads periodicals He subscribes to 28 titles each month and hasn’t read a book in three years. He feels so overwhelmed by the allure of modernity, like he’ll miss what’s just happening right now. And now. And now.”
A rhapsody on memory and the anticipation of the future dissolving into the receding waters of the past, Powell’s graphic novel traces a journey of self-discovery and the uneasy realization that everything, eventually, disappears. However, underlying this realization is an almost cosmic hope that human interaction and history can transcend the corrosive effects of time.
QUICK VIEW
