Have you ever sat at your desk in a little cubicle of misery, simply pondering how much your life sucked? How day in, day out, your mundane little chores all ultimately amounted to nothing, and was simply another step to getting material possessions you don’t use to impress people you don’t care about? Me too! And as such, Matt Kindt’s new original graphic novel from Vertigo, Revolver, is right up my (our) alley.
Revolver is many things, on many different levels. Think of it as American Splendor meets the apocalypse with a small dash of Groundhog Day. It’s a humanistic tale of the mundane drudgery of life, a science fiction yarn about parallel realities, a story of humanity’s will to survive, and a satire of our material world. It sounds confusing and perhaps a bit overzealous, but Kindt grounds the story on such a basic level of humanity that it becomes a satisfying and surprisingly fast read.
Sam is an average Joe with a job he detests, a boss that hates him, and a girlfriend that does better than him. When he awakens one morning to a world rife with chaos, terrorism, nuclear attacks and plague outbreaks, he finds himself as a key player in the future of humanity. However, when he wakes the following day, he finds himself back in his dead end life. Revolver then delves into an exploration of Sam’s very basic need to contribute, but when the apocalyptic world you may be hallucinating is the only semblance of importance you have, how do you cope with going back to the life of an everyday shmuck?
The two different worlds are such polar opposites and relatively extreme examples of both potential walks of life, but as such Kindt succeeds in making his point without ever really shoving it down your throat. At its core, Revolver is about the duality and dissatisfaction within human nature, presented with a sci-fi twist. Remarkably, Kindt avoids the heavy handedness that often comes with a book that deals in terrorism or societal breakdowns. These things happen, but all the “big” moments are often relegated to a news feed at the bottom of every page, unless the events in question directly affect our main cast.
Speaking of the news feed, not only does each line cleverly tie into the page number, but it also serves as a key component to portraying the drastic changes in worlds. For example, one line could be about the annihilation of Seattle while the next could be about box office numbers. It’s a simple tactic that helps emphasize Kindt’s point about the triviality of living for possessions.
Kindt’s cartooning is super simple, using a very muted color palette of gray tones, blues and browns. He quite obviously comes from the world of independent comics, and anyone that digs the style of Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth or The Nobody will enjoy Kindt’s work in Revolver. He also uses a rather subtle method in color to distinguish between the worlds, with the “normal” world having a distinctly blue overtone while the apocalyptic world gets a more ominous coating of brown that gives it the dust-covered feel a world on the brink would have.
Revolver is not the most inwardly effective graphic novel you’ll read this year, but you’ll certainly come away from the book with questions about the life you are leading. Is owning that ottoman your feet are resting really the epitome of your hard-working existence? After finishing Revolver, you might want to just reassess your priorities.
