Local heroes

Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly talk to The Onion AV Club Blog about Local, their 12-part tour of North America:

AVC: Even though each issue of Local is a new story in a new town, there’s still a connecting element in the presence of Megan, who we meet at age 17 in the first issue.

BW: That’s the thing I did differently from Demo. Demo didn’t have any characters that ever appeared more than once. In Local, I wanted to maintain that single-issue story format, but take it a step further. I decided I’m going to have this character that appears, whether she’s a primary character or whether she’s literally walking by in the background, in every one. So by the time we get to Local #8, if #8 is the first Local you’re reading, it’s not going to matter that Megan has been in seven others previously. You’re still going to get a complete story, and you’re not going to feel like you’re missing anything. And it’s good because comic-book readers are kind of trained to have stories that go from issue to issue to issue, so having this recurring character is almost like a bonus prize for the people that read all the issues in order. They’re going to have this secondary storyline of this girl’s life, of Megan’s life, as she lives during the duration of these 12 stories.

I enjoyed the first two issues of Local quite a bit, even though the whole notion of Wood and Kelly accurately depicting twelve different North American towns is rather wasted on me. Kelly's art is delightful, and young Megan is simultaneously appealing and terribly irritating.

The real test comes with the third issue, due out later this week: the first two stories both focussed on the character of Megan, but the third seems to be about a different group of characters so presumably she's going to have a walk-on part at best. Unless Wood and Kelly fumble the third issue really badly, I think I'm probably going to be sticking around for all twelve just to see how Megan matures (or not) over a dozen years or so.