“A.D. After Death: Book Three” by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire

This final installment has been sitting on my desk waiting to be read for a while now, and I finally got around to it. It is fairly long and I knew it would take me at least an hour to read it, so I was waiting until I had enough time to savor it.

As with the first two issues, this one is very text intensive. The story is extremely complex, dealing with memory, guilt, and cycles of rebirth in a post-apocalyptic landscape. And while I am feeling that the post-apocalyptic genre is getting a little hackneyed, this story is really fresh and interesting.

Jonah, the protagonist, has been undergoing treatments that prolong life indefinitely. The problem is, his memory gets more distorted after each cycle (the term used for the treatment). At one point, he conjures a memory of when he first went for the treatment. He is explaining to a woman Inez about why he decided to take the treatment.

I look down at my hands, as if there’ll be an answer there. “I suppose because I’m just… tired of being afraid all the time. Tired of feeling like my life is an egg I’m balancing on a spoon day after day. Because I just live in fear, and this…” and here I look up at her, “this just isn’t who I want to be.”

This paragraph made me think about people today. It seems that many people live their lives in fear, which is fueled by 24-hour news and social media. Not long ago, I had to turn off all my news sources. It had become toxic and made me feel bad most of the time. And like Jonah, I do not want to live in fear.

One of the most powerful moments in this book was when Jonah remembers his mother’s death. He recalls the horror reflected in his dying mother’s eyes, and undergoes an epiphany where he fully grasps why she was so horror-struck at her moment of death, as her psyche was flooded with memories.

And the terror in her eyes… the horror at knowing the truth.

But that’s where I was most wrong. I saw that now. All this time I thought the horror was at remembering–at seeing herself as she was, rather than how she’d hoped to be at the end.

But I knew now that wasn’t the case at all; she hadn’t been horrified at remembering.

She’d been horrified that she forgot in the first place.

That she’d lost her place in her own story.

I knew this to be true, because I felt that way now, felt it with every cell in my body.

Having watched someone close to me suffer the mental deterioration associated with Alzheimer’s disease, this concept haunts me. The thought that it is possible to forget everything that is important to you, all the experiences that make us who we are, is infinitely terrifying to me.

Towards the end of the tale, Jonah is contemplating death, and he realizes that to fully understand the experience of death is beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend.

I thought of children, how impossible math is to a baby, or physics to a toddler, and I got the feeling that whatever death was, it was beyond my perception entirely.

Death is the ultimate mystery. In spite of all the mystical texts written about dying, regardless of all the near-death experiences, the truth is, we really do not know what happens. It will forever remain a mystery for us during our lifetimes.

One last word about this book: The ending is very ambiguous, but in a good way. The author carefully leaves the ending open for interpretation, and I love that. Too often writers feel the need to wrap up a story all nice and neat; but life is not really like that, and this story reflects the unknowns in life that we must interpret through our own experiences. I won’t say any more, because I am not one who likes spoilers.

Thanks for stopping by, and keep reading cool stuff.

“A.D. After Death: Book Two” by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire

This is the second book in the trilogy and it is just as deep and thought provoking as the first installment. Instead of summarizing the complex storyline, I figured I would share a couple passages that I found to be especially interesting.

“Old age is being aware of yourself, your fragility; it’s being scared, and humanity is in its old age now, is my belief. We are a frail old man, aware of our brittleness. All it’ll take is a push. A fall and a broken hip. A plague. A bomb. A cataclysm. And we will start to fall apart, fast, just like your mother did.”

At the mention of my mother, I feel my rage rising, but he stops me before I say anything.

“But it doesn’t have to be that way, Jonah,” he says. “Millions of years of history could change right here, on this porch. With you and me.”

I have been thinking a lot about the current state of humanity, and this passage I think really sums it up perfectly. Our civilization is old, and it feels like it is dying, and I know that makes people scared. This would explain all the insanity that is bubbling up in our world. But this passage also offers us hope. If we accept that our old world is finished, we can make the decision to begin the process of giving birth to the next phase of humanity. Humanity, like everything else, goes through cycles. We are near the end of the current cycle. So we now have a choice: pave the way for the new cycle, or allow ourselves to be extinguished along with the old.

This segues nicely into the other quote I wanted to share.

Imagine it, getting to live over and over, remembering what you choose to remember, shedding everything else; all the time in the world to overcome your fears, to learn all you want to learn, to love over and over, to cycle and cycle through until you’re truly satisfied and proud and … finished?

The cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth for an individual human is also representative of the same cycle on a macro-human level. Humanity goes through the same cycles as individual persons.

I genuinely feel that we are on the threshold of what future generations will consider one of the most interesting and pivotal points in the evolution of the human species. As difficult as it is to live in these times, I am excited to be here and participate in the changes that are under way.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and share in my musings. And remember: “Millions of years of history could change right here, on this porch. With you and me.”

“A.D. After Death: Book One” by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire

I am not sure whether I should categorize this as a serialized novel with heavy illustration, or as a graphic novel that is text intensive. Regardless, it is an impressive creation. The writing is brilliant and evocative, and the artwork sadly beautiful. I was truly moved after reading this first installment.

From what I gather so far, this is a story about a world after some virus or disease wipes out most of the life on the planet. The protagonist, Jonah Cooke, takes a job in a monitoring a station in a safe zone that listens for sounds of life. While this may sound like just another post-apocalyptic story, there is so much more depth to this than most works that fall into the genre.

Much of the text is comprised of memories from Jonah’s childhood where he relives the trauma of his mother’s death. As anyone who has lost a loved one can attest, this type of trauma runs deep and colors all aspects of your life. The metaphor of a frozen lake is used to describe the effects of the trauma; the sense that below the smooth surface of the ice is a cold, dark, watery place just waiting for a crack to appear and draw you down into the depths of utter despair.

Will it ever go away, you wonder? Or will it always be there, that shadow at the edge of things? But, even at a young age, you know the answer to that question, don’t you? You know it: of course not. Because it’s just there, so close to the surface.

It’s three at school, in the sickening way the cellophane peels off your sandwich.

Or there, in a shattered vein on your teacher’s calf.

Or there, in the scuffed nose of your action figure.

And there, in the weakening grip of the magnets on the board. In the erasures on your homework. In pens running out. In new sneakers that squeak so loudly, but go silent by end of day. In the small tear in the backseat of the bus, the wisp of stuffing you can’t push back in all the way. In the parade of blinking turn signals on the cars lined up at the red light by your house, on and off, on and off, ticking in some pattern that means nothing at all. And as the day ends, you feel it deepening, that shadow, becoming material. The blackness pooling below your nightlight. The deepest dark of that hallway that separates your room from your parents’.

All of it speaks to that same fucking water beneath the crust of things, moving and shifting and waiting, and you wonder, DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL LIKE THIS?!

Are you alone?

Are you just messed up? Were you born missing something, some protective layer, some membrane that’s supposed to shield you from the sight of it–that water, right here, inches below.

The feelings conveyed here are so powerful and visceral, and I personally relate to them. I have lost people close to me and remember that feeling of impending doom, of apprehensively anticipating the ground to give out below at any moment. It takes a long time to heal from this type of trauma, and some people never do, which is what makes this such an intense work of art.

Book Two is already available. I will be getting it and sharing my thoughts on it soon. Thanks for stopping by, and keep reading challenging stuff.