Today’s review from Rob Kirby is co-published with an editorial from former Publisher of SOLRAD and current Publisher of Fieldmouse Press, Alex Hoffman.

2020 was, by all reasonable measures, a top-tier terrible year. The COVID-19 pandemic opened up a Pandora’s Box of disease, death, rage, ignorance, political treachery, and cynicism. And the subsequent months-long, worldwide shutdown traumatized so many of us, compounded as it was by the murder of George Floyd and a horribly fraught presidential election. 

So much of it seems like a blur just four years later and editor Gabe Fowler now offers us a chance to revisit and reflect on that time. Even with all the darkness inherent in the subject matter, Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown is a surprisingly uplifting reading experience.

 As documented in the introductory notes (and in Hillary Chute’s excellent forward), Fowler’s inspiration for Rescue Party came in April 2020, just a few weeks after lockdown began. Initially mired in isolation and depression, he began dabbling with making art (specifically collages). Newly energized, he put out a call for comics submissions on his Desert Island bookstore’s Instagram page: “We all need something positive to think about and a lot of us have time on our hands, so let’s do a project together. Who wants to make something?” Fowler’s only formal requirement for collaborators was that their comics be formatted in a nine-panel grid. As for content, he simply stated: “Visualize a Utopian world after we survive this moment.” His prompt struck a chord and submissions poured in from all over the world. Fowler posted them on Instagram to an audience of thousands. 

Rescue Party collects about a hundred and fifty of these one-pagers into a unique time capsule of a (let’s hope) once-in-a-lifetime crisis. 

The anthology is divided into three sections: “Shipwrecked,” which focuses on the initial phase of lockdown; “Lost at Sea,” in which contributors delve deeper into feelings of isolation as the days drag into weeks and months, with some sharing the creative ways they channeled their angst into action. Finally, there’s “Rescued,” in which artists begin to look to the future, imagining better days and what those might look like. 

Guided by Fowler’s Utopian prompt, the content bends toward the idealistic, but offers a wide range of content, mood, and styles: naturalism, surrealism, melancholia, goofy humor, and everything in between, resulting in a collection percolating with restless energy and creative freak-flag flying. It’s as though Fowler’s call unleashed a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure spark, inciting vivid daydreams and flights of fancy burbling up amidst fear, anger, and stress. 

Some cartoonists focus on the day-to-day of lockdown. Brooklyn artist Cameron Schroeder highlights a recognizable lockdown activity—making things to fill the time—with a whimsical fantasy that ends in genuine emotion. Schroeder relates how they began crafting small clay objects with their roommates, baking them in the oven. They make enough little cars for “a small clay parking lot”. They then fashion a palm-sized subway car. “I can’t stop imagining shrinking down to fit inside,” they continue, “and riding the rails around my apartment.” The strip concludes movingly with Schroeder imagining that all his loved ones are waiting at the train’s last stop: “We lay in the grass together and it feels so good to touch again.” The sweet longing in this final panel is palpable and connects straight to the heart. 

Caroline McClain’s more sober-minded comic describes her and her partner’s quiet happiness at seeing a woman walk her two dogs past their house every day, the dogs becoming signals that this time of crisis would pass: “Twin stars rising in the morning, a promise kept (…) The certainty that life will go on.” This piece struck a chord for me. During the earliest, most disquieting days of lockdown, there was a runner who would do his daily warm-up stretches outside my front window, and, like McClain with the dogs, I found his regular routine comforting. 

Some artists engage in socio-political critique, mostly avoiding specific politicians and of-the-moment statistics. There is a satirical comic by Christopher Sperandino called “Li’l Oligarch” (p. 108) in which the titular character is cleverly drawn as Dennis the Menace, clearly based on Donald Trump (the poof of hair both Dennis and Trump sport up top is uncannily similar). But here the Trump proxy is reformed by the end and taught how to be an actual decent person (though he’s still a bit of a braggart). Talk about a fantasy! But it’s very clever and well-executed.  

The general political commentary tends to be more general, with a sort of mass consensus that there must be something better to come back to when the pandemic subsides. We all know that the pandemic cast a world of societal inequities in sharp relief (which the murder of George Floyd underlined with even more terrible clarity). Painful though it may have been, it was a valuable airing out of class and racial injustices.  Many artists dream of what they would like Change to be. Jesse Lambert asks, “What’s on the other side? What comes after?” (p6) Several artists address these questions in their own way. Mike Taylor bluntly depicts a jittery society teeming with conflict and chaos, before concluding, “There should be no going back to normal. Normal wasn’t working for us. We can do Better.” Nick Forker’s powerful utopian vision identifies capitalism as the enemy, dreaming of a society where there is “no rent” and “Property is not a thing anyone cares about.” (p14) In a particularly strikingly visualized piece, Barcelona artist Maria Pichel (p62) addresses the in-progress shutdown as inherently laden with a certain value. “We stopped going out just to consume,” she notes. “And it felt really good.” Like others, she laments a modern society cut off from the natural world. The final panel of her piece depicts a woman resting her hands on beach sand, learning to “touch again.” Her’s is a reminder that utopias don’t even have to be complicated. 

Some artists envision the future world wiped clean, like an etch-a-sketch, where humanity has simply started over. In Scott Carr’s (p16) pointed silent piece, people take a shuttle out of their domed city to “Discover Ancient America.” In the last panel, an archeological artifact is unearthed. Namely, a Coke bottle.  

Others, such as Dutch artist Tamar Sleven (p87), simply get silly. We see Sleven’s future world through the point of view of a woman who receives a message in an envelope from a tiny humanoid figure who lives on the leaf of a plant. The punchline (what the little character asks her) is genuinely chuckle-worthy. It’s delightful to read comics here drawn simply for laughs. 

In contrast, Hong Kong artist Kaitlin Chan (125) offers a lovely meditation on quotidian moments she looks forward to enjoying “when we’re allowed out again.” Among other things, she anticipates the pleasure when she can “Ogle the hot waiters who smoke outside” and vows to “pat every shop cat.” I found this strip beautifully resonant and atmospheric in its specificity. And Chan’s resolve to notice and appreciate currently unavailable little pleasures is its own kind of vision. 

Boasting a bonanza of terrific art and stories, Rescue Party overflows with passion and ingenuity. It is not just a document of the pandemic and its resultant trauma. Isolation breeds anomie, but this crew of artists reminds us that a longing for a better world and genuine human connection can help carry us through. The last thing to emerge from Pandora’s Box was hope.