Breathers
How’s this for a setup: Imagine a world where the air is poisonous and everyone has to wear a special mask in order to breathe while they’re outdoors. It’s all due to some vaguely explained accident decades ago and nobody’s been able to find a cure for it yet. In the meantime, people have adjusted to this new normal even as they grumble about it. Well, except for those who are starting to believe that it’s all a hoax perpetrated by the powers-that-be for reasons unknown. Except they’re not going to take it anymore! They’re finally going to Breathe Free at last!
If you read the above and thought, “BOY HOWDY. THE CREATOR OF THIS SERIES SURE IS WRITING ABOUT A RECENT/STILL-ONGOING WORLD EVENT.” Then you wouldn’t be wrong. It doesn’t take long for anyone who starts reading “Breathers” by Justin Madson to get the idea that he’s trying to write the first great post-COVID about how people struggled with the pandemic and all the changes it forced on everyone. Which makes the parts where the characters start doubting the existence of the plague and engaging in conspiracy theory thinking very uncomfortable to read. Is this post-COVID comic just one big saga about anti-masking?
The answer is thankfully, “No,” for reasons that are relevant both to the story itself and the nature of its publication. The latter is especially relevant as Madson notes in his afterword that he originally didn’t begin conceptualizing the story until 2006. When did he finish serializing this? In 2011. Which makes this series a remarkable case of life imitating art. “Patlabor 2” says “Hi” by the way.
Does that make this series more interesting as a result? Well, it did have me trying to guess Madson’s, and by extension Dark Horse’s, beliefs about the pandemic while reading it. That did help a little as the series itself is something of a meandering, extremely chill character study which features a large cast who cross paths with each other over the course of its length. Imagine a much less violent “Pulp Fiction” or a not-as-propulsive version of “Magnolia” where everyone is wearing masks and you’ve got an idea about what this series is like.
There’s the woman in a tough financial spot forced to do a job she doesn’t want to help pay her daughter’s medical bill. The detective who’s ruthless in busting criminals, yet capable of acts worse than those he arrests. We’ve also got a mask salesman who lives for his job as he tries to forget a tragic loss in his past. Then there’s the guy whose friend helps set him up with a barista who’s constantly masked and who also has a sister that is coping with the plague in her own unique way.
Madson lets these characters’ stories unfold without a particular sense of urgency or direction. There is a moment early on which looks like it’s going to drive the action, but it also fades into the background for a while as the character sorts out their issues and other threads are followed. It’s not great drama, early on, that’s for sure. Getting through the early chapters requires a willingness on the reader’s part to see where all this is going to go.
While I wouldn’t put it up there with the movies I mentioned earlier, or the great character-driven work of something like “Box Office Poison, things eventually do pick up for “Breathers.” The characters become more interesting the more you learn about them. Their paths cross in unexpected ways. The various storylines eventually all resolve in satisfying fashion as just about everyone gets what they deserve if not what they want. All this ultimately made me glad that I decided to pick this series up despite not hearing anything about it before seeing it in Dark Horse’s monthly solicitations.
Well, the price for this collection certainly helped as well. “Breathers” is a paperback collection over 400 pages in length all for $30, which is a good deal whether or not you can find it discounted for sale online. Consider that the trend for comics publishers has been towards $5 single issues, $25 hardcover collections for just over a hundred pages of comics, and $30 for the first softcover collection of a hyped superhero comic (still hoping that price point for vol. 1 of “Immortal Thor” is a mistake…). The cover price for “Breathers” will get you a lot of comics for your money. I wouldn’t say that it’s for everyone, but that makes it all the more surprising that it didn’t cost more.
That its subject matter became more relevant in the years after its publication is just the good fortune of this series. Even if COVID hadn’t come along, “Breathers” would still have been an interesting read just for the level of storytelling craft on display. It’s just that now you can read it and see how much Madson got right in his vision of a plague-stricken society. Or just read and enjoy its meandering narrative as its characters try to navigate their particular existence on their own terms. The price is right, after all.