By April 1, 2020, it was abundantly clear that New York City was not doing well: Schools, bars, restaurants, and other businesses deemed “non-essential” had ceased operations weeks earlier as COVID-19 deaths steadily rose. Gabe Fowler, sole owner of Desert Island, the legendary comic book store in Williamsburg, had closed his doors and fled the city (in his case, to a cabin in Connecticut). Feeling isolated and scared—the seemingly predominant emotional state at the time—Fowler launched a call to action via Desert Island’s Instagram account: “We all need something positive to think about, and many of us have time,” the post read. “Who wants to do something?”
Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of the Covid Lockdown (2024) is the result of Fowler’s invitation. Recently published by Pantheon Books, it presents a selection from the over 250 responses Fowler received from more than 50 countries. It also includes warm, personal, yet perceptive essays by himself and Hillary Chute, a literary scholar whose extensive writings on the genre (including Graphic contenther column in New York Times book review Section) have helped to define and defend this form within and outside of academia.
Fowler has imposed few restrictions on his potential contributors: submissions must not exceed the standard format of 9 panels and the outlook should be, if not positive, then at least future-oriented. Rescue team It is about a shared vision of what a future after COVID-19 could bring.
As a book, and even more so as a visually distinctive one, Rescue team feels like both a celebration and a commemoration: We did it. The “we” here is both self-chosen – Fowler and Desert Island are part of a close-knit, if far-reaching, creative community – and somehow universal, as the resulting works are immensely expansive in nature, both formally and culturally. Individually, the comics are gloriously dreamy testaments to that frightening, thrilling moment – and to hope itself. Their message is therefore timeless – more relevant than ever.
Whether scrolling through social media or chatting with colleagues and loved ones in what feels like an endless Zoom meeting, many if not most of us have experienced the pandemic through digital interfaces developed, owned and operated by a handful of large tech companies. If one object best embodies the acute sense of individual alienation felt by so many in 2020, it’s the iPhone; if there’s one digital platform that allows us to visually document and self-publish our own pandemic experiences, it’s Instagram. On Desert Island, Fowler runs a fairly tight-knit, if entirely independent, social media operation. Rescue team is, in a sense, “born digital,” as its 9-panel format fits perfectly into Instagram’s grid, creating a series of narrative arcs in real time for the shop’s approximately 145,000 followers.
Ultimately, Rescue team raises a number of questions, some of which keep cropping up, about and around the form. These provocations remain as existential in nature as the pandemic itself: Why does the grid – as well as the physical book – remain the preferred format for comic artists? What new, novel possibilities does today’s internet, with all its horrors, hold for comic artists in 2024? What experience shows is lost in translation when digital is translated into print – and vice versa? Has Rescue team does it even need to be turned into a book? The party, it seems, is not over yet.
Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of the Covid Lockdownedited by Gabe Fowler and published by Pantheon Books, is available online and in bookstores.
