Last Exit Before Toll

(Oni, 2003)

Your car breaks down in a rural area. What do you do? You get out and curse. You make arrangements to get it fixed. Or you take a rental car or bus to your destination. Whatever the case, life resumes.

For Charles Pierce, though, life takes a pause. A long pause. Pierce is an unhappy guy who’s got a wife and kid. Maybe not in Baltimore, Jack, but he went out for a ride and he never went back. And when he hits the road for a multi-day seminar, he’s actually running away from home and his unfulfilling life. He just doesn’t know it yet.

So here’s this poor stiff, stuck in the middle of Elk’s Snout, USA, facing an expensive and lengthy repair job, unable to call home, and about to miss his seminar. Geez; it’s hard not to sympathize. The brilliance of this graphic novel, though, is the creators’ ability to put the readers inside Pierce’s way of thinking. After all, life has become nothing more than a series of unending annoyances and responsibilities, and all that awaits him at home is an uncaring wife and teen and a honey-do list of mundane tasks.

So why go back? Why leave the numbing, narcotic comfort of a simple town full of friendly strangers? Well, those of us not addicted to such pain-killing diversions know the obvious answer, but an emotionally clouded Pierce trying to remember it is what makes this story itself sad but so very addicting.

— Brett Weiss

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#1

November, 2003
Cover Price: $9.95
1 copy available for $7.68

Neal Shaffer, Christopher Mitten, Dawn Pietrusko