The “North and South” Trilogy comes to an end.
Created by Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartinoCover by Gurihiru
Written by Gene Luen Yang
Illustrated by Gurihiru
Lettered by Michael HeislerFire Lord Zuko and Earth King Kuei arrive in the Southern Water Tribe amid protests against Gilak’s imprisonment. While the leaders hold council to solidify Malina and Hakoda’s unification plans, Gilak breaks free and leads a powerful rebellion! In the face of these two opposing tribes, Katara will have to make peace with her nostalgia and distrust to save the home she loves from being permanently torn apart.
Mark Tweedale: I know “The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars” isn’t that far off (July), but there’s been no mention of another arc of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” yet, so I’m a little sad upon finishing this one. I suspect we won’t get another until “Turf Wars” wraps up.
Otherwise, I’m pretty happy though. In “North and South” I finally got the Katara arc I wanted. It’s not perfect―there were a few moments where I felt like things were too restrained and would’ve liked to have seen it pushed further, however those would have been pluses to an already good story. I specifically liked the way Gene Luen Yang chose to end this story, as it was the kind of moment I wanted in the show, but never got. I’ll talk about that later when we delve into spoilers though. How’d you find this final part, Paul?
Paul Lai: I have mixed feelings, Mark, and they’re strong feelings. On one hand, the wrap-up of this adventure was immensely satisfying in many respects, and without spoilers, suffice it to say that this last chapter was a pleasing story conclusion. Yang and Gurihiru have gotten the pacing, characterizations, and plot density of these 3-volume Avatar series mastered to a fine art. MacArthur Genius Yang has now written more pages of these characters than any other in his varied career. I feel like the franchise is fortunate to have this creative pair (trio, actually) developing this world for as long as they have.
On the other hand, there’s a significant social and political theme all throughout “North and South” about the idea of the Southern Water Tribe’s being colonized. And while I respect what the creators have done, I’m still a little unsettled by some of what’s left undone. Specifically, since the beginning of this story, the conflict has been positioned as one between the colonizing, industrializing, and ‘civilizing’ forces of Avatarverse ‘modernity’—which we already know kind of ‘wins out’ because of Korra’s world—and the adherence from some Southerners to a traditional way of life, represented in a fanatical way by Gilak and in a more romanticized way by Katara.
I do agree with you that Katara has a satisfying personal arc in this story (which we can touch on more later). And I do think in many ways, the story gives space to that ‘indigenous’ perspective in its larger conflict. Yet I can’t help but feel that some piece of that perspective got short shrift in the expediency of a story ending. I don’t entirely blame Yang and Gurihiru for this, since they’re stitching stories between a past and future they didn’t create, neither in the fictional Avatar world nor in ours. And even still, they deserve credit for broaching these politically fraught issues in a fictional space where they could’ve just evaded them, and also credit for presenting them with some complexity. Still, without spoiling too much, I feel like the chance to make a statement by leaving certain things less neatly resolved was yielded to an ending that tied up many knots, and maybe it was too neat for my liking.
Our opinions will probably be vague until we jump into spoilers, what with this being a third volume and all. But my overall reaction, despite the mixed feelings I mentioned, is still a very appreciative thumbs up. I’ve not been let down by a single chapter of these five Avatar series from Yang and Gurihiru, and this closing of “North and South” ranks up there in craft and appeal with any part of this really landmark run of comics.
Continued belowMark: Yeah, I think this one ranks just behind “The Search” in terms of my enjoyment. Like you, I have mixed feelings about some stuff, some big, some small.
There were a few moments that broke the intensity of the moment. When Aang witnesses an event that puts someone very important in danger, potentially even threatening a new war, his exclamation of ‘Monkeyfeathers!’ really damaged the tension. Yeah, it’s a phrase Aang says in the show, but usually when the situation is more of an ’Oh, darn, moment.
Another odd moment was Toph being blocked from a pursuit by three soldiers. In her words, there were ‘too many dunderheads in the way.’ And all I could think of was Toph at the end of Season 2 of the show, as Team Avatar (otherwise known as the Aang Gang) infiltrates the Earth King’s palace.
I guess this is more a staging problem than anything, but it hurt the tone of the scene, and it was a moment when Toph didn’t feel like Toph to me.
Paul: I hear you about these tonal oddities, and I might’ve felt the same way with previous volumes. But I gotta tell you, Mark: my reading experience was significantly changed this time because for the first time, I enjoyed ‘North and South’ chapter 3 by first reading it together with my six year-old daughter, who’s been catching up on the comics. So while I’m trying to do my best Toph voice and guessing what Gilak would sound like, I’m also saying those goofy Sokka interjections and awkward insult lines out loud… and they kind of worked for me!
My kid and I did turn to each other at the end of one dramatic bit of climatic element-bending heroics and say, ‘Well, why didn’t they do that in the first place?’ So yes, I did feel like there was some degree of prioritizing the narrative, mood, or character beats over the logical consistency of the story. Almost as if there’s some ratio in Yang’s head of how many pages he should go before inserting a moment that would cue the playful background music or the ‘doink’ sound effect from the show.
Mark: Oh, man, that’s awesome. I can’t imagine how much fun it’d be to introduce your daughter to this world and experience it anew through her eyes.
Honestly, I think one of the difficulties the comic faces is the tone, and that’s not because of the comic, it’s because of the audience and the way our expectations are wired. Pretty much everyone reading this comic would have watched the show, which gives us strong opinions about what an “Avatar” story is. But a comic is a different animal. Each installment of the comic is only seventy-two pages, and as big as that is when compared to your standard monthly floppy, you’d be struggling to adapt the content of a twenty minute episodes into this format without it feeling squashed.
What we perceive as the tone of Avatar: The Last Airbender TV show is an amalgamation of many episodes with a wide range of tones. We remember the overall tone of the humor in the show, but that style of humor can be radically different from episode to episode—some could even be relatively humorless. And that’s fine in a TV show with another episode coming next week, but if the comic did the same thing I’m betting readers would have something to say about it while waiting three or four months for the next issue. So a classic episode like Season 2’s “Zuko Alone” is out of reach of the comics.
When I read the comic, I’m sort of hyper aware of it trying to hit so many different notes from the show. Gene Luen Yang’s an excellent writer though, so he handles this sort of problem well, but sometimes I wish the comic could linger with a particular mood and push the intensity.
Paul: I totally see what you mean. The creators have taken some good risks with these, but I don’t know if we’ve seen them employ the full potential of the comics medium’s uniqueness to do something really experimental. I’d say they’ve earned enough trust to, say, go darker for a longer period of time, or not have a philosophical discussion get interrupted by foes bursting through the door.
Continued belowI even think that this exploration of Katara in a little bit of turmoil could have gone further. I concede that ‘North and South’ is satisfying fan-service to the complete Team Avatar (or ‘Aang Gang.’ Or Sokka’s ‘Boomeraang Squad.’ Or maybe… ‘Bender Blender?’ ‘Momo’s MoFos?’ ‘The Appa Ratus?’). But maybe at the expense of letting a Katara-focused story really let loose the rope on what a rich and interestingly conflicted character she can be.
Maybe the last pre-spoilers thing I can say is, what I really loved about this chapter is the shifting and maturing family dynamics at the story’s center. “Avatar” has always been good at making the grand scale story, about tribes and nations and movements, boil down to relationships between characters who are representative but still three-dimensional. And I get warm-fuzzies from the way this story, like Yang and Gurihiru’s previous ones, builds on the evolving relationship between Katara, Sokka, and their father Hakoda, along with the extended family of the Water Tribes and Team Avatar.
Mark: OK then, let’s dive into spoilers. It’s interesting you mention the maturing of the family dynamics, because the growing maturity of the characters is something I’ve enjoyed throughout this arc. With each new “Avatar” story, the characters seem to grow up a little more. There was a point in this installment where Katara reminded me of the Katara from the TV series… but not Avatar: The Last Airbender, rather the Katara we met in The Legend of Korra. It wasn’t anything huge or dramatic, but that moment really made me feel her character growth in a powerful way.
When we consider the adaptation from TV show to comic, I think some characters weather it better than others. Sokka, I think, suffers the most, as he tends to play the comic relief character. I love wacky Sokka, but there’s more to him than that. One of my favorite Sokka moments in the show was from the Season 3 episode “The Runaway.” It’s pretty simple, just Toph and Sokka sitting on a cliff, talking about mothers and Katara.
Considering the subject matter of this issue, I was really hoping I’d get a bit of serious Sokka in this installment. Gene Luen Yang did not disappoint:
It’s moments like these that made this final part of “North and South” come together as one of the best “Avatar” comics to date.
Paul: That was one of my favorite moments as well, although it’s in keeping with the rhythms of the show, and the very next panel, the brief dip into serious business is interrupted as Aang runs in with a ‘heads up!’ But I’m quite sure I’m the outlier in the audience who wishes that conversation could’ve kept going.
What does continue, though, is this arc of Katara’s where she’s not only wrestling with her acceptance of Malina and the Northern Water Tribe’s intervention into her homeland, but her own reconciliation with her mother’s absence. One of the puzzles of writing post-TV series Avatar for the creators must have been figuring out what threads of character maturation hadn’t been completed. During the show, the team’s parallel mastery of their bending skills and coming to terms with their mission of peace and unity made for satisfying character arcs that ended roundly with the show.
But it’s way less interesting to tell ongoing stories about a team of heroes who’ve already reached the summit, both in terms of their self-mastery and their external quest. Unsurprising, but still clever, that Yang and the creators have looked to our heroes reconciling with their pasts and ancestors while at the same time trying to forge a consensus through diverse opposition from these peoples. (Which, by my count, the comics have now done significant work with most of Team Avatar’s unaddressed backstories and through the three relevant Nations/Tribes… might be why it’s time for a break…)
My point being, I think this story deserves credit for (pardon the pun) drilling into the untapped reserves of buried conflict that lie in Katara’s unresolved attachment to her mother, to the Water Tribe as it were, and to a way of life that’s being swallowed up by ‘progress.’
Continued belowBut in the closing scenes, a mirror moment to the one you showed above, I see Katara as confronting all this change and genuinely coming to terms with the unsettledness of her various feelings.
You could imagine this is where the story would go, and I would’ve been shocked if Katara’s rift with her father’s governance remained, or if Team Avatar didn’t wind up passively endorsing Hakoda’s progressive efforts. And yet, for what’s lost with the Tribe’s modernization and open shores to be summed up with Gilak’s plummet into the abyss and Katara’s flowers on the tombstone… it just didn’t quite attain to the level of recognition I thought Yang and company could have reached with the analogous historical issues this story brings to mind. I was genuinely moved for Katara’s sake in that moment, but part of me wanted to linger longer in the mourning.
But overall, was this resolution and ending predictable and obvious for you, Mark? Or did you find it surprising and engaging? With the way that the intensity has to be heightened in a third act, did you feel like any of this chapter was rushed, or character beats cheated?
Mark: I’m glad you mentioned this scene. Katara visiting her mother’s grave is the kind of cathartic scene I’d hoped to see in the TV show, and while “The Southern Raiders” episode in the third season certainly covered some of this territory, I found this scene more satisfying. It was a natural extension of “The Southern Raiders” scene.
That said, there was some stuff before this that did feel a little rushed and one moment in particular that felt like a cheat. I don’t know about you, but a big part of this story was about preserving the culture of the Southern Water Tribe while under pressure from the culture of the Northern Water Tribe. It’s very easy to draw parallels between that and certain events in our own world.
But then there’s another element introduced quite late, that the Southern Water Tribe’s culture is but a fragment that survived a hundred years of war. This was a fascinating idea to me, and I wish it had been explored further. It gives us a better sense of what the South is and what it means to rebuild it. I mean, imagine what this land would have endured. In the early stages of the war, all its major cities would have been wiped out, along with much of its art and libraries. The parts that survive are isolated and sparsely populated. You have an entire generation divorced from its history and the culture of its people, except for what can be passed on directly by word of mouth.
There’s a difference between rebuilding a culture and overwhelming it with another, and I wish that more of that had come through in the finale. For me, the scene that really did this well was Master Paku teaching the two little girls. In the first season of the TV series, Master Paku refused to teach Katara purely on the basis of her being a girl—it was not the way things were done in the North. But here we see him with a class with only girls. This scenes with the young waterbender girls and with Katara, were about truly rebuilding the South in a way that’s respectful of its culture. Even still, we have a scene where Katara is talking about preserving Southern-style waterbending, but let’s face it, except for what she taught herself, she studied Northern-style waterbending. While Southern waterbenders remain, it’s likely very little if any Southern-style waterbending remains. In reality, what they’re doing is building a new Southern style. Paku helps, but he does so in a way that is respectful of the values of the Southern Water Tribe, rather than imposing his own.
What felt like a cheat for me was Gilak falling to his death. Whenever a character falls to their death, it almost always feels like an easy way out. At least at the end the story acknowledges that the unrest in the South is far from over, but this was a case where I felt that aspect of the story was tied up far too neatly.
Continued belowPaul: I love your points about that narrative gap in the Southern Water Tribe reconstruction history and the significance of Master Paku teaching whom and how he teaches. That’s why considering Avatar with you is such a pleasure, Mark. You bring the deep knowledge and attentive reading!
It’s probably also worth pointing out the recognition and reflection of the Water Tribes seen in Zuko and Earth King Kuei, the former eager to make reparations and the latter clumsily but ultimately correcting his words (and maybe his regard) for the ‘civilized’ status of his Southern Water Tribe hosts. Earth King Kuei is just convenient comedy and a story chess piece, but I think Zuko’s slight role gains some significance because we have seen him wrestling with his post-TV show relationship to the other Nations in these comics, so his humility seems tested and genuinely statesmanlike. It reminds me of the great distance we’ve gone in establishing these characters after five comics series.
Which compels me to ask: where do you think the comics are going next, Mark?
Mark: I don’t know where the comics could go next, to be honest. You mentioned earlier that so far the series has been picking up threads left dangling from the TV show, and with “North and South,” I feel like the comics have addressed the last major one. (Well, except perhaps Iroh’s journey into the spirit world… That’s something I’d love to see, though my guess is it involves Lu Ten and will not be a happy story.) So where do we go from here… who knows?
I know what I’d like to see though. So far we’ve done these big, three-part stories, but I’d like to see some smaller stories for a little while, perhaps a single story in one of these digest volumes, or even two or three—a sort of “Tales of Ba Sing Se” volume. I think they’d be nice to collect in a hardcover library edition along with the Free Comic Book Day stories and the “Lost Adventures” material. Plus I’d like to see some stories that don’t have an obligation to be epic and can get really intimate with the characters. What about you?
Paul: Here’s my speculation. After tying up as many loose threads as they have, Yang and Gurihiru, together with Di Martino and Konietzko, step back and take a breath. They’ve done the aftermath of the show, when the unification effort is young and the characters are fairly close to their end-of-show statuses. They turn their attention to “The Legend of Korra” for a while. But in the meantime, knowing there’s so much richness and story potential in the years and years after the period we’ve been reading, they shore up the major details of the timeline in between Aang and Korra for major characters and the world, paving the way for stories that extrapolate and diverge a bit further. Aged King Zuko in a latter day version of “Zuko Alone,” struggling against the fading public memory of Avatar Aang’s days and a bureaucratization of their ideals. An industrial-era crime drama with Toph’s police forces being shaken by early corruption and unconventional criminals. Sokka as diplomat.
Maybe that’s a fanfic impulse run amok, but what I’m really interested in is how story genres in the late 19th and early 20th century, East and West, emerge and compartmentalize as a result of the growth of the nation-state, industrial economies, and global commerce and cultural exchange. I think you can actually touch on those, without heavy-handedness, through what happens to these characters and the worlds they inhabit and the ones they establish.
With this body of work behind us now, are you ready to rank Yang and Gurihiru’s Avatar among the best comic adaptations/continuations of a franchise we’ve seen? Or where does it rank among the annals?
Mark: Y’know, I’m not a big reader of comic adaptations or continuations of TV shows or film series. They always sort of struck me as not real—like licenced fan fiction. The few that I do read always involve the original creators in some capacity and are considered canon. I like “Serenity,” though I don’t think it’s ever quite captured the spark of Firefly. “Invader Zim” moved seamlessly from TV to comics, though with Jhonen Vasquez’s involvement that should come as no surprise. But “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is definitely my favorite, because the original show is so very much my kind of story, and the comic captures it so well. And Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru build on that foundation in a way that feels natural. I’ve actually had moments that I’ve remembered from the TV show only to realize later I’d never watched them—they were actually from the comics. This is especially true of “The Search.”
Continued belowI’m assuming you’ve read more adaptations than me since you asked this question. How does it rank for you?
Paul: I don’t read many TV-to-comic adaptations, actually, but I do find the ways characters, settings, and stories move from one medium to another to be really fascinating. “Serenity” and “Invader Zim” are good comparisons, and for more contemporary variety, I’m thinking about everything from “My Little Pony” and “Adventure Time” to “Sons of Anarchy” and “Godzilla.” I’ve read too few to render judgment, but I do check them out when others report they’re doing something transcendent or idiosyncratic—Tom Scioli’s “Transformers vs. GI Joe” or Caldwell and Pugh’s “Flintstones” or Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell’s “Jem and the Holograms.”
The question for me is always, did you have to hew too closely to the source material until it kept you from doing anything new and interesting? Or did you have to depart so significantly from loyal fans’ expectations and thereby break the toys so no one else could play with them? And on that tightrope, I think Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru have done the best job I know of keeping the best of the show—and there are many ‘bests’—without slavish mimicry, making the most of the comics form. In that regard, I actually think “Avatar” gets less recognition from the broader comics public than it should, even though I think faithful fans are quite happy with these comics.
As are we, right, Mark?
Mark: Indeed. I’m going to give this one an 8.5. Overall, it was a strong story and Gurihiru brought the world to life beautifully as they always do. I particularly enjoyed the cathartic moment of Katara visiting her mother’s grave. However, I think the central political conflict was resolved too easily, especially Gilak going full villain and falling off a cliff—although at least there was dialog acknowledging that the conflict was far from over.
Paul: I’m with you on 8.5. Sound storytelling and rock solid art deserve continued credit for keeping the Avatarverse lively and tying it in a nice bow. But here’s hoping future installments take more risks.
Final Verdict: 8.5. A solid finale to the “North and South” trilogy.
