Superstar writer Brian K. Vaughan, artist Marcos Martin, and colourist Munsta Vincente’s second series on their Panel Syndicate webcomics platform, “Barrier,” wears its progressive politics on its sleeve, while always remaining focused on character, never becoming preachy.
Cover by Marcos MartinWritten by Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrated by Marcos Martin
Coloured by Munsta Vincente
An unconventional drama about violence, language and illegal immigration.
Way back in 2015, when the first part of this five-part series came out (which we reviewed), “Barrier” seemed like a grounded, contemporary western, with the feel and aesthetic of a prestige cable drama. Throughout that first issue, we see Oscar, a Honduran, who only speaks Spanish, attempting to make it across central America to a new, better life in the US; We also see Liddy, a Texan ranch owner, who, after finding the skinless head of one of her horses, thinks the cartel is using her land to smuggle things into America. This all sounds very post-Breaking Bad grounded crime drama, but when these two meet, “Barrier” gets weird.
There’s a sequence towards the end of the first issue, juxtaposing Liddy on the left of the page, and Oscar on the right, with a full-bleed panel of sky cutting the page in half that shrinks with each swipe to the next page. You know it’s building to something as the barrier of sky between them is squeezed. Then they come together with a splash page of Liddy’s face being woken by a scream from Oscar outside. Liddy goes out to defend her property from a trespasser, but when she does, the realistic background drops to white, Liddy and Oscar begin to be lifted into the air. In the final pages of the issue, Vincente’s grounded colours explode into bright greens and pinks, as our leads are brought face to face, Liddy on the left, Oscar on the right, but now with no barrier. They’re brought together by alien abduction.
That’s right, after 50 pages of grounded realism, “Barrier” is actually about crazy looking, insectoid-plant aliens abducting two people from very different backgrounds – a land-owning white woman from Texas and a poor illegal immigrant from Honduras. It isn’t too hard to see where the story goes from here. Oscar and Liddy have to get past what divides them in order to survive, most tangibly the language barrier. Oscar only speaks Spanish, Liddy only speaks English, the aliens only speak in jagged block colours to deafen humans. But for them to be able to return home, to Earth, all three must find a way to communicate and to empathise.
I don’t speak Spanish, and no one speaks alien, so it’s a testament to Martin that I always feel like I know what’s happening. This is part of what’s so great about good comics – by giving the weight of storytelling to the visual, to sequential art, you don’t have to know someone’s language to understand them. This incredible command of the medium, shown by all three creators but especially Martin, is made particularly clear in part 3, which is the only ever issue Vaughan has written with no words.
The politics of “Barrier” are also not hard to see. One of our leads is an illegal immigrant, an inherently dehumanising classification (calling a person ‘illegal’) that is used in racist dog-whistles by right-wing reactionaries. Illegal immigrants are an ‘other’ to blame for problems that they are also victims of. And then, in “Barrier,” we are presented with an even bigger ‘other’ in the aliens. But over the course of five chapters, we are compelled to build empathy with all three – Liddy, Oscar and alien. We see that they have all suffered tremendous loss and pain. We experience that loss and pain along with them.
It feels weird writing about a comic that breaks the dog-whistle racism of anti-immigration at this specific moment in time, in the weeks after Charlottesville, where the dog whistles stopped and the explicit white supremacy came out; where people yelled about ‘blood and soil;’ and where the President drew ludicrous false equivalences between Nazis and anti-racists. Anti-immigrant racism is, obviously, a part of that but it feels somewhat smaller – less immediate. “Barrier” now feels like a relic from two years ago, from a time when the political discourse was dominated by mere dog-whistles.
And, in a way, “Barrier” is, the first part came out a year and a half ago – comics take a long time to make, especially when they are truly independent, like this. Vaughan and Martin founded Panel Syndicate for their previous webcomic, the fantastic “The Private Eye.” With no financial backing from anywhere and a pay-what-you-like (including nothing) model, somehow, they make enough for Martin and Vincente to survive. The initial success of Panel Syndicate may have rested on Brian K. Vaughan’s superstardom, but now it’s a growing space for radical and interesting comics. Panel Syndicate is socialist (a term that the creators have used to describe the platform) in that ownership is shared and there is no publisher to exploit a profit from the labour of the creators and access is democratized through the payment model. It’s the promise of the internet, freedom to make and consume.
It’s no surprise, then, that “Barrier” exhorts a left view on immigration. Not much of this comic is that surprising, at least in hindsight. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It still presents a compelling story with characters that feel real and ideas that still matter. Vaughan, Martin, and Vincente remain one of the best creative teams in comics today, this comic is definitely worth your time.
