Justin Madison's debut graphic novel Tin Man is set in a version of L. Frank Baum's Oz, and his tin man, Campbell, has the familiar shape and form Americans expect from their tin men since 1939. But that's not particularly clear at the beginning of the story, and it's never important. It's something bigger than an Easter egg, I guess, since there are plenty of references to Baum here, but it's all background.
We're in a recognizably modern world: suburbia, TV news, two-paycheck families, junkyards, high school students who play video games and hang out to do mischief. The land is called Oz, which is mentioned but not emphasized. It looks mostly like our world, with a few tweaks.
There's a major space industry, and people can build space-capable ships in their backyards, in best Tom Swift fashion. Kids can aspire to get out of their dead-end towns by getting into the very selective VASTE Institute, something like a STEM magnet high school with much more emphasis on spaceships and big wrenches.
But they're still kids, and that's what Tin Man is about. Three young people who each want something - though they don't all exactly know what they want, when the book begins - who meet, and who each find something like what they want (or need) by the end.
One of them is Campbell, the tin man. He grew up with his people, in the forest, chopping down trees. But he heard of a wizard, in a far-off city, who makes mechanical hearts for tin men that allows them to feel, and Campbell wanted that for himself. His father didn't understand why; they fought; Campbell ran away. There's a bit more to the story, but that comes out in the course of the book.
Campbell meets Fenn in a junkyard. Campbell is there: living or hanging out or just existing. Fenn is a local kid, maybe ten or so. He's obsessed with space; his hero is Jed Astro, a famous explorer. And Fenn is picking through junkyards as he tries to build a spaceship himself - he finds a mechanical heart, he befriends Campbell, he's the glue that pulls this story together.
The third character is Fenn's older sister, Solar. She used to be an academic whiz, head of the class at her high school, recruited for VASTE. But she's hanging with the stoners and bullies now, dating the worst of them: slacking off, skipping school, avoiding work and responsibility, looking to get a job at a local garage and give up on all expectations.
Fenn wants his old sister back: the one who cared about space and science and the future. The one that worked with him and was good at the same things he cares about.
Solar wants... Well, she used to want to go to VASTE, to go to space, to get out of this town and make something of herself. Now, she doesn't seem to want anything.
Campbell wants that mechanical heart, we think - but we learn that he'd already gotten it, and how that went.
Meanwhile, Terrible Twisters are running through Oz, getting closer. And Solar's new friends - especially her boyfriend, Merrick, their leader - are mean and destructive and getting worse. And we learn why Solar changed, what happened in her life (and Fenn's) recently that soured her on life.
And they all get what they want, or maybe need, at the end, as the twisters hit and Merrick continues to be a horrible human being and Fenn's homemade spaceship turns out to be unexpectedly useful.
Madison has a somewhat indy-comics style, a little grungy, with dot eyes: it reminds me a little of Jeff Lemire, though not that grungy. His places are real, his people expressive, his colors crisp and bright. And he's just sneaky enough, with his Oz references and unobtrusive storytelling, for a reader like me who eats that stuff up. Tin Man is another one of the flood of recent graphic stories aimed at teens, but, like the best of that flood, it's not limited to them.
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