Episodes

by Alex Scott

Episodes traverses the rocky landscape of on and offline social interactions, advertising and media in a way that is both darkly humorous and emotionally engaging. Set in a metropolitan city, spanning the mid-90s to early 2020, Episodes follows a diverse group of characters as they struggle to reconcile their messy day-to-day reality with the aspirational fiction of their ever-present screens.

“This is an epic tale told on a personal level,” says writer and artist Alex Scott. “Episodes is for an audience who grew up on a diet of scheduled TV programming and now feeds off a 24-hour cycle of social-media updates and sponsored content.”

“Episodes arrived in our inbox fully formed,” says Earth’s End Publisher Adrian Kinnaird. “It was obvious Alex had a clear personal vision and the execution of the book was very unique and innovative.” For Co-Publisher Damon Keen, a key feature of the book is its use of TV-style subtitles. “Some people find comics difficult to read; not everyone is familiar with the medium's conventions. Episodes solves this problem by presenting itself in a format we are all familiar with from film and television.”

A multidisciplinary artist from Auckland, Alex describes her first graphic novel as the culmination of a childhood spent in thrall of the TV, a degree in scriptwriting, 15 years as a sub-editor, an illustration and painting practice, and nine years as a cartoonist for the New Zealand Listener. “My trajectory hasn’t felt entirely logical, but it’s all fed into the making of Episodes,” she says. “This is an incredibly personal book to me because all the stories developed out of experiences or feelings I’ve had and finally felt ready to share.”

Genres: Comics

200 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That’s right, Charlie. Encore. It’s the home automation system that outperforms itself.”

Those familiar with the work of Nick Drnaso, would perhaps be fooled into thinking that this was the latest instalment from him, but no, this hails from the other side of the world down in Aotearoa, and although it takes a while to bed in, once you get there, it really starts to click.

Scott has crafted a series of enticing and enigmatic pastel laden slices of suburbia, soaked in quiet desperation. We encounter a landscape of cold spaces and sterile places. We see that repression and other icy surface pleasantries do a poor job of papering over the cracks of a broken, harrowing world of isolation and dislocation just bubbling beneath the surface.

“You need to accept that I’m a brand. And do you know what sets the successful, enduring brands apart from the big fat failures?”

We soon realise that these characters are trapped in a passive aggressive hell, reduced to a dumb, empty existence, and left only with mindless acquisition. What happens when your world has substituted ideas of compassion and community for commodification and consumerism?...

So often these characters seek solace or solutions from society, but instead all they get is brand shaped diseases dressed as cures. This is what the world looks like when the life is hollowed out of it. Scott beautifully captures the anxiety, lies and vacuity at the heart of modern NZ exposing all the empty promises of a hyper-consumerist society.

“(Rapid voiceover) Take only as directed-if-symptoms persist see your medical professional.”

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

got locked out of the house so went to the library to hang out. saw a cute graphic novel. funny tale of advertising, influencers, and consumerism.

[Cal Greaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this as a Christmas present for someone else but couldn’t wait to read it myself. And now that I’ve finished it, I want to go back to the start and read it all again. Lots of layers and complexity that I’m pretty sure I missed on my first read. A great read!

[Emanuel Sanabria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall great 😊 I think I can see some influences there (Tomine, Clowes, Drnaso). The pacing of this thing is quite frenetic in some parts that feels too much like our daily lives, quite uncomfortable at times. I saw that as a virtue but also it made it taste maybe a tad too sour.