Comic Connection: Grommets and Tony Hawk American Wasteland
Grommets (Image Comics) is a nostalgic read that brings back feelings of a certain era of skateboarding similar to how Tony Hawk's American Wasteland did.
What do the Grommets mini-series comic book and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland have in common? They both capture the feeling of a bygone era in skateboarding. Grommets focuses on the skateboard culture in California in the 1980s. On the other hand, American Wasteland calls back to the Z-boys era of the 1970s in California skate and surf culture.
The Image Comics team of Rick Remender and Brian Posehn (writers) along with Brett Parsons and Moreno Dinisio (artists) have brought a nostalgic feeling to the comic book medium. The comic has gained praise from the birdman himself.
“Grommets captures the raw feeling of being an outcast kid in the 1980s, and why skateboarding became such a sacred salvation to a lucky few. The graphics, attitudes, and language of that era are represented with a rare authenticity that will leave you wanting more.” —Tony Hawk
Let’s look at the similarities between these two skateboard-themed projects.
Grommets Captures a Nostalgic Feeling the same way Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland Did
The Art and Tone
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland has cut scenes that look as if they were drawn in an independent skate magazine or comic book. This is partially because one of the main characters Mindy, produces her own independent “zine” called American Wasteland in this art style. Mindy’s character is an artist who hangs out with a group of local skaters in their secret skatepark called “The Ranch”. Much of the storyline revolves around collecting items for the ranch skatepark.
The artwork in the game captures the 1980s feel of skateboarding in California through Mindy’s “zine”, the integration of the Z-boys, and the styles of skateboarding the player character and other nonplaying characters implement in the game. The tricks and ways that characters maneuver on skateboards have the “old school style” with plenty of carving (such as on the green pipes point area that is unlocked towards the end of the game) and flatland tricks that became popularized in that era and would later become synonymous with skaters such as Rodney Mullen.
Similarly, the comic book Grommets captures the feel of the 1970s skate life in California. Brett Parson and Moreno Dinisio are the artists for the entire mini-series. The team did a phenomenal job of bringing the outcast skateboard culture to life through the pages of a comic book, in the same way American Wasteland brought the feeling through television screens.
The art in the comic captured the bigger wheeled and “banana” shaped boards that carved their way through the drained swimming pools that became synonymous with skateboarding culture in the 1970s.
Both releases captured the essence and feelings of the respective eras in the tone and artwork.
The Outcast Feeling
The main protagonist of American Wasteland is an unnamed skateboarder who moves to California from Kentucky to start a new life. The first scene in the game sees the protagonist attacked by local skaters who steal most of his belongings. This is when Mindy is introduced as she helps the protagonist regain his belongings from the local skaters.
From there the protagonist begins to hang around Mindy and her friends, Boone, Dave, Murphy, and Iggy VanZandt. Although the reason for leaving Kentucky is never truly revealed, there is an overarching feeling that the protagonist is a misfit and in need of a fresh start. Mindy and her group of friends could also be considered misfits as they tend to keep to themselves and hang around in the seclusion of the “Ranch”.
The same feeling is conveyed in the Grommets comic book. The comic centers around Rick who is starting at a new school. While being rejected by a group of skaters at the school, he befriends the outcasted and misfit character Brian. The two quickly become great friends and although they are far from popular, they are unified through skateboarding and are determined to forge their path through their troubled teenage years.
Both sets of characters come from a background of being outcasted and feeling like they don’t fit in. Those feelings drive them to meet like-minded friends and they end up happily forging their path through life.
Double Nostalgia
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland felt nostalgic for those who spent their adolescent years in the 1970s skating in the style of Jay Adams, Stacey Peralta, Tony Alva, and the rest of the Z-Boys.
Similarly, Grommets feels nostalgic for those who skated in the 1980s as they made their way through middle school and high school.
Additionally, there is a second layer of nostalgia as readers dive into Grommets. It evokes a lot of the same feelings that American Wasteland did when it was released in 2005.
Now that American Wasteland is nearing 20 years of age, reading the Grommets comic feels much like booting up American Wasteland for the first time. For gamers like me who played through American Wasteland when it first released (and spent plenty of time on a skateboard), cracking the cover of Grommets brought back feelings of nostalgia for the early 2000s, even though that decade is far from the source material for the comic book and video game in question.
In Conclusion
At first glance, the two releases may not seem to have much in common. After breaking down the art style, outcast feeling, and nostalgia that both releases bring to the table, there is plenty of overlap between the two.
Are you reading Grommets? Have you played Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland? Sound off in the comments below.
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