The Past, Present, and Future in Nate Powell’s “Conjurers”

Last post, I started discussing Nate Powell’s “Conjurers” and the ways that comics provide a unique medium for bringing the past, present, and future together in a singular manner. Today, I want to finish that discussion by looking at the latter half of “Conjurers.” I’ve written about that the ways that comics flattens time, specifically in connecting the past and the present. Powell does this in Two Dead when the private who makes racist comments towards Jacob Davis comes and wraps his spirit around Jacob’s face. Hugo Martinez does this as well in Rebecca Hall’s Wake: The Untold Story of Women-Led Slave Revolts when he brings together present-day New York City with the past, linking the ways that slavery continues to shape and construct the Big Apple and the nation. Powell does this same thing in “Conjurers” through the movement from Rose, to Rose’s daughter, to Rose’s great-granddaughter and beyond.

Since Rose’s great granddaughter did not write the recipe down when her grandmother taught it to her, she must figure out how to make the fried chicken, and in order to do this, she must, as she puts it, “start by carving through the layers.” The “layers” have a literal and figurative meaning. They refer to the layers of the chicken, but they also refer to the layers of her ancestry, the lineage that connects her to the woman she never knew in a…