The Well
Writer/Artist: Jon Allen
Publisher: Top Shelf
Publication Date: April 2025
For nearly a decade now Jon Allen has been slowly but surely building out his own little universe, centered on the fictitious town of Piney Bluff, Ohio: A strange corner of the post-industrial Rust Belt where adorable anthropomorphic animals drink, do drugs, fall in and out of lust and love, and generally get into trouble. Across the increasingly ambitious graphic novels Ohio is For Sale, The Lonesome Era, and Julian in Purgatory this odd yet instantly-recognizable environment has taken on a very clear form. Allen’s crisp black-white-and-gray drawings linger on the details of American life circa the turn of the millennium: Abandoned factories and depressing chain restaurants dominate the landscape, while the characters’ homes are strewn with the detritus of mass-produced consumer goods that promise, in vain, to dull the pain of a quickly-vanishing working-class life that seems to be getting a little bit worse with every passing year.
In The Well, Allen’s latest stand-alone graphic novel (and at a whopping 720 gorgeously-drawn, fast-reading square pages, his heftiest so far), it seems as though a sea change may be at hand. Veronika, an intriguing young woman with a black bob and pointy ears who has made appearances in all of Allen’s Piney Bluff stories, finally takes center stage. We initially find her at the Dead Dog, a trashy dive bar where her good-for-nothing boyfriend Matt and his hard-drinking pals are celebrating the upcoming pan-Ohio tour of Matt’s metal band Carnosphere (Spoiler alert: You should never, ever date a musician).
Veronika is clearly out of place and out of sorts. At the ripe old age of 24 she’s already plagued by self-doubts and regrets: Did she make a mistake by dropping out of college? Was it a bad idea to move back in with her parents and her little brother Camden (the closeted teen protagonist of The Lonesome Era)? Yes and yes, in her withering self-assessment. But perhaps things are looking up for Veronika. While Matt is off playing shows (and playing the field), Veronika is staying at his “gross little apartment,” and starting a new job as a database technician at a growing local company that makes “herbal supplements” (or is it energy drinks?). Compared to the drunks, drug addicts, and depressives that make up her circle of friends, Veronika seems distinctly upwardly mobile. Will she achieve escape velocity and break the cycle?
With its punk-inflected vibes, queer themes, and open-ended storytelling, an obvious touchstone for Allen’s work is Jaime Hernandez’s ongoing Locas stories (and anyone who digs Hernandez’s stories of life in Hoppers owes it to themselves to check out Piney Bluff), and in Veronika it seems that Allen may have found his Maggie, a character who can can appear in a range of contexts and situations and always seem fresh and relevant. Veronika has previously appeared as both a supportive older sister in The Lonesome Era and an equally supportive friend in Julian in Purgatory and has always seemed collected and confident, but here Allen gets in her head, and the reader realizes how conflicted this “cool girl” really is. While The Well continues to showcase Allen’s well-tuned ear for funny and natural dialogue, he also explores Veronika’s doubts and fears directly via spare, almost poetic first-person narration and extended dream sequences, and the reader is drawn completely into her point of view. Over the many pages of this book Veronika clearly emerges as Allen’s most well-rounded and engaging protagonist yet.
In the sprawling offices of the unnamed company where she works, Veronika settles into her anonymous cubicle, where the hours seem to fly as she codes “happily, building elaborate structures of pure abstraction in a lightless and infinite space, weightless bricks for an invisible city.” Her work is at first fueled by coffee and tea, and eventually by the company’s flagship product, a miracle elixir that the eccentric corporate founders Jake and Susan claim improves “focus, concentration, mood, creativity, memory, and clarity of thought.”
Back at Matt’s crusty digs, Veronika makes an effort to clean up the dirty dishes and empty beer cans, and begins to imagine “building a life together” with him, but when another woman turns up at the door looking for Matt, Veronika begins to realize that things in the real world might not be coming together with the clarity and precision of the digital realm that she thrives in. When Veronika confronts Matt over the phone about his infidelities he doesn’t bother to deny it: “C’mon, you know I’m a rockstar. I gotta maintain a certain lifestyle.”
Veronika turns to a pair of her new coworkers for comfort, going out for Friday night drinks with the ebullient, openly-gay receptionist Persephone and the ambitious and anxious Jake. When would-be ladies man Jake’s attempt to ask the newly-single Veronika out on a date crashes and burns, she and Persephone are left alone to bond over a few too many drinks. Things quickly get a bit complicated in a bravura extended sequence that brilliantly explores the confusing intricacies of attraction and and the sweet awkwardness of desire. Allen has a naturally patient and even sprawling narrative style, allowing his scenes to play over many dozens of pages, in a manner that distinctly calls to mind Jordan Crane’s work in Keeping Two. Here the technique pays dividends as the reader gets to experience the slowly escalating tension and budding connection between Veronika and Persephone (this chapter alone clocks in at over 100 pages long, a graphic novella in and of itself), and it is a clear highlight of the book.
Meanwhile, strange events are taking place in the bland, labyrinthine hallways of their workplace, and Veronika, Persephone, and Dave soon find themselves pulled into a mind- and genre-bending mystery that dominates the back half of The Well. Suffice it to say that things aren’t quite as they seem, and that Veronika’s new job might not be the easy path to escaping the doldrums of life in Rust Belt America that it first appeared to be.
This isn’t the first time Allen has played with genre elements in his ongoing narrative (an army of mischievous black demons invade a house party in Ohio is for Sale, and Julian in Purgatory, a searing and grounded portrait of opioid addiction, flirts with the idea of becoming an out-and-out crime thriller), but The Well goes all-in with the genre elements in a way that is new. While Allen handles the challenges of shifting gears with aplomb (and generally seems to be having a lot of fun), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the more quotidian conflicts that drive the front half of this graphic novel as I followed Veronika and company on their increasingly wild adventure. Over the years Allen has refined his lived-in, utterly honest-feeling vision of life in Piney Bluff to the point that it feels a bit wrong to tweak the formula. But even as the action gets intense and the situations more outlandish, Allen never loses his handle on his characters’ quirks, and the snappy dialogue and sensitive narration continue to build a portrait of Veronika and her friends that feels extremely true to life.
As with any good hero’s journey, Veronika emerges from her ordeal transformed, and seemingly ready to tackle the next chapter of her life. But in the surprisingly raw and realistic universe that Allen is building up over the years, nothing is simple, and happy endings aren’t a given. But no matter what is next for Veronika and the other adorable, relatable, and generally fucked-up denizens of Piney Bluff, I’m confident that Allen will be ready to chronicle what happens next in this all-too-familiar corner of the America, and I’ll definitely be there for it. I recommend that you visit Piney Bluff, you won’t be disappointed.
The Well is out now via Top Shelf
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