Gerry Duggan, widely known for X-Men, takes readers on a journey half a century in the making. Released by Image Comics and presented as a series of photo essays, Timing/Luck is a time capsule and visual narrative of Duggan’s life as he falls in love with comics, writing, and photography, and how the world around him both changes and stays the same.
Timing/Luck features a wide array of comic writers that Duggan calls friends and mentors, such as his Deadpool writing partner Brian Posehn, and other legends like Stan Lee, Jason Aaron, Skottie Young, and Jeff Lemire to name just a few. The book also captures other celebrities, influential writers, and actors, like J.J Abrams, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and many more. However, Timing/Luck is much more than a photo album of famous cameos; it’s a strong visual narrative of a changing world, empty streets, lasting friendships, and over 40 years of photographs.
Writing
Duggan writes like he photographs: with sincerity, curiosity, and respect. There’s no sentence in this book that doesn’t feel bathed in awe and gratefulness for his peers, mentors, and those who came before him. Inanimate objects, like his first car, and old Hollywood institutions are given life through his storytelling and accompanying photos. Duggan’s writing is hard to dislike as it is purely honest. It is a man who is so grateful to everyone around him, for the life he lived and the lessons he learned simply for having lived it, and it made it very difficult not to feel the same emotionality when reading along.
While Timing/Luck does not shy away from the hardships of Duggan’s life, the sense of dread and sadness is often cut by a clear optimism, especially as he writes about the days leading to and overcoming the pandemic.
Art
The photographs used in this book come in many varieties. There are the candids, most of which typically feature Duggan’s friends, other celebrities, and the occasional interesting person on the street. These take up much of the book, with Duggan making clear choices to be a fly on the wall, wanting to save the moment as opposed to intrude on it, which allows for many behind the scenes in usually private or reserved areas, such as writers’ rooms and backstage rehearsals.
Many photos feel much more typical to the everyday person with a camera, with a few selfies, convention panel photos, and bar hangouts throughout the book.
However, the photos that most stood out to me were the ones without a human subject as the focus. Duggan showed the life and spirit of the places he visited through his photographs, not just by portraying their beauty, but by showcasing why they were important to him and their communities.
Verdict
The title Timing/Luck heavily undersells this book, but after reading it, it’s clear that Duggan is the kind of man who would consider all the work he put in as a product of just timing and luck. Yet it is so much more than that. It is decades of hard work, dedication, love, and effort, to himself, his friends, family, and simply his craft: this book is a splendid biography, and a journey worth following.
