Posts
Just Read: Faker #1-6 (of 6) Vertigo Mini by Mike Carey and Jock
So, it's been a while since I've read a VERTIGO book, especially a VERTIGO mini-series, really I haven't taken the time since the days of Nevada and Goddess, and so it was with great anticipation and self-satisfaction ("I have a Vertigo mini, aren't I so cultured, ahem hem hem") that I sat down to consume FAKER, a six-issue saga written by Mike Carey (X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Crossing Midnight, Hellblazer) and art by Jock (The Losers, Green Arrow: Year One)
The story opens on a collegiate university, and swiftly introduces its small cast of young adult protagonists. Part of the series' premise is that each and every character is a bastard, in their way, an unlikable, self-involved, obstreperous kind of chap or chippie and while this does play into the themes and even the sci-fi/horror element of the tale, it is, as usual, exceedingly difficult to follow such characters for page after page, all the while telling yourself "there's a point, there has to be a point". We are inarguably a youth-centric culture, and youth is indeed a self-centric stage of life, more prevalently than any other. But isn't selfish to selfless kind of an uber-arc? Isn't the move from an awareness of yourself to the dawning understanding of, oh, everything else kind of a man or woman's entire life movement? Can this really be considered a fair arc for a character in a single story?
It's sort of forest for the trees: writers these days have THE great maturation process of any man double as the "character arc" for any given story, but of course in order to accomplish this everything has to be blown way out of proportion: the character has to be REALLY selfish, and then they have to magically turn REALLY out-of-character idealist at the last moment. It reminds me of the (in memorial here) David Foster Wallace quote: irony and ridicule have become “agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture”, wherein he mourned the loss of engagement with deep moral issues that animated the work of the great 19th-century novelists. Deep moral issues, which FAKER certainly tries to tackle, cannot so much as be jabbed with a toe if said toe isn't drenched in insincerity, punk attitude, quips, and a complete disassociation with the very importance the issues at hand hold.
Basically, FAKER vies to showcase different levels of selfishness and social fakery, of the pseudo-emotions we adopt to get through life and interact with other fakers. Toss in a bizarre Twilight Zone-esque element of a boy who apparently doesn't exist, a best friend who only the book's central cadre of kids recall having memories about, but to the rest of the world he was literally born yesterday, and FAKER offers, admittedly, a story not found anywhere else.
Sadly, it devolves quickly into cheesy pulp stuff, as the allegorical nature of the set-up becomes solid sci-fi followed by thriller-esque action. It kind of like an X-Files episode, but with highly unlikable characters. Even worse, the message of the book gets garbled as the MOST unlikable character of them all becomes the hero, and for...very inexplicable reasons. It's another tough-to-the-point-of-bitch girl = strong woman role model who hides a strength other types of mean people don't wield. Uh...sure.
Mike Carey is hit-or-miss - I really enjoyed his HELLBLAZER run up to issue #200, though then he spun off on a very odd tack. Actually, it makes sense: his HELLBLAZER, initially, was about a mythical dark beast, and it was glorious. Then he tried for human characters in need of sympathy, and the book bombed and bombed big. FAKER is the same, the fantastical elements very intriguing, but the characters and their respective stories absolute abominations story-wise.
JOCK supplies wonderfully deft artwork, well paired to a story that grows darker and black-ops-like as it goes, but his characters all look mean, defensive, itching for a fight, which only enhances the craptacularly juvenile emotional qualities of the story.
To steal a few quotes: "whiny, narcissistic characters [suggest] a falling off of ambition and a claustrophobic solipsism" which is not surprising as the "brave new individualism and sexual freedom of the 1960s has devolved into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation." (more David Foster Wallace - rest in peace, big guy) FAKER is juvenility at its worst, but tempered not at all by anything resembling a mature eye or guiding hand. It's glorification of asininity justified by the "realism" of the subject matter. It's emotional and creative pornography, defined the same as any pornography "if it is done for the sole purpose of titillation alone".
I was happy to dive back into a VERTIGO mini, but FAKER fails on every level, and is a disgrace to a once progressive company line.
Story - 3/10 (some great genre ideas, well handled, terrible everything else)
Art - 5/10 (well done, nothing inspired, adds nothing to the story)
Importance - 1/10 (best left forgotten as ever being a part of VERTIGO)
TOTAL SCORE - 3/10
0 Comments:
Post a Comment