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Faker
Words by Mike Carey Pictures by Jock Published by DC/Vertigo Edited by Shelly Bond Identity. It’s the killer app of our times, and I’m not necessarily talking about the neat and tidy little online personas we craft to do everything from fling enchantments at orcs to validate our continued existence to the seething mass of humanity that were crammed into your classrooms as a kid. At some point in the distant past, there were barely even designer brands with which to define yourself as being somehow different or superior from the pack. Now customization and individuation are the watchwords of the entire retail industry and beyond. We have more subcultures than wikipedia can keep up with, we have new elective surgeries being invented almost every day to make you a little less human and a little more “you,” there are sixty five thousand possible drink combinations for you to call yours at Starbucks, and your eighty gig i-pod is tailor made to give you the ultimate mix tape that lasts literally for weeks if played from end to end. Even spirituality is becoming all about individualism given the blockbuster success of the soft sell solipsism What the Bleep Do We Know? that ran with the tagline of You Create Your Own Reality. Mike Carey’s new series Faker is about a lot of things, but it seems to mostly be about what happens when these cultivated and pampered identities start to collapse. From the first promo pictures of Jock’s art for the series and the tagline “Everyone has something to hide,” I was picking up vague Generation X vibes from the comic, expecting something reminiscent of Chuck Palaniuk or Douglas Copeland. I wouldn’t call that evaluation entirely wrong as the cast of the comic are up to the minute college students, but with the kind of bubbling nihilism and cruelty more characteristic of Bret Easton Ellis. However, this is far more than a Rules of Attraction style tale of terrible people doing terrible things to each other. Mike Carey is sometimes maddeningly mercurial in that he cannot be anticipated as a writer in the sense that Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, or Grant Morrison can be, but Carey has a kind of restless creativity that he brings to every project he works on. Many of his comics start with rich premises that could very easily be left to unwind almost on their own and would result in good stories, but it seems to me that Carey feels the need to introduce some unexpected element of chaos to interrupt the flow of the story and keep him several paces ahead of the reader. Faker is a prime example of this idea, because by the end of the first issue I was all ready to settle in for a rough ride of competing egos and trajectories towards spectacular self destruction with the small niggling doubt that a seemingly Trainspotting inspired hallucination sequence was somehow more significant than it appeared. I suppose it’s only natural for one’s spider sense to tingle when university students break into a lab being used to research using brain enzymes for liquid crystal information storage to mix strange flaming drinks, but I digress. The second issue starts out innocently enough when one of the protagonists is seeing the electronic proof of his existence evaporating to the point where he cannot register for classes and every attempt he makes to find documentation is thwarted by seemingly arbitrary circumstances until he seeks what he calls existential validation outside of his circle of friends that make up the rest of the main characters only to discover that his memories; of a job from the previous semester and of a one night stand at a party are not his own, they’re his friends. His entire existence has been supplanted by a gestalt of his friends’ memories, and the final revelation of the issue is Carey’s seed of chaos come into full bloom to propel the series into a completely new direction that I can only guess at. Vertigo wunderkind Jock (The Losers, Scalped, Green Arrow: Year One) supplies both the covers and the interiors for Faker, but to be perfectly honest he would have been much better off sticking with cover duties and leaving the interiors to a less flashy, expressive artist. His interiors are functional and are never difficult to follow, but also fail to inspire the imagination. Of course it’s still a vast improvement over the mind numbingly dull art of Carey’s other Vertigo ongoing, Crossing Midnight. The two covers are predictably gorgeous though, a far better medium for Jock’s gift for composition, jarring colour choices, and visual metaphor. I really have no fucking idea what Faker is going to become from this point in, it could very well be the next Kill Your Boyfriend or Lazarus Churchyard, but whatever it is, it’ll be blazing a new trail, it will be relentless, and I will be reading it. You should be too. The first two issues are available at your local comic book store. Mark Osborne, Editor in Chief of Binary Culture, is not a motherfucking happy kitten. |
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