Broken Frontier

Five college students. Five freshmen faking their way through life. But one of them turns out to be the biggest faker of all. That, in short is, the premise of Faker, Vertigo’s latest surefire-hit mini series by Mike Carey and Jock.

Set during cold winter at the University of Minneapolis, the book’s hook is simple: what if you woke up one day and nobody outside of your inner circle remembers you or knows who you are? Has the whole world gone to shambles? Or does it mean that someone is playing a dangerous game?

BF turned to Carey for some answers…

BROKEN FRONTIER: Since we’re dealing with a group of five freshmen here, let’s run through the cast first…

MIKE CAREY: Sure. The two main characters are Jessie Kidby and Nick Philo. Jessie, as we meet her in Faker #1 , is in many ways not a very likeable person. She’s incredibly cold-blooded and ruthless in some of the things she does. She’s very attractive and uses her body and her beauty to work her way through college by abusing her lecturers and professors. She goes to married men who’ve got a lot to lose if it comes out that they’ve had sex with a freshmen student and extorts money from them. She’s very unapologetic about it all and seems to enjoy the hell out of the power she wields. Jessie is an oddball.

As the story goes on, we get to see what makes her tick and see why she is the way she is. She’s a really hard case…

BF: Would you go as far as saying she’s got psychopathic treats?

MC: [Laughs] I think that’s taking it too far… she has problems, she’s got big, big issues, some of which she faces over the course of the story and some of which she never does, but she’s not a psycho.

Nick on the other hand is very different. Jessie’s come to refer to him as the ‘mother superior’. Everybody in the friendship group confesses to him. And while they tumble in and out of each other’s beds, none of them has ever slept with Nick. They all look up to him. Jessie even says that what they all feel for him is so special, it doesn’t even include lust.

The other three characters live in the same house with them. Paul Saknussen is a jock, muscular, but not a particularly intellectual guy. He’s got problems of his own at home: he’s just discovered that his mother slept with another man, and it turns out his dead father is not really his father. Now, his biological dad wants to meet him, but Paul doesn’t want to meet the guy at all, because his dad was never there.

Yvonne Latimer is a computer hacker in a small way. She strips the protective code from computer games and sells them as bootlegs. She’s got a very low self-esteem and basically sleeps with everybody who so much as comes on to her.

Marky Sales, is bisexual and incredibly sexually rapacious. He goes through sexual partners very, very quickly but in a bizarre way hates to be touched emotionally. On the physical side he loves to be touched, but he hates it when people have really seen him and have had sex with him, that they seem to think they’ve got some sort of claim on him.

So, that’s the core cast, they all go through hell in the story, some come out with a bit more self-knowledge, while others never come out at all.

BF: How does the title ‘Faker’ refer to the cast? Does it refer to each of them individually?

MC: Yes, it does. One of the things the story says about human nature and human relationships is that everybody lies and that a big part of our lives is built on lies. Some positive, some negative, some that we tell to spare and some to hurt people. There’s a point where Yvonne says to Jessie, "There’s the face you present to the world, and then there’s your real face.", and Jessie says, "You can’t believe that, there’s no real face, that’s just lie you tell yourself."

So, the title refers to each of them, but there’s one particular faker among them who’s very different than what he/she seems. And that’s the mystery of the book.

BF: The fact that the book is set during their freshman year, combined with you saying that our lives are all built on lies, is that why you set the book during the college periods because young people are at a crossroads and can still make a decision?

MC: That’s a good point. You’re right, at that time of your life your identity is still fluid, you’re still almost consciously creating a new identity, or having it created for you. When you leave home, you feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself and look to fill it up with another. It doesn’t mean it ever stops later in life, but the whole search for identity is much more acute during one’s college years.

BF: Why did you set the story at the University of Minneapolis? There are decidedly more groovy campuses in the US than that particular one…

MC: In one sense, it was an homage to the Coen brothers, I was thinking of the emotional flavour of Fargo —the main character in there, played by William h. Macy is incredibly self-diluted and I was thinking about that. At the time, I was also talking to Peter Gross a lot, who lives in Minnesota. (Lucifer artist), that’s where he lives.

Also, I just tend to try not to go for the obvious, but pick settings that are unusual so you can do unusual things with them. During winter, Minnesota is utterly, desperatedly, dangerously cold. My brother was a visiting lecturer at the University of Minneapolis once, and I drew from his stories about his time there as well, about what the cold was like and what it can do to you. All of those things came together.

BF: Does the cold play a part in the story then, in terms of how it affects the characters?

MC: Not really, it’s used more as an atmospheric background, but you can also look at it as having an emotional, symbolic meaning. These are people who are not good at intimacy; they’re not giving of themselves emotionally. Although, at the heart there’s ultimately a connection between two characters that do kind of open up to each other more deeply and fully.

BF: I’ve read the preview on the Vertigo website, where the group is dealing with experimental drugs… I assume your college years were nowhere near as extravagant as the one the students experience in the book? [Laughs]

MC: [Laughs] I’ve always been the most boring and conservative person you could possible imagine. My college friends never even offered me drugs. I dabbled, but my drug is alcohol… alcohol and science-fiction.

BF: I guess I can throw my next question out of the window then! I was about to ask if you’ve got any wild or weird college experiences you’d like to share. [Laughs]

MC: There was one time when myself and my girlfriend went out and we met up with a middle-aged guy who we vaguely knew from around college. We ended up chatting—he’s the party-type, loud and funny—and spent the evening with him. He had a friend who worked in the liquor trade, and we ended up drinking together and got completely pissed on really expensive, very very fine cognac. I’ve never been so drunk in my life before or since.

Then all of a sudden, he came on to the two of us… It was hard to extricate yourself politely from such a situation when you can’t even stand, so we made a very slow-motion run towards the door. The next morning, we were so hung-over, oh god!

Relating to Faker , it’s all fiction, though there may be a few things I’m referring to that are real.

BF: This marks your second time working with Jock as the two of you only did one issue of Hellblazer together. As a fellow Brit, was he at the top of your list of people you just had to work with sometime?

MC: Oh yeah, you bet. I absolutely loved his work on Losers. Actually, you could say this is the third time I worked with him. While I was writing 2000 AD , with Mike Perkins on art, Jock did a fantactic Carver Hale cover, where Carver was leaning into a wall, badly wounded and loading a shotgun with one hand. That was the first time I came across Jock’s work, and I was blown away by it then.

The Hellblazer issue we did together was probably the single best issue I did during my run. The way Jock rendered the London setting—it was a story that depended a lot on [that setting]—it was very beautiful and convincing.

BF: What I like especially about his art is that he’s got this unique way of establishing such a rich atmosphere with only a few, well-placed, gritty lines. Did the two of you approach Vertigo together?

MC: Not really. [Vertigo editor] Shelly Bond and I had q conversation and we drew up a short list, and Jock was very high up on there. Following that Hellblazer experience, I was very keen to work with him again.

He finished up on Losers at exactly the right time, so Shelly approached him right there and then, while we were still threshing out the details of the story, and asked him if he was interested.  As it turned out, his window was pretty narrow - he was shortly going to start work on Green Arrow Year One with Andy Diggle.  But he just about had room to fit us in, and he found the project interesting enough to say yes to...

BF: Is this a one-and-done kind of mini series?

MC: Yes, there won’t be a sequel. The way it’s set up the ending is very decisive and very final.

BF: Final question then, when it comes to mature readers books, do you ever see yourself setting one up for Marvel’s Icon line, or will Vertigo always be your preferred destination?

MC: I certainly wouldn’t rule out pitching to icon. I’ve never been invited to. But, when I’ve got a story idea like this, that fits in with a mature readers line, it sort of comes naturally to me to pitch it to Shelly first.

We’ve got such a good relationship together, which goes back to a decade now, dating back to the first time I went to San Diego. One way or another, we’ve been involved in projects ever since and I trust her instinctively as an editor.

Faker #1 goes on sale today. If you want to meet up with Mike, make sure to visit San Diego this year, or drop by one of the U.S. bookstores he’ll be signing at over the next few weeks.