Broken Frontier

A circle of friends return for spring semester at a Minnesota college, though one of their number – Nick Philo, everyone’s favorite – seems to be mysteriously forgotten by everyone but these friends. How? Why? How can someone cease to exist, yet retain their physical place, and also all previous ties but only to a select few? The answer (or so the buzz proclaims) promises to blow readers’ minds, and while we wait, the concept of identity is thoroughly explored within the pages of Faker.

Mike Carey is a phenomenal comic book writer, but Faker is not his strongest offering. The notion is an intriguing one, and the script itself is very well done – as with all the best weird tales, it takes its time, establishes the characters, and slowly crawls toward its more outrageous, inexplicable content.

Sadly, Carey falls victim to the worst habit of the mature writer when penning the voices of youth: all the characters are unlikable, shallow, and little more than cardboard cut-outs of honest individuals (perhaps a plot point?). Is this youth? Well, on the surface, perhaps, but such is usually the awkwardly composed social persona, the desperate attempt to control an otherwise hormone-riddled life. Yet in fiction, and particularly in Faker #1, even though we see these kids in their most private moments as well as their most public, there’s no distinction, no personality, no depth, and no reason to (frankly) give a toss.

This may all have a purpose, a set-up to explore the point and content of sincerity and personal identity, but it’s nonetheless a lazy approach. The plot is dense enough to have me return for more, but I’m no less disappointed by Carey’s unconsidered handling of Faker’s cavalcade of persona non grata. A flawed character, even a callous one, doesn’t have to be so elemental in their chicanery, and indeed shouldn’t be.

The art by Jock is very suiting the material, though, the characters looking wonderfully real – sexy, filthy, and average only in very human, amalgamate ways, every one a combination of the above rather than an ideal of one or the another. If only Carey could have been so deft. A solid book, if wholly unsubtle and overwrought.