Broken Frontier

During the last great party in New York, where were you? Who did you meet and what kinds of crazy stories do you have to tell? Forgetless #1, written by Nick Spencer and released by Image Comics, begins one of these epic and ensemble-casted party stories.

The comic is told partly backwards and split into two stories with art by Scott Forbes & Marley Zarcone, each handling half of the book. Their art styles are wildly different, but mash up well together and fit with the tone of each plot.  One can assume these converging stories will at one point meet due to their shared plot device of the Forgetless. The possibility that these two artists might get to jam within the page would be a very interesting thing to see.

Forgetless is an all-night, ravestyle party in New York City and defined with an urban legend quality. To the characters, anything can happen at Forgetless. Making comparisons to Studio 54 in its heyday wouldn’t be inappropriate, especially in the second story, which focuses on the event’s nigh legendary reputation.

In the first story we follow Sara & Sonia, aspiring models by day and by night… well, they run special errands. Sonia’s first assignment is a Forgetless attendee, which brings our “heroines” to the scene. This chapter is told backwards, beginning with a piece of the future that wildly contradicts the excerpts from the characters’ collective present. It’s a very subtle and intriguing misdirection that this reader assumed was a typo at first. It’s a great hook.

Another fun story device utilized is the substitute of thought balloons and text boxes with Twitter style tweets dispersed within the panel. These are deliberately used to progress the story or give you an insight into a character’s thoughts and could have easily become novel or annoying. We’re left on a cliffhanger involving a gun, giant koala and that unresolved hook. Color me primed for the next part of Sara & Sonia’s tale.

The second story is unlike its predecessor in the fact that it’s told in a linear fashion and is a lot more whimsical in nature. This tale revolves around three South Jersey teenagers who have always wanted to attend Forgetless and this might be their last chance. With no money, no car and no fake ID’s, we follow them as they start to remove these obstacles in wicked and funny ways.  The switch is jarring at first, but the story and characters are handled with such charm that the pacing trespasses are forgiven by book’s end.

A first issue is a very tricky endeavor. It has to establish so many things very quickly that an incorrect balance can prove disastrous. Nick Spencer does a fine job of putting all the pieces on the board in as entertaining a way as possible.