Magic And Sexual Frustration In Faithless #1
by Josh Davison
[*Mild Spoilers Ahead!]
Faith is a sexually frustrated young woman with a group friends who like to mess with her. Their favorite target is Faith’s attempts to practice magic. After a hangout, Faith accidentally spills her drink on another young woman named Poppy. Faith and Poppy spend the rest of the day together, and it involves more magic, a suicide, a $100, and nighttime party.
Faithless #1 is a pseudo-day-in-the-life tale that centers around Faith and her tribulations of the day. It centers around two themes: magic and sexual frustration. In fairness, doesn’t everyone’s day center around those two things?
Faith is an engaging protagonist with quirks and relatable issues (as we’ve established). She’s mostly trying to live her indeterminately-aged life and wring some enjoyment out of it all.
Poppy is something of a manic-pixie-dream girl, but the childlike innocence is replaced with a very dark sense of humor. The aforementioned suicide has numerous jokes made at its expense. It honestly resembled Chloe from Life is Strange bringing Max out of her straight-laced shell (to mix my metaphors a bit).
That said, Poppy is funny. It’s hard not to get some enjoyment out of her jokes even in the darkest moments of the comic.
The ending throws quite a twist, and I’m still not sure what it was indicating. It certainly made for some shocking and memorable imagery though.
Speaking of imagery artist Maria Llovet brings a distinct and personalized style which creates a genuinely unique lens by which we see these characters. Everyone has their own unique look, characters are made to be highly expressive, and the color palette is tame enough to suit the day-in-the-life plot while popping enough to keep the eye trained on the page.
Faithless #1 makes for a compelling first issue and presents the reader with fascinating characters. I’m far from sure where this comic is going, but that’s honestly a refreshing feeling. The cover promises “the tradition of the Divine Comedy,” and I’m eager to see what it means by that. In any case, this one gets a recommendation. Check it out.
Faithless #1 comes to us from writer Brian Azzarello, artist Maria Llovet, letters from Andworld Design, cover artist Paul Pope with Daniel Semanas, and variant cover artists Lee Bermejo, Tula Lotay, and Mirka Andolfo.
