The Wretched Soul Of An Artist: Faithless #4 Reviewed
by Josh Davison
[*Mild Spoilers Ahead!]
Faith opens up to her friends about her sexual experience with Louis and how she saw Aya’s face during it. She knows that it was nothing, but it still spooked her. Max drunkenly gives her hell over having sex with someone so soon after Aya’s death. Faith meets up with Louis again afterwards, and he opens up to her about how he sees the world. He then uses Faith to make his art, the making of which tears Faith open and leaves her feeling betrayed.
Faithless #4 dives headfirst into Faith’s new relationship with Louis, the prolific artist who is also the father of Poppy. It is a strange one, and elements seem somewhat abusive–until Louis uses Faith for his art, the process of which is unambiguously abusive.
Much of the comic consists of Louis telling Faith about how he views the world, sex, and art. This segment is interesting, and it reveals Louis to be an extreme narcissist with some nihilism on the side. His art consists of ambushing Faith, on camera, about a touchy and painful part of her past. Louis’ team take photos as Faith gets more uncomfortable and eventually bursts into tears. It’s pretty horrible, though Louis does make a somewhat decent argument for its status as “art.”
The closing sequence in this comic takes the supernatural elements to a bizarre new level, showing a character having a vision that can only be described as a mixture of John Carpenter’s The Thing and the artwork of H. R. Giger.
Maria Llovet continues to impress in both the tender scenes and the horrific ones. The comic seems to want to show how close those two concepts can be, and Llovet rolls with the punches with a seeming ease. Her color art is fantastic as well; Llovet’s ability to mix shades is sometimes breathtaking.
Faithless #4 is another compelling mixture of eroticism and horror. Faith’s wandering travel through the upper-crust art scene gives revelations to both she and the reader that are both shocking and gripping. This comic gets a recommendation for sure. Feel free to give it a read.
Faithless #4 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 Jenny Frisson and Dave Rubin.
Final Score: 8.5/10
