Faithless vol. 1

Faith is a twentysomething living in New York with a keen interest in the ways of magic.  It basically amounts to a bunch of weird-looking doodles in her notebook, but she keeps hoping that it’ll spring into something more.  Then she meets Poppy and things start becoming magical.  Not only is Poppy a skilled lover, she introduces Faith to an exclusive side of the city that she could only dream about entering before.  Poppy also has a father who takes a keen interest in Faith as well, as he looks to nurture her artistic side.  The only way our protagonist could be happier is if people around her stopped dying suddenly.  From a stalker of Polly’s, to a couple of her friends, it almost feels like the universe is trying to send Faith a message about the path she’s on.  The question is whether or not Faith is having too much fun in her new life to notice.

After the whole “Batpenis” debacle at DC, Brian Azzarello took his latest creator-owned project, with artist Maria Llovet, to the folks at BOOM! who have no problems with penises, vaginas, boobs, and sex in general in their comics.  I’m mentioning all this because “Faithless” is a sexually frank series that has its characters engaging in all kinds of trysts, and some sex-themed death and retribution scenes as well.  This is not a comic for prudes, in other words.  As to whether or not it’s all relevant to the story, I’d say it’s tied in well enough with Llovet making it all look enticing and horrifying as needed.

The problem is with the story itself.  “Faithless’” first volume comes off like a bog-standard story of someone losing themselves as they forsake their friends in moving up the social ladder.  To Azzarello’s credit, he does a good job of selling the idea that Faith would be genuinely tempted by what’s laid out in front of her.  He’s just going to be hard pressed to come up with an end to this story that doesn’t see his protagonist punished for her decisions, or deciding to ditch it all and go back to being an ordinary person.  The supernatural trappings to this story do allow it to stand out a bit from stories with similar plots, but not by much.  If anything, the story could’ve used some more devilish details to liven things up.