Faithless vol. 2

Faith left her old struggling artist life behind at the end of the first volume.  While the implication was that she may have lost her soul (figuratively and literally) in the process, vol. 2 doesn’t dwell on that a whole lot.  Now that Faith has thrown in her lot with Poppy, her uncle Louis, and friend-with-benefits Solomon, she’s living the high life in Italy.  The only struggling she has to do here is in deciding what to paint next as Faith has become the next enfant terrible of the art world.  She’s got fame, fortune, and some very experienced lovers to cater to every sexual need she’s thought of (and maybe a few she hasn’t).  There is the lingering doubt she has over who Poppy and Louis really are, but that’s easy to push away between everything they provide.  At least, it is until a certain homeless woman shows up in the city to let Faith know exactly what forces she’s playing with here.

To their credit, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Maria Llovet managed to find a new way to disappoint me with this volume.  That they managed to avoid the obvious route here was certainly impressive.  It was actually fun seeing Faith enjoy the perks of her new life as you fully expect these kinds of stories to try and sell you on the hollowness of upper class life.  Not “Faithless.”  Azzarello and Llovet are here to let you know that there are perks to possibly having bartered away parts of your soul by palling around with The Devil Himself (his name’s Louis, I mean, c’mon…) and his favorite nice.  It’s not an approach I’ve seen practiced too often, which adds to its appeal here.

The problem is that vol. 2 starts feeling like the middle part of a trilogy by its end.  This is mainly due to a reveal in the penultimate issue which begs to be explored in greater detail and a finale which is far too ambiguous to be satisfying.  Unfortunately, there’s no indication as to when Azzarello and Llovet will get around to delivering it as they’re both currently busy with other creator-owned projects.  That they’re leaving this series unfinished is disappointing and something that casts a pall over this volume equal to the moralizing that I thought I was going to get from it.