Comics: Young Liars

by Teresa Jusino

A friend of mine and I recently discussed the fact that the difference between our generation and previous generations is that we have replaced sincerity with irony and sarcasm.  Everything is a reference.  Everything is trying so hard to be so hip. We had this conversation after I read the recently released first collection of David Lapham’s Young Liars from Vertigo, and it helped me put into words why I disliked it so much.

“Daydream Believer”, which collects issues #1-6, tells the story of Danny Noonan, a twenty-something loser for whom the only important thing in life is his relationship with Sadie, a once-promising rock singer whose life was forever changed by a bullet being lodged in her brain.  Now, she has lost every single one of her inhibitions and needs to be babysat by Danny as she pursues any and all stimuli.  Of course, that isn’t all, because comics today have to be badass and raw.  So, there’s an attempted heist, running from Sadie’s crazy father’s henchmen, rape and lots of killing, drug use, someone getting his penis chopped off…and all the while, there’s a “killer soundtrack.”

Because the thing I need most when reading something is a killer soundtrack. **

In his introduction to the collection, Gerard Way (whose work on The Umbrella Academy I love) praises the book in part for containing characters he hated at first but grew to love despite their being despicable, and that this is typical of David Lapham’s work.  That comment made me want to stay away from Stray Bullets.  The characters in Young Liars are not characters I love to hate, or hate but grow to love.  They are characters I start out hating and end up despising. Scratch that.  Despise is too strong a word. By the end, I couldn’t care less about any of them, and I have no interest in reading the rest of their story.  Danny Noonan is a pitiful, narcissistic child whose faux-profound narration of the story is completely inane.  He reads like the guys I hated in college.  The rest of the characters are spoiled, entitled rich people who have big dreams but don’t actually do anything about them.  Even “Big C”, a recovering groupie who’s gotten into Fordham University for social work has gotten distracted by the debauchery and the allure of a crime.

I wanted to like Sadie. There is something appealing about living vicariously through a female character that isn’t afraid to water-ski off the back of a cruise ship, fight gang members, or sleep with anyone who strikes her fancy.  Yet none of this is empowering or remotely interesting after a while.  All of that “fun” loss of inhibition stems from serious problems that exist not to make a character complex, or tell a good story, but to create fodder for a sexual fantasy.  Of course Sadie’s been raped and had an abusive, crazy father.  Of course she was shot in the head by a guy who thought he owned her, and is now physically incapable of not being a splooge-bucket for every man she comes across.  And of course she needs Danny to control her.  Because, as we all know, there aren’t actually women who like sex a lot, or can hold their own in a fight.  Awesome women like that have to be created by men and bullets, and even then, only to serve.

Despicable characters would be tolerable if the story were worth it, but it was told so badly and was trying so hard to be a Tarantino movie that I could barely follow what was going on.  The device of starting every issue with two rock songs got old and annoying really fast, and there was nothing to make the parade of violence, insensitivity, debauchery, and criminal activity palatable, interesting, or even remotely human. Young Liars gives twenty-somethings everywhere a bad name.

I have to say that I do like David Lapham’s art.  Perhaps he should reconsider writing things…

** Sarcasm. See?  I am a product of my generation.  Also, I’m being self-referential right now.  Awesome.  And just think - Young Liars was too insincere for me.

TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. She has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan, which beat up her Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man crush in a fight proving once again that writing skill trumps gadget skill even when that gadget skill is attached to bulging biceps.  Teresa is also an aspiring fangbanger.  Visit her in The Red Room.

Liar [With Earbuds] (Playaway Young Adult)

Secrets and Liars: Young, Loaded and Fabulous (Young Loaded & Fabulous) (v. 2)

Warriors of Plasm # 6 ~ Defiant Comics ~ David Lapham

Young Liars Vol. 3: Rock Life

Staring at the Sun