MY FAITH IN FRANKIE'S MIKE CAREY & SONNY LIEW

[MattBrady]

by Matt Brady and Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

Two guys and one girl. No, it’s not the most recent spam in your in box, it’s the setup for Mike Carey and Sonny Liew’s My Faith in Frankie, a four issue Vertigo miniseries debuting in January. Since it’s Vertigo, one of the guys is dead, and the other is a god. Don’t worry – it gets clearer.

“It’s a Vertigo romance book, with everything that implies,” Carey told Newsarama. “A Vertigo romantic comedy, even. What we've got, essentially, is a love triangle where two guys are after the same girl. It's just that in this case one of the guys - Jeriven- is a god and the other - Dean - rose from the dead back when he was a kid. Needless to say there's more to it than that, but the emotional focus of the book is Frankie's having to choose between these two guys who both say they love her. And along the way we get enough of the backstory to see what else is at stake in the choice. We also get a lot of crazy complications as some of the characters are revealed to have agendas that they're not being entirely up front about.

“It's also a story about friendship, and how friendship and romance get jostled and derailed by each other sometimes. Because there's a fourth side in this triangle, as it were - Frankie's long-time best friend Kay Watson, who is a much quieter and more serious person than Frankie but absolutely devoted to her. And Kay is absolutely bound up in everything that goes on in the book, including the consequences of Frankie's final decision.”

When asked where one gets such a concept as a dead boy and a god competing for the love of a girl, Carey came clean – he doesn’t know. “I think the relationship between Frankie and her little personal god came first, because that was something I'd tried to shoehorn into other pitches over the last couple of years,” the writer said. “Then at some point I just thought ‘stop trying to nail a story to this and look at it - this is a story.’ Once I got to thinking about how a relationship might work, the whole romance/faith/deceit dynamic all came tumbling out in a rush on the first go. It was suddenly amazingly easy.”

As for the origins of the romances, one doesn’t just leap head-first into love. Frankie was friends with Jeriven and Dean first. “In both cases Frankie knew these guys for a long time before they started making passes at her,” Carey said. “But really, she attracts them because of who she is. Frankie is a pretty amazing person - Kay describes her at one point as a golden child. Everything she's wanted has always come to her: some of that is because she's got her own personal god, of course, but then you're in a chicken-and-egg situation. She's the sort of girl who automatically becomes the center of gravity wherever she is: I think everyone knows someone like that. But as we'll show, it can be as much of a curse as a blessing to be someone who gets noticed and someone who things happen to.

“So, they've all known each other from earliest childhood onwards, and that's a very important aspect of the book. In terms of storytelling, we're constantly flashing back to the origins of these relationships, back when all the protagonists - apart from Jeriven, were about five or six years old. Sonny and Marc have done this parallel, flashback narrative in a very different style from the rest of the book - a wonderfully appropriate style, with overtones of fifties and sixties newspaper comic strips. And they're colored accordingly by the very talented Brian Miller. They're a joy to read.

“Because of the way we've done it, you're learning more about the main characters and their backstories all the way through, and what you're learning tends to change the way you feel about what's happening in the present-day story. There's a back-and-forth interplay, rather than ‘here's how this all started - now we return you to the main storyline.’ It seemed to go with the overall story dynamic very well.”

So – back to the storyline, just what do the two suitors have to offer Frankie? Obviously, they’re coming at this relationship from completely different ends of the spectrum. “Dean - the ex-dead guy - is stupendously good looking and has the cockiness and confidence that go with that,” Carey said. “He's Frankie's natural opposite number, if you like - the obvious favorite in the race. Jeriven, although he's basically omnipotent, at least when we first meet him, is much more diffident and indirect. It's hard for him even to articulate his feelings. He's basically watched over Frankie in a god-like, protective way ever since she was born. And as she's grown up that protectiveness has changed into something else - but it's changed so subtly that he's scarcely aware of it himself at first. So he keeps on telling himself he's still looking out for her when in reality he's stopping her from meeting and forming relationships with other guys.

“So on the face of it, there's no real contest. Jeriven has to change the rules of the game to get a look-in - which is one of the reasons why things start to get a bit complicated and fraught for all concerned.”

And as you may have figured, My Faith in Frankie isn’t set quite within the reality we’re all living in. “It's one of these stories where you just have to accept the one ludicrous premise,” Carey said. “In this case, it's that there's a city where the gods live, and mostly they keep themselves to themselves, but every so often one of them will wander on down to our world and have a look around. Everything else springs from that, and there's an absolutely consistent internal logic.”

So – all of that said, and the pieces together in your head, would you have pitched it as a miniseries? If you’re finding yourself on the fence, Carey has some advice – “That's the great thing about Vertigo. If you've got an insane idea, they're always the ones to take it to.

“I submitted a one-page pitch to Shelly [Bond], who showed it to Karen [Berger], and they both said, ‘go for it.’ It was the quickest approval process I've ever been through! It was always going to be a love or hate thing, I think: you look at where the story is going to go and how the climax plays out and it either clicks for you or it doesn't. Personally I think it's the most original and engaging thing I've done - and fortunately Shelly agreed.”

Bond did more than agree – she also suggested Carey think about adding artist Sonny Liew to the mix. “It was an inspired choice. He'd never done anything for a US publisher before - he's best known for the Malinky Robot books, and I don't think they're even available in the US yet. But he'd been sending samples to Shelly, and she already had him in the back of her mind as someone to use if the right project came along. The stroke of genius was seeing that Frankie was the right project.

“Sonny's style is eclectic but totally unique. He's got a clarity and a clean line that sometimes remind me of Moebius, but the whimsical humor that goes with that is all his own. He draws lovely, convincing characters and fantastic, spectacularly detailed settings. There are a million visual grace notes in this story - sight gags, repetitions, delayed pay-offs and so on - and I'm responsible for about a hundred of them.”

So where did this Liew guy come from anyway? Got a map?

The aspiring illustrator and painter graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001, where he even took some lessons with David Mazzuchelli. Prior to that, he studied philosophy at the Cambridge University, UK. Born in Malaysia, Liew is now residing in Singapore.

Technically though, Frankie isn’t Liew’s first comic work over here. The artist did an Iron Man piece for the Marvel Universe 2001 Millennial Visions. “It was just a one-page splash with a short written piece on the side,” Liew said. “I was offered an issue of Muties and a short story in X-Men Unlimited but had to turn both down to work on the Vertigo thing.”

And adding to Carey’s view of his art as eclectic, Liew described his own style as “a bit of [Bill] Plympton, and a bit of [Frank] Frezetta. My own tastes in comics run from Chris Ware to Kaz [aka Larry Katzman], Tony Millionaire and Simon Bisley. Otomo always blows my mind. Charles Burns, Bill Watterson… I really could go on.”

But Liew isn’t the only artist on the miniseries. It’s also got an inker of note. “I feel I've got to gush in stereo - because the inks, of course, are by Marc Hempel, and they also had a transforming effect on the book,” Carey said. “As a writer I sometimes find the esoterics of the penciller/inker relationship a bit... well, esoteric. I know in theory you can have inking that brings out the best in the pencils and inking that obscures or obstructs them. But I'd never seen it so spectacularly demonstrated as here. Marc's inks are so sympathetic and so skilful that they add a layer of vibrancy and articulation to the art all by themselves.”

And it all fits in under the Vertigo banner…pretty much, given the imprint’s tendency to reinvent itself. “If we're looking at this in relation to previous Vertigo projects it's hard to find anything to directly compare it to,” Carey said. “Structurally it's a bit like Girl - lots of short chapters, lots of chopping and changing with point of view. In tone it's more like Nevada, in that there's a lot of comedy and it sometimes has a slightly black edge. And in terms of subject matter it's like the Vertigo romance anthologies. Mix with three parts sex and one part religion, shake well.”

After the shaking, that’s that. My Faith in Frankie was designed to tell one story, and that’s what it’s doing. “You could just about imagine a sequel, but it would probably involve a different set of characters, a la Sam Kieth,” Carey said. “I think it's fairly unlikely there'll be a My Faith in Frankie II, but if there is, the tag-line would have to be ‘This time, it's ecumenical.’”

[gwangung]

Sounds like a fun book...different, offbeat and potentially a great read.

[Fazhoul]

Man, that looks completely bizarre. I might have to check that out when it hits the stands.

[Matthew Smith]

If Marc Hempel is involved in any way, shape, or form, I'm all over that puppy.

--Matthew

[krisboose]

Actually the first issue of Malinky Robot is already out over here in the States...it's a Xeric winner I think and my shop got it in through Cold Cut....it's also already been solicited in Diamond's Previews a month or so back. I totally recommend it. It's beautiful pencil work and a quirky little story. This new Vertigo book will be a nice one. Thanks for letting us know about it. Keep up the good work!!

Peace,
Kris

[Zadillo]

This looks really interesting...... love the art, and writing looks good (I like Mike Carey already from Lucifer and Hellblazer). Will definitely pick this up. Looks like it should be a lot of fun.... I love the idea too.

-Zadillo

[Philip A Moore]

this searies sound like it will be fun

I love Mike Carey's work on Hellblazer as for the art it's beutiful but I could see Mark hempels inks in it before I notices he was the inker. I at first thought it was just simularity or influince It especially noticable in the third picture frame

GOOD DAY

[DarthRandall]

Looks and sounds quirky enough that it just might work. Love that art, and you can definitely see a Hempel-quality to it.

[Rand]

This looks brilliant.

With all the CG titles being axed, I guess I have money to invest in independents like these.

[blankpoint]

With all the CG titles being axed, I guess I have money to invest in independents like these.

It's precisely because there's good material like this consistently put out by Vertigo that I never had to bother with CG comics, or any other upstart pseudo-superhero publisher.

[blackandwhite]

looks good.

gonna check this out.

[Johnny Bacardi]

I wanted to delete my post, but the site won't let me.