REVIEW: Faithless III No.2

For a story like “Faithless” the creators sure have plenty of faith in Boom Studios to continue to produce this book and not censor it any further than the erotica variants in solicits. I opened issue two and far from expected to see a phallus squirting out blood, various forms of beastiality, enough visage’s of face – to nether – region action that would make a human centipede blush, and a group of catfish who hold the position of wet nurses, but this just another ordinary day in Azzarello and LLovet’s special part of hell called “Faithless”. It truly is hard to ignore the essence of this book mired in vulgarity and utter shock value on nearly every page. As said in the tale, “You cant unsee genius, and it’s fucking brilliant”. The marriage of Azzarello’s gruff writing is captured in every pen stroke of Llovet’s art, making for a dizzying tale that can be the cause of nausea and arousal – just like falling in lust.

Speaking of Dizzy-ing, Azzarello brings the noir crime-drama featured in his “100 Bullets” saga to this tale by putting together an expose of elitists at their most taboo and glamourous. Faithless III is Gossip Girl meets X-rated Whedon fanfic touched with enough mystery to satisfy any readers of “The Good Asian” all the way back to “Dick Tracy”. If the previous “Faithless” volumes were about an artists’ rise to fame, then this is the story of the pressures that surround an artist at the height of their fame. The characters are cool as ever as they use the language of seduction as interchangeable as a afro-latina may speak Spanglish or a Haitian-American conversation divided into portions of Creole and English.

“Faithless III” No.2 is a thing of absolute beauty as for every blood drenched phallus, there are two women having casual coitus in the pews of a Catholic church. This is Azzarello’s Levyian opus, with this book, this man has earned the point in his goatee. And as for Llovet, woe betide any vendor for putting her books in the adult section of a comic book shop. Because if Michelangelo could decorate the Sistine Chapel with chubby naked cherubs and call that high art, then Llovet’s visage of the vagina being pleasured by demons, deserves an exhibit at Art Basel, annually.

Score : 5/5

(W) Brian Azzarello (A/CA) Maria Llovet