Writer, Artist, and Cover: David Lapham; Colors: Lee Loughridge; Letters: Jared K Fletcher
What’s a comics cotillion? Look here for the answer.
Danny Noonan might be the unluckiest protagonist of any comic book currently on the stands. Since Young Liars began, he’s set himself on fire, been castrated by a midget, and beheaded by the girl of his dreams. Or, at least that’s what he’s telling us. The problem with Danny, of course, is that he’s a liar, and he’s certainly not above changing a detail of his past to evoke pity or horror from us, or to cast himself as the hero or the villain of his story.
Spoilers, as always, after the jump:
The thirteenth issue picks up almost immediately after the strange conclusion to #12, which saw Danny reintroducing himself to his girlfriend Sadie, or rather Johnny Jukebox introducing himself to Lorelei. I had initially read their new names as signs that Danny and Sadie had escaped the machinations of the evil Brown Bag retail empire and the Spiders from Mars, but the new issue quickly reveals that the pair have fallen deeper into their clutches than ever before.
Danny – er, Johnny Jukebox – is living a warped version of the rock and roll dream: wild sex, wilder bacchanals, and, of course, lots and lots of free drugs. Of course, something’s wrong: Johnny’s trapped and no matter what he tries, he can’t escape the endless cycle of crazy parties. He drives a truck over the tomato garden: it’s back the following day. He burns his house down: it’s completely rebuilt by the time he comes back from the store. His best friend is murdered: well, Johnny doesn’t think they can fix that, but we know he’s wrong – Johnny’s pal Kenny is Danny’s pal Kenny, who was beheaded by Pinkertons way back in the second issue.
That’s not the only time that this issue resonates with past installments of Young Liars: Annie X has evidently been posing as nurse named Jackie, who provides all the free drugs for Johnny’s parties. Her role here hearkens back to issue #8, where Danny imagines her as an agent for the Spiders from Mars, spying on his life with Sadie in Los Angeles. Annie/Jackie’s presence raises some interesting questions: until the twelfth issue, I had been treating each issue as if it were just one more lie Danny was telling the reader. Annie X’s role as an agent of the Spiders was just another piece of his delusion to me. But, in #12, when Danny woke up in a mental institution whose existence was somehow more difficult to take seriously than the crazy events of Danny’s life, I began to wonder whether all of the insanity was somehow true, despite all of the internal contradictions. What if Danny lied about being a liar?
Actually, I think even that question misses the point. I’m no longer sure whether the difference between lies and truth is all that important to Young Liars. Sure, Danny’s an unreliable narrator. You can’t trust his words, nor can you even trust the images that the book’s art displays. But he’s also the only narrator we’re going to get. In a sense, that makes everything he tells us “real.”
Stray Notes:
- Kenny’s appearance sent me back to the second issue: remember how Danny’s hit single “Suicide Dreams” ran through its narration boxes? That song told the story of a desperate man named Johnny. Is Danny now living the life of the man he sang about?
- Browing, Arizona home of the Brown Bag retail empire seems is laid out like an enormous spider web.
- Apparently, killing Kenny was a no-no. That’s the guy from Tunetown that the Pinkertons murder at the party, isn’t it?
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