It’s a golden age of sorts for the graphic novel format, with the medium building upon the respect it has long enjoyed across Europe as a profoundly sophisticated storytelling medium, aided by established US and UK artists such as Alison Bechdel, Adrian Tomine and Alice Oseman shifting significant units, inspiring TV, film and theatre projects, and ushering in newer waves of talent.
Ireland’s own comics community continues to evolve in an intriguing fashion, with the recent Dublin Comic Arts Festival confirming the rude health of the community, and an inspired new store in the capital, Little Deer, specialising in small press titles.
After a trio of well-received works, notably his breakthrough travel memoir Americana (And the Act of Getting Over It), The Con Artists sees Dublin-born, London-based author, illustrator and comedian Healy graduating to the major leagues — it’s published by Faber here, and Drawn & Quarterly in the US — with a work that feels like a formidable talent coming into his own.
While an illustrated Healy introduces this “love story” himself, he immediately goes to pains to stress that the tale soon to unfold is entirely fictional, before changing outfit, donning an unwieldy fake moustache and entering the narrative.
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Meet Frank, an anxiety-ridden queer comic who privately harbours delusions of grandeur, whose life is gradually hijacked by a childhood friend, Giorgio, who reaches out to him after being hit by a bus. From here, Frank finds himself serving as his shifty friend’s carer, while giving a series of increasingly awkward stand-up gigs, struggling with his mental health, and coming to odds with a crumbling friendship well past its sell-by date.
A deceptively episodic narrative tackles any number of resonant themes, from arrested adolescence and the stories we tell, to the need for boundaries, and the lack thereof; this is a profoundly millennial work, infused with a deadpan sensibility that befits the anxieties of our Insta-age. That sensibility informs the artwork, its impeccable comic timing and deft, spare swagger — an extended sequence where our protagonist experiences a sudden panic attack after unintentionally placing himself front and centre in his friend’s deceptive schemes may induce flashbacks in any reader who’s experienced similar anxieties.
In its own quiet, unassuming fashion, this sad, silly and occasionally beautiful book resonates.
