Comic review: Intersect #1- Drug trip with water colours

Writer and artist: Ray Fawkes
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 19th November 2014


There wasn’t that many decent comic books out this week, and as I’m learning my lesson about taking a chance on Marvel and the rest of the corporate Police state comic books (why waste my money on something that is guaranteed to disapoint?) I instead decided to check out a strange book, a book that has confused people, even though the art is apparently quite decent.

That book is Intersect #1 by Ray Fawkes. I recognise the name from some of the old DC titles that I’ve stopped reading over the past year or so. I remember him as an occasionally thoughtful writer, but just another guy on the assembly line who churns out blah comics a bit too frequently for me to become a fan of his work. He’s the writer and artist in this book, and for a guy known for his writing I found it a bit surprising that the art was probably the best thing about the book.

That art is messy, blurry, confusing and it’s difficult to get a handle on the characters, what they look like, their gender, their age and even where they are as they speak their vague and confusing dialogue. Despite the confusion though I did like the watercolour/abstract quality of it all. It has an experimental studenty feel to it, a freedom that is outside of commercial considerations, and although it’s a big confusing mess it’s a very pretty big confusing mess, and the freedom that it brings is quite refreshing to see in a comic book today.

The problem of course is that the story itself is probably even more confusing than the art. It is very, very, very self-indulgent. It’s confusing just for the sake of being confusing. There’s no consideration given for readability or narrative enjoyment here, at all. It’s a puzzle, something to do with bodies blending into each other, personalities being confused and there’s a bit of a chase going on as well. No context is given, and you don’t know who the characters are. How can you identify with a blur? It’s impossible, and Ray Fawkes isn’t really trying to help us out here.

It’s a difficult book, and I can’t see too many people looking forward to reading issue #2. It’s too confusing, too experimental, too self-indulgent and simply put, not enough fun for most comic book readers to be bothering with. I’m sure that Ray Fawkes is saying something here about the nature of mind, body, identity and society, but it’s almost completely incomprehensible and lacks a strong narrative or characters to identify with. I’m going to file this book away as something that was quite nice to look at, but it’s ultimately not worth following just in the hope that in six months time it will all start to make some kind of sense. That’s not enough for me. I like intelligent books, but being deliberately vague and confusing without readability is taking things just a little bit too far.

Rating: 4/10