FAMILIAR FACE - MICHEAL DEFORGE

I wonder how long it takes DeForge to make these things because this is the second one I’ve read this month that was published in 2020 and has very “2020” themes. Can he churn them out that fast? Is he just in tune with the general vibe and was able to make something resonant in this era in advance? They’re very intricate and seem like they would take a long time, but on the other hand he seems so comfortable in his style that you also get the sense that he might easily draw indefinitely out of sheer strange joy. Either way, the trend continues w/r/t the quality of plots. Like I said in the HEAVEN NO HELL review, the art has always been there. I’m not sure there has been a time where I haven’t loved the illustration. DeForge is so imaginative and far out and consistently unique. His choice of pallet and the thin, strange shapes he conjures and relies on really do it for me. I continue to have no complaints on this front. The stories, however, are getting better, or at least, sharper, as well. This one concerns a world where some central agency has the ability to alter any aspect of the world for any reason at any time. Obviously, they couch these changes as “to improve efficiency” but in reality the changes are often ambiguous at best. Transportation, housing, and individuals' physical bodies are altered so profoundly that characters can’t identify themselves in old photographs. There’s also rentable roommates, social unarrest, a dead-end job reading but ignoring complaints and characters emerging from giant eggs. At some point it appears that a terrorist organization also gains this ability to alter the world. Against this background the main character is trying to figure out why his girlfriend left him and what she’s up to and, maybe, if she’s joined the terrorists. It was pretty page-turny (I read it in a sitting) and surprisingly relevant to real-world concerns (not a quality I typically go to DeForge for). If I had any complaint it would be that I feel he glossed over the sexual implications of the constant transfiguration. DeForge hand-waves it away with a line about how it was exhausting not sexy to figure out your partner’s new body all the time but I don’t buy it. Give me more shape-shifting sex. Otherwise, the DeForge run continues. 2020 transfigurations.