While some pop comics focus on trying to evoke emotions through particular musical references, that’s not the tack that David Lapham took with his (sadly short-lived) Young Liars series. Two song titles emblazoned on a cassette appear at the start of each chapter, giving emotional cues to the action that follows; from then on, music is used for tone and subtext, not name-checked specifics. It goes straight for the heart, loads up on attitude and swagger, and delivers the results at maximum volume.
Lapham spins a tale of a young couple on the run, their circle of friends, and the constantly-shifting terrible circumstances that befall them. From the opening pages, it’s a joyride of images and faces and random bloodshed, lust and speed and passion and rebellion and youthful indiscretions. Linear thought, logic, and literalism are three qualities that get disposed of straightaway, in favor of adrenaline rushes, hits of amphetamine, and a beat we can dance to.
The plot is episodic to the point of irrelevance; less straight Point A to Point B and more massive swirls of hyper-violence and shouting and running and dancing. Guitars blaze, gunfire crackles, the world is given over to the bizarre and inexplicable, and the pace never lets up. While we’re busy being dazzled by heinous crimes and wild getaways, different realities are created and disposed of. Corporate tyranny, alien invasion, juvenile delinquency, furious action, sickening bloodshed, playing in a band, taking the world by storm – elements nodded to, discarded, then brought back and reassembled in a different order. The characters go to clubs, play records, sing along, internalize the music, and feed it back in waves of chaos and wild excitement.
The art and writing are perfectly aligned, Lapham’s jagged figures filling the pages, his words pressed into the edges and running into the action. It reads as a story governed only by the subconscious, a punk-glam whirlwind that does a thing, gets bored, blows it all up and starts over. It’s an awesome example of a work where an artist has nobody to second-guess him, the creator as auteur pushing right to the edge of self-destruction, never making sense when nonsense serves just as well.
Young Liars has massive flaws, certainly, but it manages the classic punk trick of turning those problems into advantages. It’s audacious, it gives no easy answers, it refuses to follow convention, it baffles at every twist and turn, and it’s endlessly compelling as a result. It’s a series that could have lasted far longer, but was cut down in its prime. It’s confusing, it’s noisy, it’s angry, it’s exuberant, it’s like nothing else you’ll ever read. It’s a comic that succeeds by simply embodying the most visceral aspects of rock and roll: taking the music’s energy and attitude and channeling it into a breakneck joyride of guitars and mayhem and youthful indiscretion.
Young Liars has been collected into three paperbacks- Vol. 1: Daydream Believer, Vol. 2: Maestro, and Vol. 3: Rock Life.
The complete series of our Pop Music Comics articles can be found here.
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