Junction True by Ray Fawkes and Vince Locke
| Junction True by Ray Fawkes and Vince Locke | |
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| Category: Graphic Novels | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A very pertinent and timely horror piece that is so different from the author's self-created titles as to be untrue. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 128 | Date: January 2016 |
| Publisher: Top Shelf Productions | |
| ISBN: 9781891830990 | |
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Take yourself down to any nearby university campus, fast food or coffee outlet or dole office and you will see them – countless young people with too many tattoos, piercings, flesh-rings and, quite frankly, what counts as even worse that I'd rather not think about. You haven't seen the future of this, however, although Ray Fawkes has, and it's not nice. This is a near-future where people inject parasites to create moving tattoos, where body modification has reached untold limits – except people are still keen to push those limits, to the extent they lose their humanity…
This counts as a very colourful vampire story, and I mean that colour to be strikingly pertinent. A lot about this book is striking. I say a vampire story and not a novel or book, as in the grand scheme of things this does read as a self-contained story, and not a lengthier, wider opus. This concerns a lad who wants to become completely reliant and subservient on the partner in his sub/dom relationship, while she… well, she's not as rarefied as the creatures of the night, but she's definitely a queenly scenester. The third major character is our heroine, not averse to some facial puncturing herself, who is collecting testimony about the damage the legal processes can cause – and what our other two interests are planning is anything but legal…
Something else to strike one is the artwork – in complete contrast to the future tech of this book, where people have sort of Bluetooth earpieces that translate what they see and hear into their immediate blog page or video journalism, we get painted illustrations. Sometimes it's not quite where it should be in showing faces and character, but when there's a breast-less female figure, or a drug active on the proceedings (a drug people imbibe by licking people's tears, no less) the design craft is still more than evident enough.
If you want what is even more striking, just consider the previous, self-created books by this author – intelligent, multi-faceted, multi-tale concepts. As I suggest if you reduce this to the vampire format you only have the race-against-time prevention plot to distinguish it from the usual narrative, but by putting it in this punky, grebo, future body world the scenario is more than fine enough. It should be required reading for all those waiting for their own forked tongue, or lord knows what's next, and is pretty essential entertainment for the rest of us.
More straightforwardly vampiric graphics can be had with the likes of The Strain Book One by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan, David Lapham and Dan Jackson. We think you might also like The Beauty by Jeremy Haun and Jason A Hurley.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Junction True by Ray Fawkes and Vince Locke at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Junction True by Ray Fawkes and Vince Locke at Amazon.com.
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