The Con Artists: Luke Healey

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Main character Frank is, like Healy himself, a stand-up from Dublin, plying his trade in London, whose anxiety issues are compounded when his friend Giorgio is hit by a bus, leaving Frank to help care for him as he recovers from his (not particularly life-threatening) injuries. Both Irish, gay and living in London, they have the kind of paradoxical close connection familiar to childhood friends, despite the fact they can go weeks or months without seeing each other and sometimes appear to have little else in common. As suspicions around Giorgio’s conduct mount, we watch as Frank attempts to care for his own mental health, a burgeoning comedy career and the needs of a poorly and sometimes obnoxious friend, all while trying to get to the bottom of the love/hate relationship that binds them together. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a comic written by a comic, it’s also one of the funniest books you will ever read about friendship, anxiety and the nature of truth and fiction. CR: A scene that jumped out at me is when Giorgio says, “These stories, you tell with all your little twists and tweaks, you make yourself such a hero, so damn reasonable.” And he reads you the riot act on the way you present yourself. When you’re writing something like that, how much of it is drawing from your own self-criticism versus a real incident where someone read you the riot act?

In The Con Artists, author Luke Healy appears at the beginning, by way of an introduction. He dresses, puts on a fake moustache, explains that what’s to follow is a total fiction, then walks into the book, playing the role of the main character. CR: In the book, there are scenes where the characters are telling their jokes before an audience. Do you use your own jokes to shape these sequences?This graphic novel [presents an] ... introspective journey, especially as it relates to ... anxiety and guilt."— Booklist

In this book, Girard recounts the perhaps-true, perhaps-not tale of attending his 10-year high-school reunion. His jittery line, and talent for capturing emotion, reveal a man so anxious about the event that he’s willing to go to absurd lengths to impress his former classmates. Girard’s bravery in portraying himself as a very unlikable character is admirable, and brings a certain acidity to this hilarious, awkward and cringe-inducing tale. A third character, Giorgio, is the antagonist and focus of the story. Giorgio is a childhood friend of Frank’s. We wondered whether given Frank’s considerable anxieties of Giorgio’s state of mind and living arrangements Giorgio might have once been an object of Frank’s affections, but there is no other suggestion of this within the comic. (With enormous apprehension we have also categorised this story as a “romance” comic: not because there is any romantic love, but because the main characters interact in a relationship which is committed, unilaterally tender, and abusive.) Giorgio is one of those people who is charismatic and likeable on a first meeting. He is self-obsessed, but in a whimsical and high-spirited way.Pretty brutal Goodreads average here for what I deem well done comics, sort of minimal, with barely tolerable main characters who are essentially conning each other in different ways. Healy opens this with a section declaring this as TOTALLY FICTION, NOTHING to do with ME and then interrupts the story half way to take a break and reassert that this is TOTALLY fiction, so that is funny. The central question that animates ‘The Con Artists’ is: what does it mean to watch someone struggle? The Con Artists’ art style is clean and legible, and the writing has many standout jokes and profound lines that linger on the mind. That being said, it also feels like a high wire act bound by an almost overwhelming restraint, with so many emotions bubbling below the surface, without much of a climax or release for the reader. But perhaps that is more accurate to a certain experience of life, where one is saying one thing and feeling so, so much of another thing. A beautifully observed masterpiece... The Con Artists by Luke Healy is my favourite graphic novel of the year so far, and to be honest, it might just be among my favourite comics ever."—Rachel Cooke, The Guardian