And if A Familiar Face, the terrifying dystopia of Canadian Michael DeForge rewarded with a “small prize” at Angoulême, was a major work of contemporary comics? In any case, that’s what we think!
Rewarded with the “Prix de l’Audace”, whatever that means, at the last Angoulême festival, A Familiar Face went a little too unnoticed in our opinion when it was published in France last November. It is true that the design of the Canadian Michael DeForge is deeply disconcerting by its systematic deconstruction of the forms to which we are (too?) accustomed, and by the use of primary colors that are often aggressive to the eye… And suddenly, A Familiar Face is not necessarily a book that is very … envy. And yet, after a few pages, we are totally won over, even hypnotized by the force of a story that will gradually reach political, symbolic and controversial heights to which we are not accustomed.
We regularly compare the terrifying dystopia imagined here by DeForge to the works of Huxley orOrwellwhich might be overwhelming references, yet fall short of the strength and relevance of the abominable universe depicted here. DeForge certainly describes here an ultra-totalitarian society, within which the heroine, overwhelmed by the inexplicable disappearance of the woman she loves, will seek a possible form of rebellion: a type of political and SF narrative that can seem in itself ultra-referenced. But the huge difference – progress? – is that DeForge integrates the latest concepts of derealization (virtualization, as they say…) of our world: he imagines that humans have themselves become forms of software, which are regularly – and without their opinion being asked – “ actualized”, “optimized” by almost inconceivable higher forces.
There is something Cronenbergian – another Canadian – in this profound vertigo of an infinite reconstruction of bodies, even though the environment itself is subject to permanent changes, without us knowing if they are intentional, accidental or the mark of the existence of a resistance to the virtual order: but DeForge perhaps goes even further than his compatriot, by integrating heterogeneous elements into his story, such as references to our own daily life – on social networks, on our relations with the virtual interfaces of the administration and companies, on the feeling of powerlessness that seizes us in the face of the growing absence of “faces” around us. And, even if a form of humor is still present there, A Familiar Face quickly resembles an absolute nightmare, between abject terror, psychedelic visions and, above all… a feeling of emotional loneliness that echoes what we already feel, in 2022, in our romantic relationships.
Simultaneously absurd and trivial, violently dissenting and furiously intelligent in the way it depicts our future and our present, A Familiar Face is an indisputable masterpiece. A major work of comics, which confirms the importance of Michael DeForgeimpressive inventor of universes and narrator of formidable efficiency.
To award him the Fauve d’Or d’Angoulême 2022, that would have been daring. And lucidity.
Eric Debarnot
A Familiar Face
Screenplay, drawing and colors: Michael DeForge
Translation from English (Canada): Christophe Gouveia Roberto
Publisher: Atrabile
176 pages – 17 €
Publication: November 5, 2021
A Familiar Face – Excerpt:
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