Postmodern storytelling, that eclectic mixing of genres that characterises so much modern narrative activity, can really pay off in the right dividends.
Far from being gimmicky, adroit bringing together of seemingly disparate elements can work spectacularly well as novel Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree made hilariously and affectingly clear recently, and as Fairlady, a 2019 fantasy-meets-police procedural gloriously affirms.
Written by Brian Schirmer with illustrations by Claudia Balboni and colouring by Marissa Louise, Fairlady is stunningly clever, mixing the sort of fantastical elements that make that genre such an escapist pleasure to read, and the whodunnit element that generally is the preserve of network TV and bookstore denizens.
Helping this beguiling blending of genres is the fact that the protagonist, Jenner Faulds is such a likeably together, breathtakingly skilled lead character, a soldier returned, like so many others, from the horrors of the War of the Harshland wonders at first what she’s going to do with her life.
With no army to speak of, soldiers either fall into routine employment or crime, or like Faulds, find themselves becoming licensed investigators whose job it is to check into the myriad of crimes that seem to populate with profusion a land where the constabulary might be more crooked than the people they are supposed to be apprehending.
It would be a sweet gig were it not for the fact that misogyny reigns supreme and while posing a man meant Jenner got to fight in the war, it’s not working now in civilian employment meaning that her only option is to take on a job as security for a wizard named Ozias Froat (the names in Fairlady are wonderfully creative) whose tower is in need of some guarding.
It’s good stable employment but hardly super busy and so in her spare time, Jenner takes on all kinds of cases, most of which appear slam dunk easy to solve until, well, they are not.
This is Fairlady, which is imaginatively and originally written with breathtakingly expansive storylines and outrageously inspired characters whose dialogue is witty and thoughtful, where the ordinary and the straightforward have an entertaining way of becoming rapidly extraordinary and fiendishly complicated with the added sense that they may all be connected via a conspiracy that Jenner can’t be certain in play but which would explain some strange outcomes and weird anomalies.
The artwork too is a dream.
Evocative and colourful, it also perfectly matches the beats of the narrative and the image you quickly develop of a land where all kinds of creatures breathe fire, where the main settlement, the Feld, looks like it is built into the decaying metallic remains of a giant robot and where lizard men and cat-faced bipedals are as standard a feature of sentient life as good old bog basic humanity.
Balboni’s art is a true delight, bringing the abundant worldbuilding to vibrant life, adding colour and intensity to a number of dramatically key scenes and underscoring both Jenner’s successes and her frustratingly annoying setbacks.
The fact that she keeps getting taken captive or waylaid by a variety of people including multi-eyed and tentacled, red-robed librarians, is driving her mad because she’s fantastically good at what she does, and Balboni’s art strikes at the heart of that frustration, celebrating her wins but also deepening the mystery about how someone so competent can be placed at a disadvantage so often.
The artwork also brings the characters to life, Balboni demonstrating time and again her gifted capacity for bringing forth emotion and tension and the inevitable clashing of the everyday and the shadowingly mysterious.
She and Schirmer are a talented pairing, which with Louise’s pitch-perfect colouring, means that Fairlady is one of those graphic novels that barely puts a foot wrong.
It has the accessibility advantage too of each chapter being a self-contained mystery where Jenner and her partner Oanu, a member of a cat-like race known as the Jessu, get to the bottom of cases that are never what they first seem, but also part of an immersive arc that links everything together in an immensely satisfying whole.
If you have ever wondered how the episodic and the arc-like can coexist and coexist entertainingly well, then check out Fairlady which is all thrillingly fun cases, intriguing characters who possess quick minds, smart reflexes and agile wordplay, and a storyline which knows all too well that behind the ordinary and the benign can sit the diabolically complex, all needing someone as incisively good as Jenner Faulds to tackle them and get to the bottom of everything.
Which is sadly where she is likely to remain for all time now as the cliffhanger that ends the fifth and final chapter will never get a resolution as Fairlady was cancelled in its year of publication; still even unfinished, this is an enthrallingly good tale which is worth your time anyway and we can only hope that Schirmer’s final words on Twitter, where he announced the cancellation, will one day come to pass.
I hope to one day return to this crazy fantasy world. I hope to write more tales of the land’s only Fairlady & her big, sexy cat man. I hope that we made even a tiny impact on some readers along the way. I hope.
