The Con Artists: Luke Healey

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Giorgio is a jerk who makes bad decisions and seems to be full of half-cocked money-making schemes, but Frank sticks by him. The Con Artists is a graphic novel exploring themes relating to mental illness, strained relationships, and artists using stories from their lives as part of their art. A great story of friendship, or rather, nostalgia for a bygone friendship, a fantasy, you might even say.

Along the way, he discovers Giorgio has been living a life not parallel to that he depicts on social media, and is committing fraud to pay bills. 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. Healy is one of those very noticing artists, and the great pleasure of his deeply satisfying fourth book, which is about an old friendship that will shortly curdle, lies in small things: little details you may not notice the first time around; ambiguities that nag away at you.

A Guardian Best Book of 2022 —'A beautifully observed masterpiece… one of my favourite graphic novels I’ve ever read. The book passes mostly pleasantly, with well-defined characters and occasional funny scenarios (the comic bits did pull a chuckle from me). I might as well come come straight to the point: 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. Sometimes someones are unhealthy and don't need to be in your life, and we need far more stories showing this to be true. My favourite graphic novel of the year so far, and to be honest, it might just be among my favourite comics ever .

The book observes how much resentment builds between them, in their differing attitudes to purpose, privilege and self-presentation. But it’s a tender, intimate story, too, one in which long-repressed love and competitiveness bubble up as if from nowhere. There were many, many things to unpack, and while they were quite interesting, I don't feel we got the time or attention needed to get into them.

I enjoyed Luke Healy's Americana, a memoir of Luke taking his Irish self to the West Coast of the US to complete an arduous hike. Frank only wanted three things this year- to perform stand-up comedy, go to therapy, and to keep his house plants alive. 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.