Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Young Liars #7

By Zak Edwards
September 11, 2008 - 21:58

Dream sequences are always tricky, especially when you’re not even sure they are dream sequences.  Like it’s a dream (or in this case, nightmare) you never wake up from.  Maybe I’m just writing things to try and rationalize the latest issue of David Lapham’s immoral and amoral romp through society and all it holds offensive.  But this issue has left me confused.  So perhaps by the end of this we will have figured some things out, but I think this issue is one dependent on the issues ahead rather than the issues behind.  But this issue has more of the offensive absurdity I have come to love and expect from this issue, so let that be your warning for giving this book to a minor in age or spirit.

So, the whole entire issue is a barely held together narrative named after the very popular and influential David Bowie album “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”  Spiders from Mars have been mentioned before in one of the main character’s, Sadie the girl with no morals, incoherent ranting.  But it is in this issue Sadie seems to have a bit of character development.  She has always been violent, hell, she was introduced to the series by biting the nose off of some guy, but now it seems Sadie will have more direct targets as she recreates her morality after losing it to a gunshot wound to the head.  But this issue had me researching the David Bowie album and I came across something very interesting, “Ziggy Stardust” was actually supposed to be the soundtrack for a tragic play Bowie came up with.  While the play never happened, he did outline the play in an interview for Rolling Stone.  Basically, a man named Ziggy Stardust, living in a resource depleted dystopic future, believes he was told in a dream a group of beings from other dimensions are coming to save him.  Turns out these beings are fairly care-free and not really interested in saving the world and eventually kill Ziggy in order to make themselves material on our plane.  So what has this to do with Young Liars #7, well, I think Sadie has become Ziggy, which has me worried at maybe her eventual demise, but also excites me.  Lapham is taking an unproduced David Bowie play and messing with it for his own twisted story.  That is exciting.  So while this issue may make little to no sense as a nightmare from which the reader and protagonist can’t wake up, I think it may be up to something very cool and very twisted all at the same time.  But then again, Lapham has refused to let his readers know everything that’s going on, and that may be why I keep coming back to it every month.

So, this really hasn’t been a review in the conventional sense, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I had trying to figure things out.  Feel free to post your thoughts below, maybe get a dialog going on your thoughts.  But if I was giving this a score, it would be very high as I honestly believe this is one of the better series going and this issue doesn't disappoint.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12