The Con Artists: Luke Healey

Product Information

The Con Artists is a book about distances, albeit those of an emotional nature: between a man and his friend, a comic and his audience, or a patient and his therapist, constantly rebuking our protagonist for being too funny during their CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sessions. “You think I’m funny?” Frank asks, desperately, in reply. 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?

Some aspects of The Con Artist are entertaining, including a devious con that Giorgio does to acquire home supplies. I also enjoyed the changing relationships between Frank, Giorgio, Emma and Ro; and between Giorgio and his father. There are funny moments during and after standup comedy routines. The medical missteps give me pause to not give a wholehearted recommendation of The Con Artists; but I do favor reading it for the relationships and comedy and not to learn about medical treatments. And finally, an editor of my review raised an important question: “If the plot of a comic raises health issues is there a responsibility on the part of the creator to at least make the handling of it realistic, assuming the mishandling isn’t part of an intentional plot line?” It would’ve made this work much more enjoyable for me. 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? But I draw a very hard line about calling something nonfiction—for me it needs to be as close to my recollection of reality as possible. If it’s embellished at all, I prefer to classify it as fiction, which is why this book is largely classified as fiction. I had this big crisis concerning writing about other people’s lives. If I’m writing about myself and subconsciously or accidentally altering stuff, it’s just about me and I won’t be misrepresenting anybody’s life experience but my own.LH: Make short and really bad stuff. I’m a terrible perfectionist and my big problem is often getting started. Just sit down and purposefully make the worst comic you can, but finish it. If you try to make something horrible, by the end, you’ll want to make something good. Much later in The Con Artists, Giorgio falls on the pavement, accidentally on purpose? Frank is called and told by someone, “[Giorgio]’s in the hospital with some minor brain damage,” which could be a concussion. At the hospital Frank learns Giorgio has loss of hearing in one ear and a fractured skull. Are all of these accidents part of a con, but the resulting serious physical injuries not anticipated by Giorgio? It’s a fascinating premise. We immediately ask ourselves what it means. Is he playing himself, perhaps only loosely disguising the fact that the story is really about his own experiences? Is he going through the motions of denying it to make the concept sound plausible? The “Superhero” Trademark: how the name of a genre came to be owned by DC and Marvel, and how they enforce it Comics have their roots in comedy – the evidence is in the name. From early woodcut manga to the newspaper strips of the 1890s, people have made use of the joke-telling power of combining words and pictures for centuries. Even today, in the age of the graphic novel, where comics explore heartbreaking true stories and gripping dramas – the humorous potential of the medium still draws those who want to make people laugh.

From the title of his latest graphic novel— The Con Artists—Luke Healy lets the reader know what they’re getting into. The question, though, is who the con artists are and who they’re conning. And, of course, to what end? Frank (the standup comedian who is the book’s narrator) and Giorgio were friends as children, and on paper they’re very similar: both Irish in London, both gay and both single. But in adulthood, they’re not especially close, meeting up only every few months or so – until, one day, Giorgio calls Frank and tells him he has been hit by a bus. His wrist is broken. Could Frank look after him when he gets home? It’s worried Frank, not Giorgio, who asks this question, but almost immediately he begins to regret the offer. Giorgio is a nightmare patient, as demanding as a hotel guest, for all that it’s in his house that they’re staying. It’s almost sinister, the way he insists that Frank washes his hair or cuts up his dinner – and there’s something else, too. How is he making a living? In the bathroom, the soap is flashy – Frank would have to play three gigs to buy it – but his friend is getting letters from the benefits office. Nothing makes any sense, and trying to work it all out triggers Frank’s already quite bad anxiety.Ireland’s own comics community continues to evolve in an intriguing fashion, with the recent Dublin Comic Arts Festival confirming the rude health of the community, and an inspired new store in the capital, Little Deer, specialising in small press titles.

LH: It’s a sort of compliment. It’s a devastating compliment because it means you have a clear enough voice that someone can imitate it, but it’s not nice to feel seen.This is going to be Frank’s year. He’s going to do it all: find love, become a famous comedian, and responsibly parent his plants. But then, Giorgio gets hit by a bus. The story is about Frank, who is trying (and failing) to make it as a stand-up comedian, a friend of Giorgio, who early on gets hit by a bus and needs support. As time goes on it is clear that Giorgio is a serial liar, using everyone including Frank. Frank's bad comedy is so bad it is interesting, but hey, that can be funny, too, right? And it is insightful about his life, too. Frank is also in therapy, gay, and really does care for (also gay) Giorgio.