Faker

A word of warning: Don’t try to read this while eating. Bodily fluids of the nasty kind play a pretty major role in the story, and characters are all too quick to describe the smells. But in spite of the excretionary indiscretions, this collection of the first six issues in a series is a tour de force into identity. Written by Mike Carey and drawn by Jock, Faker puts a group of friends who live together and lie to each other to task solving a mystery. Who is Nick Philo, and why is it that only his roommates remember him? Add in campus research funded by the Department of Defense and lots of the usual comic-books stuff: sex, violence, drama, trauma and self-involved young adults attempting to behave like the grown-ups they think they ought to be. It’s dark, it’s angsty, and it’s well-done.