King of Flies

Last week, I read Legend of the Scarlet Blades, which was an excellent samurai story for those who don’t want to read a 1000-page manga epic. This week, I felt the need to read something real. Personally, I prefer “slice of life” books when the characters and situations are extreme. Stories about people in situations that I could easily find or have been in myself tend to bore me. I want to read about people doing things that are as far away from my world of experience as possible. And I found that in KING OF FLIES VOL 1: HALLORAVE and VOL 2: THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD written by Pascal (Mezzo) Mesenburg, illustrated by Michel Pirus, published by Fantagraphics.

King of Flies is a series of interconnected 3-4 page stories about the people who live in the City. There’s Eric, the protagonist, who in between ingesting copious amounts of drugs, likes to sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend, Sal. Eric is lucky enough to have a mother who supports his drug addled existence, unlike Sal who must work for a living. Sal find acceptance in life by sleeping with Eric and Dennis because Dennis is a drug dealer. Dennis is just a dope. Then there is Marie the teenager just looking for love and a father figure who is sleeping with Eric because she wants to be cool. She does lots of drugs too. Once people start dying and the living start hallucinating about them the story enters a whole new level of strange.

King of Flies is not for the meek. Mezzo has written a story that is about the seedy underside of suburbia. There are lots of drugs, lots of sex, and lots of people who have lost their way both morally and mentally. In Eric, Mezzo has created one of the most unlikeable, yet incredibly interesting characters I have read in a long time. Words like narcissistic and shallow are some of the nicer ones that I would use to describe him. But, for all his faults, Eric is fascinating because he is so amoral and apathetic to those around him you can’t help but read more. Eric is needlessly cruel yet while reaping the seeds he has sown, wonders how he got there.

With each sequence of the story so short, it takes a few pages for Mezzo to get the story going. Once it does then it’s full steam ahead. Mezzo keeps weaving the various incidents in each characters lives in and out of each other in incredibly incestuous ways. By doing so, one characters cruel act becomes magnified many times over. Each chapter is also a first person narration. This really allows you to get into the head of each person and see how miserable each of them while searching for some peace.

The art is superb also. Pirus’ style is very similar to that of Charles “Black Hole” Burns. It’s very tight with dense backgrounds and it works perfectly.

Mezzo has written a story that is unrelentingly dark filled with morose characters doing mean spirited things to each other and anyone who gets in their way. And it’s AWESOME! King of Flies is different from everything else on the stands. If you are looking for something that’s part real life, part people being cruel, and wildly entertaining then this is the book for you.

- David Lee