Vertigo love Mike Carey.  At the moment, he's writing both Hellblazer and Lucifer.  These are two of the most Vertigo titles you can possibly imagine.

Of course, this does carry the risk of typecasting.  Fortunately, while My Faith in Frankie is still Vertigo, it's a very different book.  This is a slightly surreal romantic comedy, with the oddball premise qualifying it for the Vertigo imprint.

Frankie Moxon is seventeen, and all her life she's been protected by her personal god Jeriven.  Jeriven came to earth from the land of the gods years ago, and since Frankie was the only person who could see him, she ended up as his sole worshipper.  Without much else to do with his time, Jeriven has been protecting Frankie with unusual thoroughness - against everything from physical injury to bad test results.

Unfortunately, Jeriven is equally determined not to have any competition for Frankie's affections.  Hence his desperately sincere attempts to protect her from the remotest chance of a sex life.  You can't trust these teenage boys, after all.

It's a cute idea, and quite rightly it's played for laughs.  Jeriven's too nice to actually hurt any of Frankie's suitors, so instead he just plagues them with bunnies.  The skill of these things is to find a way of making Frankie and Jeriven's relationship vaguely comprehensible, and Carey solves that problem nicely by playing them as a married couple.  As the cover blurb says, Jeriven is, quite literally, "a jealous god."

Sonny Liew's beautiful artwork gives the book a slightly retro feel.  Frankie and her love interest Dean both have the same out-of-time feel as in Chynna Clugston-Major's Blue Monday, although without the manga influences to confuse matters.  For some reason it reminds me of a very cuddly Sam Kieth, though I'd be hard pressed to explain precisely why.

A charming little book, not to mention genuinely funny.  Worth a look.

Rating: A

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