Luda

July 11, 2022
Comics writer Morrison (Supergods) debuts with an intricate and fantastical take on All About Eve starring an aging drag queen and her ambitious protégé. The not-entirely-reliable guide through this “haunted arcade of shifting selves and liquid identities” is Luci LaBang, a former television star now in her 50s. “Narcissus in middle age, in all her airbrushed Hollywood splendor,” as she describes herself, is tapped to participate in a stage production called The Phantom of the Pantomime, a mix of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Aladdin, and The Phantom of the Opera by way of Beckett. Luci is also a master of an occult-influenced, perception-bending art called The Glamour. After a suspicious accident befalls Luci’s costar, she’s replaced by an inexperienced yet bewitching ingenue named Luda. A “Rentboy” with a traumatic past, Luda is desperate and determined to learn The Glamour’s “sleight of mind,” particularly the ability to disappear into someone else. She becomes a sort of sorcerer’s apprentice until, perhaps unsurprisingly, her sinister motives are revealed. Though the madcap theatricality can sometimes feel a bit overwrought, Morrison’s dense and often dazzling sentences brim with Wilde-esque wordplay. For readers willing to go the distance, magic awaits.

August 1, 2022
A middle-aged drag queen spins a phantasmagorical yarn about an ill-fated theatrical production and her uncanny prot�g� in this debut novel. Luci LaBang is hoping for a comeback. Estranged from the band mates who accompanied her original rise to fame and done with reality TV competitions, the nonbinary performer is coaxed out of retirement by the prospect of performing The Phantom of the Pantomime. The show takes the traditional, Orientalist panto play Aladdin and makes it a gothic play within a play, with the titular phantom picking off actors one by one. The inaugural production is a smash hit, but what is meant to be a victory lap remount becomes plagued by eerie mishaps. After the original Principal Boy is hospitalized, the radiant and completely unknown Luda becomes the Aladdin to Luci's Widow Twankey. Drugs, sex, dubious magic, and mysteries of gender and identity ensue. Morrison has created a captivating and unforgettable narrator in Luci, and every page is thick with bons mots and appealingly lurid descriptions of Glasgow and its denizens. Whether there is too much of a good thing in the novel's 448 pages depends on the reader's stamina. Also challenging is Luci's fat phobia: While perhaps unsurprising, given Luci's preoccupation with her age and appearance, the repeated digs at director Dominick Float's weight become both tiresome and cruel. A sparkling, self-indulgent novel that revels in the transformative and grotesque.

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September 1, 2022
In the first novel by acclaimed comic-book writer Morrison, Luci LaBang, a drag queen whose acting career is trending down, is invigorated by a new challenge: to take a raw, untrained young actor and turn her into someone fit to share the theatrical stage with Luci. The girl's name is Luda, and she reminds Luci of herself, the way she was many years ago. Coincidence? Or a calculated, manipulative move on Luda's part? The story has an All About Eve vibe to it, but it's pretty clear that's intentional: Morrison seems to be doing a riff on that famous film, but he's added a few new elements, such as magic and the occult. Perhaps because this is the author's first stab at long-form fiction, the writing is perhaps a little overblown from time to time, and Luci's first-person narration meanders a bit in places, but overall the prose sparkles with wit and Luci's unique turns of phrase. An engaging and occasionally horrifying story that delivers the goods.

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