Faces of Clay

Zine
Title:	Faces of Clay
Publisher:	Featherpaw Press
Editor:	H. Ann Walton, Vicki L. Martin
Author(s):
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	March 1991
Medium:	print
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Quantum Leap/Twin Peaks/Crime Story
External Links:
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Faces of Clay is a gen 97-page crossover 1991 novel by H. Ann Walton and Vicki L. Martin. It includes a poem by Karen F.S. Lowe.

The art is by H. Ann Walton.

It was a 1992 FanQ nominee for best QL Novel.

Summary from the back of The Professionals fanzine Tenderloin:

Sam Beckett leaps into an art gallery janitor in 1971 Washington DC. He must protect a blind woman artist from a mob killer although Ziggy as predicted that he may die doing so. With Sam wounded and near death, can Al do anything to prevent a tragedy?

Reactions and Reviews

1991

On the lighter side of the zine world: "Faces of Clay" (H. Ann Walton, Vicki L. Martin) is a very good concept that needed about one more rewrite before publication to be perfect. Sam's last name is misspelled throughout, and Al sees Sam as himself even when he's in another body... little things that are nevertheless distracting. Sam falls in love with the designated damsel-in-distress awfully quickly.

And then the relationship doesn’t really come to a satisfactory ending. My biggest complaint is that Al at one point, tells Sam to save his own life by abandoning a woman who's in danger of being gang-raped and murdered. As if he would. I think the writers may have needed to view a few more episodes before putting the final touches on this one.

Those caveats aside, it's a nifty concept. Sam meets a blind sculptor. Paige Cooper, who has the semi-psychic talent of sculpting the real face of the people she works with. She does a bust of Sam which looks like Sam, not like his host body. Unfortunately she also sculpts a former Mafia leader the way he looked before he had plastic surgery and disappeared. Needless to say, that’s why people are trying to kill her.

There’s a lot to like about this zine. The love scenes between Sam and Paige may be precipitous, but they're beautifully done. So are the emotional bits among Sam, Al, and Paige (who can sense Al indistinctly). The writers also have fun with Paige's slightly psychic twelve-year-old brother Dale Cooper (yes, he of the coffee and dam’ fine cherry pie.) Seems the youngster wants to be either a Buddhist monk or an FBI agent when he grows up.

The zine is a bit pricey for its length ($12 by hand, unknown price by mail). However, there’s a lot of good work in it. I’d love to see the same writers come back to QL with just a little more background material, and give us another novella.

1992

Faces of Clay is 97 pages and 16 short chapters long, with a fair number of drawings. The art is okay when the artist is copying a picture - nice pencil sketch at the beginning - but it gets pretty awful when she’s going ’freehand’ illustrating scenes from the story. For starters, someone needs to pin her down and make her look at hands and how people use them. And the story itself is full of action, but the drawings are all static.

The story’s strengths are (1) there really is a plot, with only minor loose ends, (2) there's some attempt at clever imagery, (3) it moves at a nice clip, (4) Sam gets good and bonked and there’s some smarm. Plus the female lead remains tolerable, even though it’s a raging Mary Sue.

Its weaknesses are in the cliched writing style, stilted dialogue and poor characterization. Unfortunately the weaknesses over shadow the strengths for me. Sam pops into Francis "Frankie" Baldovino, the janitor for an art gallery. By page three he's already lost it over our heroine, Paige Cooper. Paige’s virtues are extolled pretty much constantly. I’ll pick Sam's description from page 50: "She’s an artist. Used to paint, but since the accident has turned to sculpting. She's young, beautiful, single, without a mean or jealous bone in her body. She's intelligent, self-confident, and very concerned with those around her. She's determined to bear up to her responsibilities." She's also blind, and she’s Dale Cooper's older sister, which enables the future FBI Agent to make an appearance that isn’t much more than a cameo - he’s "twelve going on thirty," and Paige won’t let him drink coffee. I admit I've never spent much time with blind people, but Paige is pretty unbelievable. She doesn’t have a cane or seeing eye dog, yet at one point she moves on foot fast enough to lose the guard assigned to her, takes a taxi to a hospital, refuses the driver’s offer of help, enters the hospital, and makes her way directly to a room she's only visited once "with only two close calls with misplaced objects against the wall." She can also tell Sam's checking out a specific sculpture because "I heard your footsteps as you crossed the room, and your breathing tells me where you're standing. Besides, I heard the wet cloth rasp against the clay." Wet cloth, note, because there are other sculptures around covered with dry cloths. If she'd just said, "I know human nature," THAT I would have bought, since it’s a bust she did of Sam he’s looking at.

Aside from Dale Cooper from TWIN PEAKS, our guest stars are from CRIME STORY; Joey Idelli and Nate Grossman show up for a few scenes, and Ray Luca plays our villain, Lucas Raymond. No explanation how Raymond survived the plane crash ending CRIME STORY, but I guess if he can survive a nuclear bomb in the series run we can assume he survives anything.

Raymond has a new face, new identity, and no doubt new schemes, although we aren't told what exactly he's up to. Paige has done a bust of him, and as she herself tells us, '^Ever since the accident, IVe been able to mold clay into the true image of what I'm creating. Some people find it unnerving to stare into their real face. Some are outraged that I captured their greedy and hateful natures, while others are moved to tears by the goodness in their expressions. Some swear they look absolutely nothing like my art, while others would shower me with the riches of three lifetimes out of gratitude. Just tonight, Lucas Raymond tried to purchase the bust I [did of him]. Sometimes it's almost as if they can’t live without it." Which translated means Raymond’s bust is his presurgery face, familiar to the wanted poster’ crowd. Let’s just say Raymond did not respond with tears of joy. Tears of rage, maybe.... He is determined not to let anyone else see the bust, and hires his two latest thugs to take care of it. They fail twice, bashing just about everything in Paige’s workroom except the bust, including a bust that looks like Sam really does, rather than like the body he’s ’wearing.' (Sam to Paige on seeing it: "It’s like you can see straight into my soul, to the... real me." Ellipses in original.)

Now about this point you’d think they’d call the police with a suggestion that Paige and/or her studio might need protection, or at least that they’d boost security at the art gallery (a ’night watchman’ is mentioned prior to the actual break ins and then apparently forgotten), but no.

Sam's going to call the cops, when Al protests, "And tell them what? Paige did a sculpture of Raymond that doesn’t look the least bit like him. All they'll say is she’s an untalentead artist and you're imagining things." Now I admit the cops aren’t always too bright, and they’re usually wretched art critics, but I think the two break-ins in about that many days, plus the fact that Sam got assaulted both times, plus the fact that Raymond appears full grown in '65 (no records earlier), might possibly convince the cops that there could be something wrong here.

Not only do they not mention any of this to the police, they don't mention it to Paige. And for all that she can sculpt someone’s soul, she herself is not too tuned in to who they really are.

She never shows any sign of disliking or distrusting Raymond, and her trust ends up endangering both herself and Sam. She accepts her own and her brother’s semi-psychic powers; why didn’t Sam mention he didn't trust Raymond and warn her his intuition's reliable?

At any rate, instead of doing something logical like hiding out or calling in some muscle, Sam makes out with the girl in the handy bedroom behind her studio while Al fusses a lot. As predicted, Raymond and his thugs show up. Sam does pretty well with the thugs, but Raymond shoots him down - then takes off without bothering to verify his bust was done in, which of course it wasn't. Al and Paige agonize for a while over Sam, but unfortunately much of it is along the lines of "why did it have to happen to Sam! Why did someone so good, so... so caring... why did he have to die?" (Ellipses in original.) No, he’s not dead, just pretty messy.

Now that Sam’s in the hospital near death, the police assign guards to both Sam and Paige - although both guards turn out to be raging incompetents. This is when Paige runs off to the hospital, losing her guard. And far be it tor me to give away the end, so we’ll abandon the plot here.

Since I saw only a few episodes of TWIN PEAKS, and I'm not sure I ever saw CRIME STORY, I can't tell you if the guest stars are in character or not. The story is set in 1971, five years or so after CRIME STORY took place, and maybe twenty years before TWIN PEAKS, so expect some differences.

Sam and Al’s characterization is iffy. First off, we've got Al telling Sam to desert Paige to rape and death at one point. Then there’s Sam being dumb enough to let his hormones rule and having sex in the exact place and time he and Paige are supposed to get offed. The author's grasp of 'how this all works’ is a little weak as well. At one point Al is apparently nauseated by the fact that Paige and Sam are imminently doomed, and he thinks to himself, "It's a damn good thing I'm a hologram, or I'd likely puke my guts up." Maybe puking's not allowed in the Imaging Chamber - no janitors with clearance, perhaps.

At any rate, this reads like a pretty good first attempt, so if you're a Mary Sue fan you might like it. If you’re not a Mary Sue fan invest elsewhere. And if you hate Mary Sues you probably deserted the review long ago anyhow. These authors have some neat ideas, if they get a good editor I'd read them again, if not I think I'll pass.

1994

Two out of five stars. Sam, as a janitor in an art gallery, meets a blind sculptor, Paige Cooper, who sculpts his real face (this would match the details learned in 8 1/2 Months, that others see the aura of the person they expect; since Paige can't actually "see" Frankie, the face she touches is Sam's). It's 1971 in Washington DC and Paige has a weird little brother, Dale, who wants to be either a Tibetian monk or an FBI agent.