By Ellis & Duffield
Publisher: Avatar
ISBN: (Book 1) 978-1592910564
There are some big British names working on comics internationally and one of them is the talented Warren Ellis (not, though, of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds fame).
Ellis is responsible for some of the most creative moments in modern comics, and some of the most outrageous too. He’s the man behind the Iron Man Extremis story that was adapted in part for the recent third movie, but he also likes to dabble in more obscure and not necessarily commercially appealing creator-owned projects. On of those is Freakangels which started life as a weekly web comic and was then collated periodically by Avatar as paperbacks.
It’s set in Whitechapel six years after a massive flood left most of London under water. We learn that much of the country has similar and occasionally even more obscure problems, and as the series progresses we find out that the eleven (eventually twelve) lead characters who are making Whitechapel their home were to blame for the catastrophe.
They were each born on the same day in the same village and, with just a hint of the Midwich Cuckoos, all have purple eyes. Odder still, they all appeared to be able to do things out of the ordinary, something that became more enhanced and more focused when they linked together.
But what the bulk of the books are about is surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, striving to support your small community in the face of adversity and a lack of infrastructure. Duffield does a brilliant job of representing the battered and sodden London streets, with detailed depictions of derelict houses and abandoned landmarks, empty of people and the bustle of city life.
You can only ever be so comfortable living a life like that, but the group are doing their best, even accepting refugees and bringing them under their enclave’s wings. It’s when their guard is down that things begin to go wrong.
Ellis is very good at writing antagonistic characters and also the sort of banter that strong friendships create. He’s not writing a superhero comic here, but something more akin to a Wyndham novel. Nobody’s perfect here, or trying to be perfect, and it takes a long time for the group to figure out a way forward that doesn’t involve knee-jerk reactions and brute force.
Most pages only manage four panels, some only two, but this allows Duffield to flex his artistic muscle and Ellis to pace the story in a less frenetic manner than the majority of titles out there. And it feels British too, which we don’t get to see much of in comics any more.
And if you liked that: Then you should really enjoy Planetary, also by Warren Ellis.
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