Warren Ellis' FreakAngels

You may have noticed the FreakAngels widget in the sidebar. FreakAngels is a weekly six page webcomic written by Warren Ellis, art by Paul Duffield, and sponsored/published by Avatar Press. There will be a collected edition out in November 2008 available in both Hard Cover and Paperback version.

This series is Warren Ellis' vision of what if the Midwich Cuckoos (from the John Wyndham novel) lived to be in their twenties? They live in a flooded London after a crisis they appear to have caused and protect a small group of survivors in the Whitechapel district.

The first volume is the story of what happens when Alice, a survivor from Manchester, is sent to kill Connor of the FreakAngels by Mark, a FreakAngel that had been kicked out of Whitechapel. The FreakAngels take Alice in after she fails to kill Connor and give her a place in their community and a job to do.

The dialogue is some of the best Ellis has ever written. Each character has such a distinct voice, you can almost identify the characters as much by their dialogue as you can from the artwork.

The artwork is some of the cleanest I've seen in a webcomic or even in most independent print comics. Paul Duffield is yet another great artist to be paired up with Warren Ellis. He brings a manga flavor to the artwork and just enough grit and grime to show what conditions the characters are living in. All of that, plus the guy is producing six pages of finished and colored artwork every week, with the occasional break week. Impressive!

Pros: Cost, it's free if you read it on the web. Written by Warren Ellis. Gorgeous art. Good science fiction comic.

Cons: The biggest (and only) complaint I have is the interface. Don't get me wrong, it works pretty well. It's probably one of the best interfaces I've seen for that matter. The load time is pretty quick.

Final Call: Hot Buy



Also, Paul Duffield will be signing the collected editions at Wizard World Texas where they will premiere.

New episodes are available here each Friday. Hey, look, it's Friday. I guess I better go read FreakAngels.