For 144 weeks (plus the occasional skip) Fridays meant Freakangels. A post-apocolyptic webcomic about a society trying to survive comfortably, starring a strange family and featuring some of the most evocative depictions of psychic abilities in a medium obsessed with superpeople.
Filled to the brim with the level of brilliant dialogue, interesting ideas and compelling twists I expect from Warren Ellis, this stands out as one of his best thanks to the atmosphere, pacing and heart. All of which worked largely because of the exceptional imagery created by Paul Duffield, Kate Brown and Alana Yuen.
Freakangels updated six pages a week, unfolding at a leisurely pace. This isn’t a comic concerned with stuffing as much plot onto a page as possible, instead building an immersive and atmospheric experience. I could linger on some of those pages for ages, just soaking up the imagery. Every page communicates so much without ever being less than utterly beautiful.
At the centre of all this is a utopian belief that problems can be solved, the world can be improved and ideals are worth holding onto. It’s easy to mistake Warren Ellis for a Cynical Old Bastard because of his mastery of the aesthetics of the Cynical Old Bastard - but reading a comic like Freakangels it’s hard to ignore the message that people can be better and that an intolerable status quo shouldn’t be tolerated. He also writes the occasional recipe, which is pretty much irrelevant, but is the only link I can think of to tomorrow…
