Freak Angels: A web comic from the mind of Warren Ellis.

Digital Comics
Freak Angels: A web comic from the mind of Warren Ellis.
By Patrick Oliver
May 9, 2008 - 14:59

Avatar Press
Writer(s): Warren Ellis
Penciller(s): Paul Duffield

English writer Warren Ellis (Planetary, Gravel) is many things.
He is prolific. He is funny. He is thought provoking. He is without a doubt a powerhouse of ideas. Freak Angels is his and Paul Duffield’s adult science fiction web comic for Avatar Press, it is updated every Friday. And it definitely contains most of the above! It is a wonderful on-going story about twelve strange, violet eyed, young adults, and what happened after the the end of the world.

London Submerged

Paul Duffield's artwork fits well with the narrative and the ideas. It looks simple, but is actually quite detailed and unfussy. Although a relative newcomer to the web comic medium, his mixture of frames and angles and colour is highly accomplished.

I like the way that he mixes the number of panels on the page to suit the narrative, sometimes switching between one through to four panels per page.
Relatively new to the medium of comic books, but experianced in a variety of visual media, Duffield's path to illustrating this webcomic was in no small part down to good luck as well as his very evident talent. Duffield was a fan of Ellis and posted some examples of his work on an Ellis related forum. His work was seen, and Duffields was asked if he'd like to actually meet Ellis. The rest, as we say, is history.

I must say, that looking at his work in Freak Angels, I am impressed. If I had picked this up as a comic book in a retail store and flicked through the pages, I would have bought a copy and been surprised if somebody had then told me that that Duffield was new to the world of comic book illustrating.

The pages are presented in portrait rather than landscape and are virtually full-sized, highlighting the current diversity in web comics. Some web comics are are the size of the strips that you would see in a newspaper, while others are full-sized. Yet others still, have no border - they can be as big as your screen and as far as your curser will take you.

A collected edition of the story (thus far) will be available in trade paperback and hardcover editions toward the end of the year, no publication date is currently known. This may seem strange, because although the Freak Angels webcomic is free, fans have already expressed a strong desire to buy the collected works, such is their appreciation of the series.

Either way, add Freak Angels to your web comic bookmarks. You won't regret it.

To read the web comic and find more more information, go here: http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23