FreakAngels is stunning

As an avid reader of comics and a lover of leading edge technology it is a little odd that I have not done much with online comics before. That is now changing.

I am starting to play with the ClickWheel application on my iPod touch which looks promising but has a limited catalogue of comics available.

I think that the iPod/iPhone is the platform of choice for the future but for the moment the content is mostly aimed at the PC.

One of my Twitter friends pointed me to FreakAngels, a free weekly comic by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield, and I love it!

You could call it a post-apocalyptic story because, er, it takes places after an apocalypse, but that would be to miss the point.

It's a story about a group of 23 year olds who happen to have caused the apocalyptic event and who are now trying to save part of what's left, i.e. London's Whitechapel.


I spoke warmly of Warren Ellis' writing recently and he is an established writer so it is no surprise that the stories are good.

Paul Duffield was not an artist that I knew before but he has quickly impressed. There are 40 episodes of FreakAngels so far, each of 6 pages, and each page is wonderful.

I could have picked any number of pages to show the quality of the artwork but I managed to limit my selection to just three.

The top image is actually the last page of the first arc of the story and shows post-apocalyptic London (OK, so the apocalypse is fairly important to the comic) where a large part of the city is flooded.

This flooding is dramatically shown in the second image of the London Eye, Guildhall and Shell Tower. This is a very recognisable rendition of these London landmarks made suitably bleak by the colouring.

This is simply beautiful artwork and I would look at this even if the story was poor or in a foreign language.

The story makes a lot of being set in London and this adds to the interest to me.

I am not sure what the Whitechapel connection is yet (I need to read the FreakAngels Whitechapel Forum to find out) but I like the fact that the story is set there. I worked around there for a couple of years not that long ago and am familiar with its streets, architecture and atmosphere.

I chose the final picture to show both what Whitechapel looks like and, for those who already knew that, how well the character of the place is captured.

I read all 40 issues of FreakAngels today and am only disappointed that I have to wait until Friday for the next episode.