Comic Reviewed by Will Cooling
Title:N/A
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Ben Templesmith
Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos
Published by Image
Fell is a Warren Ellis comic with a twist, the twist is that it isn’t a “Warren Ellis Comic”. Firstly, it doesn’t have an old, hard drinking, chain-smoking, drug-taking insane genius for its lead character. Instead, in Detective Fell it has a young, mild-mannered, observant cop as its lead character. Second, it doesn’t have a loud mouth, confident, sexy alpha female as its lead women character. Instead, in Mayko it has an insecure, depressed and feminine bar owner who works to survive, not to further some feminist subtext. Thirdly, whilst the comic has its fair share of weirdness it’s more naturalist (especially in its depiction of violence) than is the norm for Ellis. Lastly, he abandons the “chapters in the book” approach to writing multi-issue comic book stories in favour of making each issue self-contained save for a few ongoing sub-plots. The idea is that you could pick up any issue and still be able to follow the story, something that hasn’t been true of an Ellis comic for an awful long time.
This issue sees Detective Fell investigate the murder of a pregnant woman where the fetus was torn from the mother’s womb. Ellis confidently sets up and satisfyingly explains a typically weird whodunnit. What’s more, he takes time to develop a number of sub-plots from the first issue, including Fell’s relationship with Mayko and a very weird looking nun. This is a classic use of the serial format as he gives enough “new” story for new readers to enjoy whilst developing a series of continuing stories in the background, not only to give the new reader a reason to pick up the next issue but also to reward those who bought the previous one. It’s amazing that so few writers/publishers use this format when it’s almost perfect for ongoing comic books.
The art of Ben Templesmith is extremely good as well, with his simple cartooney style getting across a lot of information in each panel without ever making the page seem cluttered. His faces are extremely expressive and each one is unique with plenty of character whilst he is eminently capable of producing vivid action sequences. In addition, the colouring of the artwork seems less garish and “gooey” than in the first issue and thus more inkeeping with the mood of the story.
Of course, what it’s most famous for is its smaller page count (16 pages of story) and lower price ($1.99) than the average American comic book. And perhaps it’s with this that Warren Ellis’s quirkiness comes through as another of his books that tries to change the way we (well Americans) view comics. It’s also this that forces him to drop the decompression and pick the pace up; after all it’s difficult enough to get people to buy a decompressed 22 page comic, let alone a decompressed 16 page one. It has to be said that it’s a success, with it taking longer to read this comic than it would to read an average Brian Michael Bendis comic. Part of the reason is the taut nature of Ellis’s writing, as he wastes no time with unnecessary fights or dialogue. However, the most striking thing is his wonderful use of the nine-panel grid to dictate the pace and flow of the whole comic. As he explains in his (very interesting) editorial section, even pages with less than nine panels still use the same grid, it’s just that some of the panels are double or even triple panels. The result is that you always feel like you’re getting nine panels worth of information on each page. What’s more, because of the tightness of his writing each page moves the story along, which is increasingly rare in American comics.
Fell’s 16 page count could have easily been nothing more than a gimmick to show how radical Warren Ellis is. However, the page count makes a very real difference to the way the story is paced and written. I doubt whether it will achieve its aim in reaching new readers (after all it’s being sold in the notoriously intolerant and inaccessible direct market) but it has probably made Fell a better comic.
