Fell

(Image, 2005–2008)
™ and ©2005 Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith

Detective Richard Fell enjoyed his big city beat but now he’s working across the river in Snowtown, a decaying zone of urban malaise and distemper where the social fabric has all but unraveled.

Writer/creator Warren Ellis works the sensationalistic source material he collects and blogs about for all the freaks, losers, and monstrosities he can find to embellish this desperately unwholesome gotham. Ben Templemsith’s full-color illustration sets the murky, somber mood.
How did a smart, hard-working young guy like Fell end up consigned to a slummy wasteland like Snowtown? Ellis plans to develop the character over time, but intends for each issue of Fell to contain one complete 16-page detective story that readers can grasp without needing any backstory. Several pages of extra material—scripts, breakdowns, prose—fill out the remainder of every issue.

Deliberately priced below market, Ellis wanted Fell to demonstrate that a good value in comics doesn’t have to mean a high cover price.

— Leland Burrill

From the Comics Buyer’s Guide:

On his first day on his new assignment in the decaying area known as Snowtown, Detective Fell checks in at the Moon Street Precinct, meets some of the locals (including a barmaid with an interesting definition of foreplay and someone dressed as a nun who smokes while wearing a Nixon mask), and solves a murder using equal amounts of humanity and powers of observation.

It’s dark and edgy but (at least this time) avoids the extremes Warren Ellis is prone to, even featuring what in another era might have actually been called a hero. At the very least, Detective Fell is the least damaged and most likable character Ellis has yet to create.

Not only does artist Ben Templesmith do a fine job on the art (which is given a suitably restrained color palette), he also manages to tell the story in a succession of pages that are nine-panel grids without the art ever seeming cramped or crowded. At this price, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be giving this one a try.

— S. A. Bennett

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