On Newsarama, Chris Arrant has a great interview with Warren Ellis about his free online comic, Freakangels, the first part of which is getting collected into a dead tree edition in November.
Freakangels depicts a near-future, post-flood London, where the only viably working community is being protected by eleven telepaths, the Freakangels, who were all born at the same time twenty three years before the story takes place. It is illustrated by comics newcomer Paul Duffield, who’s got a clean, sleek style which works very nicely with the story’s steampunkish sensibilities. Ellis’ pacing of the story is very leisurely, and makes for some nice, quiet installments which serve to gradually flesh out the world which Ellis has created. Even action sequences, such as the recent attack on the Freakangels’ community by neighboring bands of pirates, have a drawn-out, slow-motion feel to them.
Freakangels is free to view online, and Ellis says that there are no plans to change that in the future—every episode will remain available for viewing, even as the print edition ships for sale. As a big fan of webcomics, I love this approach: it rewards longtime readers, keeps the accessibility curve low for new readers, and also creates an additional source of income, aside from ad revenue, for those who want to collect the entire run in a more archival form.
