Warren Ellis' "FreakAngles: Volume 1" is slow paced, meticulous and a bit pretentious

FreakAngels, Volume 1, is a unique comic in more ways than one.  For one, its arrangement of frames (or panels) is very traditional, and as such, it resembles a European comic that possess the standard layout of four or six (or any even number) of equal sized frames per page.   The story - if one can even call it a story in the traditional sense of the word - is slow moving, deliberate, and perhaps a bit too much character driven.  The writer Warren Ellis and artist Paul Duffield are certainly treading new waters when it comes to introducing their characters into the American comic book landscape.

The story focuses on several of the twelve children, the so-called Freak Angels, who possess special  psychic powers, and who were all born on the same day some 23 years ago.  When they were all 17, the world apparently ended.  They spend their time in an abandoned and half-flooded London, resembling a ghost town the way it did in the movie 27 Weeks Later.   Some are homeless bums (Luke), some spend their times guard-watching on roof tops (Kirk), while others are too busy participating in some (surprisingly unsexy) orgies (Sirkka), no name just a few of them.  They walk around, make small chit chat, bring new vigilante members into their group, and communicate to each other telepathically.  In short, none them are doing anything worth noting nor following, because for the most part, this first volume of FreakAngles is very light on plot.  There's no clear villain or antagonist, nor any internal conflict worth mentioning.  I'm not quite sure, after reading nearly 150 pages of it, what this serial is actually about, or at the very least, if it's heading anywhere worth looking forward to.

The creator of FreakAngels, Ellis, has said several years ago, "I've written over 200 pages, and I've no idea what it's about..."  These are definitely not encouraging words, to be sure, as the readers will have even less idea what they're reading.  FreakAngels looks relatively good, because Duffield does an exemplary job of drawing the characters distinctly, and not making the common mistake of having them all look alike (something most serials suffer from).  So the blame here clearly doesn't fall on Duffield, but on Ellis.  His FreakAngles are unimaginative, slow, and worst of all, quite boring.  And with no direction at all, it's a miracle that they've managed to run long enough to publish six volumes.  Some things, I suppose, are beyond comprehension.
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