Dark Views

Freak Angels is the story of 12 people with very special abilities – telepathy, telekinesis, healing, teleportation, going days without food and water. Six years ago, they were just 17. They were hunted. They were frightened. One was shot. They were scared. Angry.

They broke the world.

“This is what happened next.”

What I like: It’s a team effort, somewhat rough but fitting. The story is going slow but I found it so gripping that I read the whole six volumes in two days. Somehow, I found myself clicking and clicking and clicking. It’s addictive. Also, the artists aren’t afraid to show bloody violence when it’s necessary. But the violence is always a means to an end, not simply for the fun of it (as in a lot of the mainstream superhero comics these days).

The protagonists, 23 year old, have all developed ways to live with what they did, their guilt. This gives them wonderfully rough sides. They can be flippant in one moment and freak out the next. They struggle with their lives, with boredom, with what they are, what they could be. And all the time, life happens. Below everything is this typical British humor. Things go horribly wrong, lives are at stake and still, there is always this glimpse of hope.

Did you like Akira? Then this is for you.

And hey, it’s free. I paid money for comics that were a lot worse.

What I don’t like: I’m missing a donate button 🙂 I have too many comics already, I really don’t look forward to kill more trees just to give them some well deserved reward.

The navigation sucks. You can move easily between episodes (each 6 pages long) but there is no “next page” button. The buttons 1 to 6 to select the episode’s page are a bit small and at the bottom of the page, so I have to constantly scroll. Other web comics do that much better (Turbo Defiant, Cyantian Chronicles).

There is a quite lot of blood and gore. In a couple of scenes, you see people with their brains blown out, sometimes in more detail than you might like. As I said above, it makes sense but sometimes, I wished they’d tone it down a bit.

And lastly, a couple of small logic holes that made my wince. In a scene one of the Freak Angels takes a dive, comes back up and gets beaten over the head. The water was clear; how did he miss the second hull floating next to his own boat? Or the brains on it? It’s enemy territory after all, he should have been alert. But I didn’t get an explanation (and other noticed it as well), so it keeps bothering me.