Written by Warren Ellis, illustrated by Jacen Burrows
Published by Avatar Press, $8.95 (US) max, available from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk and many comics retailers.

In my time away from paying attention to comics, Warren Ellis (whose Transmetropolitan was one of a handful of books I still read throughout those years) produced a catalogue of dark work for independent publisher Avatar. He even went as far as to give them their own franchise in the Strange series, the anti-Hellblazer of comics. Dark Blue is a dark and disgusting world of horrible people. Frank, the cop star of the tale, is as much a bastard as the dope shooting Lieutenant he works for. He is not a stable personality and appears only to be kept in check by his female partner Deb, so decent that she's almost out of place in Dark Blue. As cops in dark fiction so often are, Frank is a man obsessed. A man obsessed with bringing to justice the depraved, violent killer Trent Wayman - a quest so severe that Frank is plagued with delusions and visions..

It's a high concept story, not big on heavy characterisation. Nobody develops, nobody learns anything, nobody changes. It's as you see it, and the people are as you see them. Does it work? Yes, just about. It's not Ellis at his best, but it's not the rather more average Ellis of Tokyo Storm Warning either. It's "Ellis having a good idea and wrapping a competent story around it", which certainly works for me. He's not forced himself to take too long to tell this story and there are no false starts or occasional bursts of rampant dialogue that hint at a better work underneath. And as I've said, this is not a bad work, but neither is it the best example of his work when stood next to such beasts as Transmetropolitan and Planetary. The comparison is unfair, as I certainly welcome comics writers exploring every little idea that interests them (something Warren has done much of over the past two or three years, and something Grant Morrison is doing at the time of writing).

Dark Blue was my first introduction to the art of Jacen Burrows. All of the Ellis Avatar projects to date have been black and white, usually with grey tonal shading. Now this does put a more intense focus on the pencils than full colour work, where the excellence of top of the line colourists (such as Laura Depuy Martin on anything drawn by John Cassaday) can raise already good pencils to new heights of accomplishment. Burrows produces rather stylised characters, but not stylised in the "big pecks, big tits" fashion many would associate with comics. It's more the way he draws a face, which is more cartoonish than you might expect from the gruesome scenes of gore he produces here.

To the best of my knowledge Burrows has not been long in the industry, which shows in some of his panels. The closer to the people or the busier the panel is, the better Burrows is. With some of the longer, wider shots he shows some shortcomings. Those panels tend to look too empty and don't have the impact they should have. It's hit and miss though - sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. His style is one I like however, and one I really look forward to seeing more of. His people have a kind of weight and edge of madness to them that I enjoy.

There are obvious parallels between the plot of Dark Blue and The Matrix (though I'm trying not to reveal them here), and Ellis himself has admitted that this is the one time so far that he has allowed himself to write a story from an old idea that's subsequently been done by someone else. Would the impact be any different if the Matrix had not been made? Perhaps, yes. It is going to be the most obvious thought for most of us upon reaching the midway twist in Dark Blue. The worlds within worlds concept of Dark Blue would probably have pounded a little harder upon revelation without the film, but I don't think it loses out because of it.

Dark Blue is an angry and vile tale (in the best way possible). As I've mentioned, it's very much a story hung around a single high concept, which comes at the expense of depth. There is room for these kind of comics though, and this is one that does work. Ellis has produced better, but Dark Blue is still a gruesomely satisfying little book. It's cheap for three comics worth of material and if you want a quick and violent read then you could do worse than giving this a look.