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Fell Vol. 1: Feral City by Warren Ellis
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Warren Ellis Illustrator: Ben Templesmith Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2007-06-05 ISBN: 1582406936 Number of pages: 128 Publisher: Image Comics
Book Reviews of Fell Vol. 1: Feral CityBook Review: Kill Street Blues Summary: 5 Stars
"Fell Vol. 1: Feral City" is a grim little tale about a police detective who has fallen from grace. Fell is the consummate Dark Stranger traveling under a Curse: a Good Man who does a Bad Thing and gets transferred to Hell as punishment.
Oh, I'm sorry---did I say "Hell"? I meant Snowtown.
Now, understand this: if you're a connoiseur of the Weird, the Sinister, the Strange, and the Macabre, then Snowtown is gonna be your kind of haunt, Brothers & Sisters.
Veteran story-smith Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith, who did the art for "30 Days of Night", have pulled off a lonely, smokey, genuinely creepy little work of inky black juju & midnight melancholy in this tale of a hard-boiled police detective who tries to bring a little old-fashioned policework to the dank backwaters of the lawless nightmare burgh.
But that's quite a task, he discovers, in this dank, murder-wracked urban oubliette where he was been exiled to do penance: Snowtown PD is just 3 & 1/2 cops (you'll see) just trying to keep a lid on. But on what---on what?
Ah, well, that's what makes 'Fell' so much fun. Ordinarily transfers from one burgh to the next are no big deal: just ripples in the tide of fleeting fortune and shifting shoe-leather of beat cops & grizzled detectives, the ebb and flow of department favor and foemanship and pure inertia.
But in this case, Detective Richard Fell is about to be transferred over the river and deep into the Woods, into a city that slumbers, and dreams, and hungers, and sometimes awakes, & clambers over railings and up trellises, slides through windows whose locks weren't securely fastened, and---well, Eats.
Yeah, it Eats. Eats those who aren't marked by its beastly, bloody sign, which has edged out the typical gang-graffiti in favor of its singular blood-red Sigil. Either you have the Mark, or you travel at your peril.
In that regard---with reference to its horrors, its indignities, its haunted, desolate, desperate streets and burned-out storefronts---you might even say that Snowtown is something like Hell. Something like Hell, in fact, but without the warm weather.
Oh well, now, that's ridiculous!---you might say. All Big Cities have their problems! All Big Cities are like that, to some extent!---you might say. You're being grossly unfair to Snowtown, which like all urban exurbs, has its share of high crime, poverty, teen pregnancy, and all the attendant horrors and troubles that go with them.
And you might be right. You might be able to hold me off, banter over how many cold cases would fit on the head of a pin, might be able to say the Mayor's new "broken windows" crime-fighting strategy has completely transformed the business district.
Only you're not going to tell me that, because this is Snowtown we're talking about. Snowtown, man. Not Balty, not Philly, not the Big Apple, not Chicago.
And there is something horribly wrong with Snowtown.
Ellis & Templesmith---particularly the latter, who in reining in his more irritatingly abstract qualities (particularly in "30 Days of Night", where the sombre dead of night horror there was undermined by his cartoonish graphics) has become a more effective artist---have captured the essence of nullity & desperation at the heart of any Big City, and deepened its shadows, darkened its speakeasies, and provided their haunted detective with a labyrinth of terror and adventure in which to seek repentance, among the mumblers, the grave-robbers, the manglers, and other night terrors.
Chief among them is the Nun. Ah yes, the Nun: rubbery & black-eyed beneath the shifting caul of her scuffy whimple: the Nun who shadows Det. Fell through Snowtown's darkened streets miming Atrocity and Filth, utterly blameless, but increasingly sinister?
But I'm not going to prejudice you against the place, oh no. Cities are made for walking. Much better to drop you off on the corner, under the flickering streetlight, and have you venture down an alley, perhaps, or spend an hour or two in some flophouse or divebar while some passing freight train howls its weirding wail from a million miles away.
Because, let's face it, you should be like Det. Fell, and get to know Snowtown on its own terms. At any rate, get to know it before it comes looking for you.
Sweet dreams.
JSG
Summary of Fell Vol. 1: Feral CityDetective Richard Fell is transferred over the bridge from the big city to Snowtown, a feral district whose police investigations department numbers three and a half people (one detective has no legs). Dumped in this collapsing urban trashzone, Richard Fell is starting all over again. In a place where nothing seems to make any sense, Fell clings to the one thing he knows to be true: everybody's hiding something.
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