44 pages
Full colour
US sized
Square-bound
Story by John A. Short and illustrated by Gabrielle Noble
Order details at https://reverendcross.blogspot.com/
REVEREND CROSS is back! And this time she's in full colour and in her longest adventure ever!
Hold on to your dog-collar as everything is about to change for the first ever female vicar action hero in REVEREND CROSS: DEFROCKED!
Cast out by the church that trained and armed her... Can Abby Cross save the world from the monsters of Greek mythology with no back-up? Will anything ever be the same again?
It's always nice to see a Short and Noble book turn up as they are probably my only favourite UK based creative comics team!
Firstly let's get the simple stuff out of the way as I know there are people out there who MUST know this before buying: the printing quality and paper stock used are high quality and bound well enough. All the colours are as vibrant as they should be and the text is readable.
The story is what you expect from Short; everything flows smoothly from dungeon action, clerical inquiry to unexpected rendezvous in a public lavatory (oh, get your minds out of the gutter), museum and Mount Olympus. There are the usual pop culture references such as The Prisoner and Quatermass and The Pit and more than a few tongue-in-cheek jokes.
I think that the stand out line was: "Armed Cleric! Fall to your knees and pray!" I will never look at the Right Reverend Henry Bloatesbottom the same when I go to church (which I do not). The story was fun and that is something people forget today: comics should be fun. I do wonder where the end of this story will leave Cross in the future.
Noble's artwork is something I first saw when someone told me that I would "not like" her Spliffy the Stoner Chick because it was not "a classical comic style"....which made me buy the magazine it was in (Wasted). I was told the same thing about Paul Grist's Jack Staff but fell in love with that series (which also heavily featured British TV pop culture of a certain era).
I have seen comics with great stories where the artwork left me cold and not caring that much. Even though it is hard work the artist has to enjoy their work and that really does tell in print -the best review I ever gave a small press comic was for something badly drawn BUT it was very clear that the artist was enjoying himself. The Fun Factor is what you see in Noble's work.
The use of colours to set certain scenes works well. The various characters, whether supernatural, mythical, cyborg or ordinary human. Noble always presents great artwork that works with the given story and she does have a couple of blogs but these have not been updated in a while.
Would I recommend this book? Hmm. Let me think about that.
YES.
Now go and buy a copy and have some fun action and adventure!
