Newuniversal Volume 1: Everything Went White

Written by Warren Ellis

Illustrated by Salvador Larrocca

Comics history is by turns fascinating, horrifying and flat out farcical. The original New Universe (Not quite an oxymoron I think but close) was an attempt by Marvel comics to reinvigorate their fortunes by introducing an entirely new universe of characters and concepts. They covered most genres, ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous and are still fondly remembered by many comic fans. They've also just been given the reboot treatment with Warren Ellis taking the most basic concepts of the New Universe books and turning them into a very new, very coherent whole. The end result is Newuniversal.

On March 2nd 2006, on a world subtly different from our own, the White Event takes place. Across the world the sky goes completely white and in San Francisco, Oklahoma, the Beltway and Manhatten, four humans are changed forever. Critically injured NYPD Detective John Tensen, with his half head shot away, wakes up, kills his nurse (Himself a serial murderer) and leaves the hospital, entering what he believes to be hell. In Oklahoma Ken Connell falls asleep next to his girlfriend and wakes up in the centre of a sigil burnt into the ground, next to his girlfriend's corpse. At Project HEX, Jennifer Swann, a brilliant cyberneticist trapped with the white elephant project her father created finds herself faced with a unique and bitterly ironic problem whilst in San Francisco, Iazanimi Randall wakes up to find herself face to face with an alien contstruct with something vitally important to tell her...Justice, Starbrand, Cypher and Nightmask.

Four New Universe characters turned on their heads and unified in the story of what happens when the world changes, and what terrified people will do to try and change it back.

Ellis' greatest strength as a writer is as an ideas man and here he's allowed to absolutely cut loose. From the hulking menace of Jenny Swann's HEX suit to Izanimi Randall's conversation with something utterly outside her experience, this is a book which piles the ideas on at a mile a minute and never once lets up. Ellis' dialogue is equally sharp and again, it's Randall and Swann who get the majority of the good lines. However, there's room for characters here too and Connell in particular is far more sympathetic in this version than he ever was in his original incarnation. He's an average man who has had something truly horrific happen to him and his failure to deal with that (And Izanimi's contrasting pragmatism about the change in her own life) makes for fascinating reading. Throw in some guest appearances by other New Universe characters and a fascinating sub plot involving the history of the White Event and this feels like a big, ambitious, completely controlled piece of science fiction with superheroes added for seasoning.

Of course, Ellis isn't alone and Larrocca's gorgeous work on the book is not to be overstated. From little touches like Ken Connell being able to see his face reflected in the bullet he thinks will kill him to the moment where Jenny Swann realises exactly how much trouble she's in, Larrocca imbues his characters with tremendous expression and humanity. It should be pointed out however that he also imbues many of them with more than a passing resemblance to prominent Hollywood actors and some readers may find it distracting. Others, this reviewer included, found it added a level of entertainment to the book having the 'movie' version already cast.

Epic in scope and colossally well done this is big, ambitious superheroics at its best. Unmissable for any fans of the genre.