Broken Frontier

With the first several issues of FELL sold out and Warren Ellis's crime drama continuing to attract buzz following multiple printings of each issue, Image Comics has announced that a trade paperback collecting FELL #1-8 will hit bookshelves in April.

Written by Ellis with art by Ben Templesmith, FELL has received widespread critical acclaim since its launch, attracting some of the most glowing reviews of 2006. A sales juggernaut, FELL continues to sell out issue after issue, printing after printing, despite rising initial orders and an ongoing commitment to keeping each issue in stock via new printings. Now, Image is taking the phenomenon to the graphic novel shelf by collecting the first eight issues of the Eisner-nominated series into a single volume, FELL, VOL. 1: FERAL CITY TP.

FELL chronicles the life of Detective Richard Fell, a big city detective transferred over the bridge 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, Fell is starting all over again and his ongoing story delivers visceral morality tales from the periphery of city life. In a place where nothing seems to make any sense, Detective Fell clings to the one thing he knows to be true: Everybody’s hiding something.

Inspired by seemingly disparate influences such as stage plays and Will Eisner's newspaper strip THE SPIRIT, Ellis and Templesmith's carefully crafted masterpiece is a dark and dense story unlike anything else on the rack.

Creator and writer of such successful graphic novel series as TRANSMETROPOLITAN, PLANETARY, THE AUTHORITY and DESOLATION JONES, Ellis is in his element on FELL, and Templesmith, best known for his work on modern horror classic 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, has proven himself an inspired co-conspirator for what many are describing as one of Ellis's finest series to date.

"Ben's a mad genius," says Ellis. "His work is a perfect mix of Sienkiewicz's American experimentation, manga cartooning and European perspective. It's a unique-looking book, and writing for someone like Ben is like having eight different artists – there's nothing I can write that won't be illustrated eight times as well as I imagined."

FELL, VOL. 1: FERAL CITY (FEB071889), a 152-page trade paperback with a cover price of $14.99 is available in the March issue of Diamond Previews with an in-store date of April 14.