Comic - Average Joe #1

Susan Omand puts on her best (i.e. rubbish) Brummie accent as she reads the first Average Joe comic from our friends at Madius Comics...

Joe Heston is just an ordinary bloke, the archetypal average joe, living on his own in Birmingham, working a mundane desk job with a telesales company and generally thinking that life sucked. Until something, and someone, happened to change all that. The beautiful Abi Derry works at the art gallery and is in charge of the newest exhibition of Anglo Saxon artefacts, including the legendary Woden’s Urn. But all is not as it seems. Abi is also working for the mysterious Mr Caedmon who wants the urn to be stolen for a group called the Volk so that they can invoke its supernatural powers. All they need for Abi to pull off the robbery successfully is a hapless curator to blame and guess whose CV is at the top of the pile? However things don’t quite go to plan and the robbery is foiled in the most unexpected way which leads to something much MUCH worse...

We have been following the creation of Average Joe for over a year now on and off so I was really excited when I heard it was finally a thing, and I can tell you this – Average Joe is ANYTHING but Average! The story so far, from the anything-is-possible genius minds of Rob Jones and Leon McKenzie, is a great fun mix of heist movie and zombie apocalypse. I know, I know, it shouldn’t work but it really, really does. All the characters are very engaging right from the off; everyone knows, or is, an Average Joe and the enigmatic Mr Caedmon is a typical Mr Big bad guy straight out of the movies. It was also very refreshing to have a story set in a real British city, grounding the action and making it even more believable. Rob Jones’ lettering too, something you may think wouldn’t make that much of a difference to a comic, really adds to the experience, not only by making it a pleasure to read but also by giving Woden his own wonderfully declamatory godlike voice with the use of a jagged Celtic font. Brad Holman’s drawings though really lift the comic to another level, with places, such as the art gallery in Birmingham and some of the people being instantly recognisable. Yes, people, because some Twitter competition winners and supporters have been given “walk on” parts in the story (if you can get such a thing in a comic) and it was great fun spotting how they had been included. I also loved the little details that Brad managed to sneak into the richly coloured pictures, like a copy of Madius Comics’ own Papercuts and Inkstains on Joe’s desk and Ramlock and 50Signal on the waiting room table at Joe’s interview. Who says product placement is only in the movies?

Yep, the dream team at Madius Comics has done it again as another top quality comic hits the shelves. A comic which has really captured my imagination, given me a new hero in Average Joe and I can’t wait to see where the hell the story is going to go from here. Let’s not wait another year for the next one guys, ok?

Image - Madius Comics

Average Joe is available from Madius Comics direct.