Review of the Week : Imaginary Boys Volume 1

At last! A comic from DC Digital Comics I can actually say that I WANT to follow!... yes, I am surprised!

Imaginary Boys
Volume 1
By Carlos Lopez Bermudez
Released February 16th 2011

When you die? You expect to be going either to heaven or hell... unless your part of the radical right, then it's right to hell for you nutters... but for Elise Dawn, who has just passed away at a most young age of 9, she suddenly finds herself in the afterlife and, strangely enough, finds herself with an exocentric choice that can lead her to the greatest adventure of exsistence... with the greatest peril anyone can face along the way.

Meeting a dark winged, broken halo, chain smoking entity named Ashbel (consigned to paint the signs marking the road to heaven or hell with his own blood) she is given the 4-1-1 on the land around her, and the basics of what she needs to survive if she plans to ignore the roads to heaven and hell, and walk the path less traveled to near and distant lands of cultural mythos (already in this issue you see a tower seemingly born from Chinese folklore complete with a guardian red dragon, a tree which may be connected to Wiccan belief, a distant construct of possibly Tibetian origin, a large white city and what appears to be Stonehedge) and a warning.

She is an "Imaginary Boy".. or in this case girl, and her body is what she makes of it (yes, kinda like What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams), and she carries with her a memory bag containing everything that she was before death. Before she takes the first steps on her journey she is warned not to lose the contents of her memory bag, and warned to stay away from smoking beings as they have tasted the realm of hell (thus became addicted to smoke, hence the metaphor of cigarettes indicating smoke/sulfur addiction) and cannot be trusted... and yes, that includes the being helping Elise in her first steps into the world as he contacts a being most interested in acquiring Elise for reasons yet to be seen.

Oh, one more thing, just because she's dead it doesn't mean she has nothing to lose. Besides her memories she also has her eternal soul to keep... as she loses that she loses herself. No sooner is she on her way as already a minion of hell and his servant try to take Elise's soul (hell already knowing of her coming as it has appeared in today's local Hell Newspaper) only to fail as Elise is saved by her former pet dog (now a shapeshifter talking dog slash wolf).

Next time? The journey into the large alien expanse of the afterlife continues as Elise takes a jounrey worth taking into the mysteries of what lies beyond exsistence and life itself... and you can take that trip with her, every month from DC Digital Comics. A well written, engaging, tight and totally addictive page turner (digital page turner yet but page turner nevertheless) that'll keep you hooked. This is, at long last, the first thing I have seen out of DC Digital Comics' endless parade of titles that has made me say "I want to read this one."

I hope you pick it up (first issue is free!) and read it too. A rare for DC Digital Comics 5 out of 5.

Next week? Another random review! Stay tuned!