I was surprised by the number of critical reviews of this comic. Lots of people put it down for lacking substance or emotional depth. In an edition of Orbital Operations, Ellis’ fantastic weekly newsletter, Ellis said of Cemetery Beach, “…this one all started with Jason and I finishing up volume 2 of Trees and my saying, “You want to go into volume 3, or do you want to do a palate-cleanser kind of thing?” And Jason sobbing “oh god yes please.” We decided to do an action piece. Jason likes to moodboard, in a way, and sends me art and photography he likes that sort of surround a space he’d like to play in. In the meantime, I was working out how to do an action piece that would also be an appalling punishment for Jason.”

I think Cemetery Beach is exactly what it set out to be, a delightfully relentless, Fury Road-ish chase across a 1980s-ish dystopian sci-fi off-world colony where everyone is at least as mad as the Mad Hatter. The art is fantastic and, so help me, whenever Warren Ellis puts words to paper or screen, I’m there to read them and I’m never disappointed. No matter where he takes me, I always feel I’m in good, unrelentingly creative hands. And no matter where his stories are set or who is doing the talking, there’s something about his dialogue that feels like home sweet-snarky home.