Black Summer #0 is a curious thing.  Officially, it's a 99-cent promotional trailer for an upcoming seven-issue miniseries by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp.  In fact, issue #0 turns out to be a key part of the plot, so either they're going to repeat the whole thing in issue #1 (which would be annoying) or it's more essential than they were making out.

The series is published by Avatar, the curious indie publisher who specialise in a weird mixture of soft porn, licensed properties, and the occasional side project from established writers wanting to avoid the content concerns of major publishers.  Warren Ellis has been putting out comics through Avatar for a while now.  On the face of it, though, this is a strange book to bring to Avatar.  It's a superhero story of sorts, and there's nothing particularly outrageous about it in terms of content.  It could easily be a WildStorm book.  A sceptic might question whether it already has been.

The superheroes of this world are a group called the Seven Guns, some of whom are now retired, injured, dead, or a combination of the foregoing.  John Horus, the morally upright leader of the group, has got it into his head that President Bush is a dangerous criminal who stole the last two elections.  So he kills him.

Whether you accept Horus' criticisms of Bush is ultimately irrelevant.  The point is that Horus believes them, and since he's too powerful for anyone to rein in, he gets to try and impose his honestly held beliefs on the rest of America.

We've been here before, not least with Ellis's own Authority - although in terms of his own stories, the theme was probably clearer in its precursor StormWatch.  It's Ellis's standard critique of the superhero genre; the moment you remove the genre convention that they don't try to change the world, you end up with a bunch of angry political radicals who are more alarming than anything else.  As with the Authority, it seems that to Ellis, they're no less scary for holding opinions that he probably agrees with - although it was always notable that a depressingly large chunk of the Authority's readership completely failed to grasp that point.

It's not a bad concept, and Ellis's accompanying editorial rather suggests a "Civil War done right" subtext.  ("This is the freedom of doing a piece of superhero fiction outside the auspices of company ownership or the weight of continuity... In this world, masked adventurers on the run are not going to be pursued, tricked and trapped by their estranged colleagues.")  Still, it's an idea we've seen many times before, and on the strength of this issue, I seriously question whether it fulfils his self-described remit of "a new angle on the superhero story."  Mind you, he's got seven issues to go, so you never know what could emerge.

Juan Jose Ryp is the sort of artist you expect to see on an Avatar project like this - perfectly good, with solid instincts, but going a little overboard on the detail without actually achieving the photorealism he seems to be aiming for.  Still, it's better than a lot of the stuff you get from the major publishers, and the guy can certainly tell a story.

I'm not convinced that Black Summer is anywhere near as original as Ellis seems to be claiming.  But it's a good concept with talented creators, and a fine first issue.  Can't complain about that.

Rating: B+

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