I didn’t read Fallen Angel, the first volume at DC, when it started. I read about it online and realized it was being pushed as a de facto sequel to Peter David’s Supergirl series, so I skipped it. Around the twelfth issue, my shop owner convinced me (somehow, I can’t remember specifically) and I hunted down the rest on eBay and read and appreciated the work. I’m not a fan of online campaigners for comics with bad sales--admittedly, I was late coming to Fallen Angel, just like I was late getting into Dan Slott’s She-Hulk. These online supporters tend to promote these books amid endorsements for absolute dreck. Then DC canceled Fallen Angel and rumors swirled about David bringing it back at IDW. I think I even hopefully e-mailed IDW, just before the news broke.
The second series comes with a new artist, J.K. Woodward, who paints. Though I’m an opponent of painted comic books, I’d seen some Woodward art in a Zombie Tales issue and I was looking forward to it... forgetting how action orientated Fallen Angel could be. Painted action scenes don’t work, too static. Fallen Angel, in the second issue, has a painted action scene. Maybe even in the first issue. It doesn’t work. By the third issue, the art and the story start jibbing, until the fifth (the last of this first arc) when it’s impossible to imagine it ever looking any different.
This story is somewhat finite. David doesn’t do a direct sequel to the first series, setting it twenty years in the future, then doing a different approach. Instead of being episodic (with a “case” for the Fallen Angel to investigate), David reconfigures the existing situation into something he can further develop, while still wiping the slate clean. While there are some great character moments in the story--the one between mother and son is particularly nice, since it’s one of those relationships very few people bother doing well and David obviously put some thought into it--it’s not a character piece. Fallen Angel is the most event-driven good comic book I’ve read in quite a while. It’s someone who can write comic books well writing a comic book well, which is different than the comic book auteur, but Fallen Angel rewards just the same.
David manages to show all the cards--the cards he kept close to his chest while at DC, since there was a chance it was a Supergirl sequel then--and the cards aren’t silly, even when covering the theological. David’s Fallen Angel theology is a little bit less blasphemous than Garth Ennis’s Preacher, but he does it well, managing to humanize God almost as well as “Family Guy” does it. Just kidding. Kind of.
I’d been reading Fallen Angel in issues, but went back when the last one came out to get a more conclusive edification. It’s a damn good comic book.