Who Is Jake Ellis?, Volume 1

Most Graphic Novels, days and days after you’ve read them, they make less and less sense. Not so with “Who Is Jake Ellis?” This GN makes more and more sense.

Nathan Edmondson’s writing is fun and precise, tough when it needs to be, and always original.

Tonci Zonjic’s artwork is beautiful, spare, evocative. He has a way with light and shadow that borders on the magical. He tells the story with as few lines and as little detail as possible, and the result is overpowering.

The best GN I’ve read in years. A whopping 5 Stars for this creative mystery. A harrowing, rambunctious, taut tale. If it were jewelry, it would be brass knuckles made out of a giant flawless diamond.

Wow! I picked this up, and I could not put it down. Jon Moore is a simple man, a CIA analyst who becomes a dark ops operative. How does he do it? He has a friend who is a real agent man helping him along the way called Jake Ellis. There is just one little detail: only Jon can see Jake, so who is Jake Ellis? That is part of the mystery in this series. In this installment, Jake gets Jon to come out into the open to go back to a place called the Facility, where apparently Jake and him were experimental subjects, all while they are being hunted down by enemies Jon has made along the way in his work it seems. This very well paced, good thrills, and it sets up nicely for the next volume, which I will be seeking out.

Fans of works like 100 show more Bullets and the manga Old Boy, for example, may find this series appealing as well. show less

copy provided by NetGalley

Jon is meeting with a group of...let’s call them gangsters shall we? when things seem to be going to hell. Any normal person would have fallen to a gunshot or to flames, but Jon isn’t normal. He can see and talk to Jake Ellis. A mysterious entity that only he can see, but who provides up-to-date information and warns Jon when things are about to happen. But who is Jake Ellis? And how come only Jon can see him? That’s what both of them are trying to figure out, as they also try to avoid being captured by intelligence agencies and killed by various groups. It’s a thrill a minute as Jon must avoid capture and only Jake can help him.

The opening sequence to this work can be summed up in one word: wow. Or show more awesome, incredible or fantastic. Take your pick. How often do you start a comic, see the first three pages of events, and then get provided to an entirely different perspective of them? In this comic you do and it works really well and it doesn’t slow down there. The writers constantly keep us on the move, as Jon avoids capture and tries to figure out what experiment was really preformed on him some time ago. This comic has elements of a spy thriller, elements of James Bond, and elements of Jason Bourne, but with their own unique twists to them.

The imagery, while seemingly simple at times, has elements of greatness to it. The artist doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but deals instead with a lot of light and shadows to create the figures and it works perfectly with this story. It gives it that gritty noir feel to it and an element of good vs evil, or dark vs. light. One of my favorite scenes in the story line is in the first issue, when Jon is hiding out in the church. It just has such stark contrasts of shadow and deeper shadow to it and the coloring is spot on, giving us just the right amount of light to see by. And then it gets gradually darker and darker. Absolutely fantsatic. My one suggestion...don’t read this as an ebook. The font is small and it just doesn’t work well.

Overall this is is a thrilling story that will keep you on the edge of your seat and wanting to know more. It’s an absolutely perfect spy thriller. 4 out of 5 (just avoid an ebook version.) show less

Meet Jon Moore. He is a criminal that is ready to take on almost any job and his backup, Jake Ellis, is always there to help him finish the job and getaway with it.. Except that the job they are working on now goes really bad. And did I mention that noone can see Jake besides Jon?

The paperback collects the 5 issues of the miniseries with the same name published by Image earlier this year. And the job that goes south is the beginning of the first issue. It leads Jon and Jake back to where everything had started 4 years earlier (and the reader gets a glimpse of it occasionally in panels showing the actions from back then).

The book is somewhat predictable - the way the main mystery was resolved was probably the most standard one. On the show more other hand it was the logical way to wrap up the whole story and coming up with something surprising probably would not have worked.

I am not sure I am a fan of the art in this book - it has its good moments and it is not distracting you from the story (which should be good enough I guess) but for the most part it feels a bit rushed; a bit too sketchy. And for a book set in the big cities of Europe (France and Spain mainly), the art just does not show it -- it could have been set in Nowhere, USA and the feeling would have been the same

And then on the very last panel, the author makes sure that the door is open for a sequel and makes the reader wonder if the resolving of the plot line was actually the end or just a step to figuring it all out. Don't get me wrong - at the end of the volume there is a much better idea of who Jake Ellis is and the story does not feel unfinished. But if there is a sequel down the road, it can just pick up where this story leaves. show less