Like many others I’m sure, there were three key factors that made me pick up Spaceman #1: Brian Azzarello is currently knocking Wonder Woman out of the park; that cover is something else; and, if you’re still not sure, it’s just $1.

Of all the books I read this week, Spaceman #1 is the one which has lingered in my mind the longest. Weaving together a tapestry of influences, Azzarello and Risso have created a character and a world which, by the final panel, already feel familiar while still being totally unique.

The Clockwork Orange-aping dialogue can be a stumbling block at first — the overly simplified, phonetically written dialect mirroring a sort of post-apocalyptic Newspeak — but it’s small touches like this that layer the world that Azzarello is building around our man-ape Orson.

And what a sumptuous world it is. Risso’s interiors are washed with oranges and full of back-lit structures, the flooded near-future city bringing to mind Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s ‘The City of Lost Children’.

Add to this a back story which looks interesting and unpredictable, and a main story arc which seems primed to explore and make the best of Orson’s unique character and you’ve one hell of a first issue on your hands.