So another Marvel/Soleil collaboration is released and finally they're readily available here in the UK.  I like the hardcovers more than single issues but thought I ought to do my bit to try and encourage the enterprise by picking up some single issues.  Besides, this release intrigued me as all the other ltd series so far have been very much in the sci-fi/space opera vein, whereas this is a clear departure from those first titles.  What we have is an action story, firmly Earth based with papal conspiracy overtones, but without the overearnestness of a Dan Brown novel.  The series is about a team of archaeologists who work for the Catholic church retrieving religious artifacts to preserve the sanctity of the religion and prevent the items falling into the wrong hands.  Whilst getting shot at.

This is fun stuff.  It's complex enough not to seem like fluff, but refuses to take anything too seriously.  I guess it is aiming for a kind of modern day, church sanctioned Indiana Jones and that kind of comes through quite well.  There are some nice historical flashbacks to the times of the Templars (don't those pesky knights always crop up somewhere?) and the shooting/heist scenes whip along with a fluid sense of choreography.  The other nice thing is the sense that, even if there are more than the initial three issues, I think it's likely that you are getting a decent self contained story, not beholden to any wider continuity. That makes books like these a nice refresher between Dark Reign and Blackest Night shenanigans.

The art isn't quite the clean linework that I'm used to in my European comics.  I'm no Manga expert, but that definitely seems like an influence here.  Not that this is a problem.  It's inticate and kinetic, whipping the storyline along at a good pace. 

I'm a huge proponent of the bede arena of comic production and I'm slowly amassing a decent collection.  This can't stand up to the greats of the modern bede arena like The Killer or Largo Winch (or for that matter the likes of Soleil's own UNiversal War One), but just he same this is very good comics, well worth the read.