Guilded Age. Volume 1 T. Campbell, Phil Khan (Writers), Erica Henderson (Art) . (http://guildedage.net/)

A hugely engaging and enjoyable heroic adventure that embraces all of the genre requirements and confidently updates and subverts them with very smart story telling and sharp humour. A group of adventurers are hired by the leading power in the continent of Arkerra, Gastonia, as a special team of "Peace Makers". The team are well aware that "Peace" is not really their remit, still they acknowledge that Gastonia are a the lesser of two evils in the fight between Gastonia and the Savage Lands. As importantly they are all adrenaline junkies and action and adventure are as necessary to them as breath and food.
T. Campbell, Phil Khan take a well established genre framework and have a great deal of fun with it without ever betraying or undermining it. The story is smartly structured, opening with an episode that introduces the team in full action before moving back to introducing the team and leading up to the event that lead them to start working together. A pirate band have kidnapped several children of very rich citizens of Gastonia and the lure of adventure and money is potent. The episode unfolds with tremendous confidence and force as the team meet and work together and find that they are good together.
The cast are sharply individual as well as matching genre stereotypes, they are both entirely themselves and who they should be in the conyext of the story. This very difficult task is made look easy and natural by the writing that smarly uses very funny jokes to sharpen the story and give the cast a chance to step out of their genre boundries and reveal themselves as individuals.
Erica Henderson's art is wonderful, it is a pleasure to read, delivering the fantasy version of magical middle ages that is needed by the context. The cast, both the leading players and the walk on parts are given great expressiveness and they move through their context with physical weight.
The colouring brings out all the tones and nuances of the story with subtelty and care, the details are given clarity and depth and the emotional tone of the story is always captured and expressed.
Guilded Age takes readers seriously enough to ensure that the story has depth and reach and at the same time is very funny, the very talented creators mix the elements with subtle
confidence and skill making this a deep pleasure to read.