The Last of the Chickenheads by Tony Wicks is good. The name and the characters make it seem goofy, a bit weird, a bit laughable. And while it may be convoluted and hard to follow in places, it shows promise as a series and shows promise in it's creator. The story behind Last of the Chickenheads has a good premise, but when I type it up and you read it something will be lost in translation. You'll just have to trust me. A human-like species of chickens named Chickenheads, and other animals, have been killed by a virus. Frank is the last of them, and is seeking revenge against the lion Bruno. The world has changed, with animals and insects becoming more human, and being put to jobs, (The chickenheads seem to be farmers, cockroaches are used as protection, since they "protect the hive", etc.).

The pacing is great, and the writing is almost there. In story terms, it's a good idea, and it's executed pretty well. However, there's lots of unexplained things that just happen, and Tony seems to throw the reader straight into this without any previous knowledge, which can make things a bit confusing at times. However, as it is a series this is something that could be sorted out in future books. Sometimes there was just far too much text, in an early scene a scientist is explaining the situation to Frank through 7 heavily filled speech bubbles on one A5 page. Overall, the writing was good, it just needed some polishing up.

Tony's artwork is pretty good, getting perspective and anatomy details mostly spot on. His narrative storytelling is brilliant, his layout of panels and his pacing through images is some of the best in the UK indie market, really. However, what drags down his art is his pretty bad use of greyscale.Thing's aren't defined enough, given only one colour for most objects, and it doesn't blend very well for the eye. It's a shame, really, because apart from this the artwork is great, it just brings it down. Hopefully with some more work the greys will work a lot better with his artwork, I'd say more shading would be useful, but really just more distinction between the levels of grey would boost his artwork so much.

It's a good start to a series, with the second book hopefully somewhere on the horizon. My major problems with it were the grayscale use and the parts of the plot that were hard to understand, both of which can be sorted with future issues. At 50 pages for £2.80, you get a lot for your money, and if you want a sci-fi adventure, you'd better start here.