A few years ago I stumbled across an intriguing comic book from Ape Entertainment titled The Black Coat. The arresting cover showed what seemed to be a Revolutionary era hero wearing a mask and acting not unlike The Phantom or Zorro. But there were monsters!
I took a glance and was fascinated by the artwork of Francisco Francavilla, a guy who had a rough style but one that played with shadow and was suited perfectly to the material at hand. I picked up the few issues I could find and fell in love with the hero, the setting, the side characters, the whole shebang.
Ben Lichius is the guy who came up with the hero and he was designed by the aforementioned Francavilla, an artist who went on from Black Coat to take on Dynamite's Zorro. When Francavilla left the book I despaired, because the original four-part story left us with a cliffhanger of sorts. One issue of the sequel, another proposed four-parter appeared but then nothing, for a very long time.
A few months ago I stumbled across the second installment, beautifully packaged with the first chapter of the second art added for good measure. A new artist, Dean Kotz was on board to finish up the story and he is a worthy successor to Francavilla. A few weeks later I found the third part and just yesterday I got hold of the fourth and final part of the second storyline. It's fantastic!
The Black Coat is a fun book full of historical figures of the American Revolution like Nathan Hale and Ben Franklin. It's got robust adventure with submarines, mysterious formulas granting eternal life, seductice entranced Gypsy assassains, flying stone Gargoyles, and a mysterious League that seeks to create violence for its own ends in the colonies. This is such a large landscape that the stories we see of the Black Coat and his loyal men and women seem significant but just a part of the greater picture. Grand stuff!
I highly recommend it. Here's a link with more.
The BLACK COAT WEBSITE
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