(5) TOM PARKINSON-MORGAN –

KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS (webcomic / Image 2013 – present)

“The king of creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the third conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast – and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of heaven will quake with his coming. And his name – his name will be – Kill Six Billion Demons.”

Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan (or Orbital Dropkick as he presently styles himself on social media) is a ‘New Weird’ fantasy webcomic, “stuffed with sumptuous insanity”. Or as I prefer to call it – psychedelic cosmic fantasy. Funnily enough, I see parallels between it and Garth Nix’s The Keys to the Kingdom, although it is a lot more, well, psychedelic and cosmic than the latter’s young adult fantasy.

God is dead and so are the gods, leaving only war in heaven as the most powerful beings vie to inherit the multiverse, although for now there is an uneasy truce between the seven beings – the Seven – that have emerged victorious to rule it between them in Throne, the heart of the multiverse. But before them was the legendary Conquering King, first to rule over Throne, but who abandoned it and disappeared with the Key of Kings, which holds the power to overthrow the Seven and conquer the multiverse itself. Which he returns from death itself (no big consequence to such beings) to give to Allison Ruth, a simple barrista from Earth, who finds herself plucked to the very heart of multiverse as its new champion and with a quest evoked by her new name – Kill Six Billion Demons.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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