Andy Winter's newest comic, coming off the success of the Eagle Award winning Hero Killers and the brilliant Blood Psi. The story revolves around former MI5 agent Jacob Marley (referencing the Dickens character) coming back after retiring 15 years ago. In the 7/7 bombings, his daughter was caught in the blast, and she is in hospital, and now Marley wants revenge against those that did it, and tries to get to the bottom of the terrorist attacks. Now, it sounds a little clichéd initially, the ageing hero coming back for one last go, but the story sounded like it had enough promise.

Jacob Marley is given all the standard characteristics of an old man coming back into a young man's game - he doesn't think he can make it, self-doubt, thinks about giving up. It's a distraction from the typical young Bond hero. The villain, Quinn, is your standard Bond villain. He spouts facts about why he is doing good, reveals his plan and his intentions to the main hero when he has them captured. However, what Winter has done, by having his exploits force the hand of Muslims to do his bidding and also kill them off is a nice twist to the story. He really makes that a smart move, but doesn't say anything questionable against the real life 7/7 by allowing Quinn to have taken up his operations sometime after that (or at least not be directly involved in that incident). Quinn also represents many of the common thoughts you hear people saying every day about immigrants in England, Quinn obviously taking it to an extreme but the words he uses are very recognisable.

The artwork by Mick Trimble has both it's good and bad points. The story is a little dark, a little murky, and in some cases the artwork doesn't really represent that. Declan Shalvey's cover wraparound gives a completely different feeling. Full of blacks and shadows, it paints a different picture than the almost completely white pages included in the comic. Trimble includes very little use of shading, and when it happens it's thin cross hatches that don't add enough to the darker themes trying to be set=up by the writing. Trimble's art is strong. There's a lot of variation in poses and panel layouts, and he drops the standard grid layouts in favour of more dynamic offerings that really make pages stand out. It's just a shame that a lot of pages lack the right black level to make his art really stand out.

The production values (apart from the soft blacks explained above) are brilliant. It's a solid price (£3.95) for the page numbers and a perfect bound comic. The inclusion of some extra sketch material and a look at the original opening sequence is a great addition. Quinn's actions are a smart twist but his character is very clichéd. Septic Isle is a good comic book, but it doesn't reach the highs of Winters previous graphic novels.