TOP OF THE PILE: Solomon Kane - The Serpent Ring #1

I cannot recommend the first issue of Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring highly enough.

Patrick Zircher has done a phenomenal job as writer, artist and colourist, bringing Robert E Howard's Puritan monster-hunter to life in this breathtakingly-paced cinematic adventure.

While serving as a privateer in the service of Queen Elizabeth, Kane accidentally kills an innocent man, but with the man's dying breath he tasks the Puritan with returning a precious snake-head statuette to a friend in Venice.

However, forces are afoot that seek to thwart Kane in his endeavours. 

Solomon Kane may be the protagonist of The Serpent Ring, but Pat Zircher's story is full of well-developed characters, all with their own motivations, often at odds with each other.

The first issue of Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring is the best comic I've read so far this year, truly feeling like a Robert E Howard tale of pulp adventure complete with a palpable frisson of excitement and a hunger to find out what happens next.

The book left me very excited to see where this continent-spanning story takes us in subsequent issues (as well as finding out how it all ties into the wider Howardverse that Titan Comics is showcasing).

I realise this mini-series is setting up the next big "event" story, Scourge of The Serpent, which is great, but I'd love for Solomon Kane to be an ongoing title... on the proviso that Patrick Zircher is left alone to write and draw this comic for as long as he wants.