Decorum

Stunning artwork carries this heady tale of far-future espionage from Hickman (the X-Men series) and Huddleston (the Middlewest series) to imaginative heights. In a universe teeming with aliens, dinosaurs, giant mushrooms, planet-size diamonds, and galaxy-spanning cults, Neha is an unremarkable teenage courier who risks her life to make deliveries. Her luck changes when a "priority package" brings her into contact with elegant assassin Imogen Smith-Morley, who sees potential in the fast-talking street tough. Imogen takes Neha under her wing and enrolls her in the Sisterhood of Man, an all-female school of interplanetary assassins. Neha is reluctant to kill, a serious drawback to her apprenticeship (Imogen, on the other hand, is less bothered by murder than by the state of her shoes afterward). Hickman's script fits the cheeky neo-space-opera mold of series like Saga or Invisible Kingdom, but Huddleston's art launches it into a fantasy tour de force, as he swirls watercolor painting, black-and-white brushwork, psychedelic spot color, Jack Kirby--inspired digital collage, and retro pop-art touches (dig those oversize Ben-Day dots!) into a phantasmagoric vision. Text sections explicate world-building details ranging from the fearsome Church of the Singularity to the street noodles Neha inhales. Readers will enjoy the trippy, tricked-out ride. (Jan.)