The Eternal Conflicts of the Cosmic Warrior is a one-shot Image Comics release written, pencilled, and inked by Paul Grist, with colours by Bill Crabtree.

Paul Grist is a Britsh comic creator probably best known writer/artist behind such titles as Kane, Jack Staff and Burglar Bill! He has also been providing covers for IDW’s current ongoing Doctor Who series.

For a time, Jack staff featured a guest character known as The Eternal Warrior. Thought to be inspired by classic comic character Adam Eterno, The Eternal Warrior has appeared in Jack Staff #11, #12 and Jack Staff Special #1. The Eternal Warrior is “the cosmic champion, a wanderer through time and space, forever caught in the battle between order and chaos! He can only be bested by a man of honest intent! He’s never met one yet!”

Since the character’s departure from Jack Staff, Paul says that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of the continuing adventures of The Eternal Warrior. He says that “this story is something I’ve been kicking round for over a year now – I do a few pages, then leave it, come back a few weeks later and have a totally new idea about how to do it, leave it, then come back a few weeks later and, well you get the idea!” In an attempt to give himself a little focus he decided to post pages up on the Internet as he completed them, posting at least one new page a week – depending on how much work he’s got on.

Now those pages have been collected, Grist’s black & White artwork has been coloured by Bill Crabtree, and the first issue of story has been released as a one-shot called The Eternal Conflicts of the Cosmic Warrior. The original title of the issue was Timeless Adventures of the Eternal Warrior, but there was a last minute name change, probably to distinguish the character from that of Adam Eterno.

The story opens on a scene of an old prophet telling an evil king of a vision that he has received of a warrior coming to destroy the king. The king is unhappy with this vision , and the prophet’s life is forfeit. It’s a bit of a silly sequence, with a good joke at the end!

We then get a lovely double page spread that tells us the legend of a warrior called Leonard, a great leader of men, whose song people lived and died for. Eventually Leonard is vanquished by the enemy, and his song is forgotten, but many people live in the hope that his song will be heard once more.

The action then shifts to a monastery where monks worship what they think believe to be  the hand of Leonard. A mysterious woman named Bernadette wants the power that this artifact holds, and is willing to kill anyone who gets in her way, including the monks. Before she can claim the power though the Comic Warrior bursts into the monastery and vanquishes all of Bernadette’s forces.

Soon it is the Cosmic Warrior is face-to-face with Bernadette, battling over the hand of Leonard otherwise know as “The Hope of the Universe.” Bernadette then surprises the Cosmic Warrior by telling him that he is the fourth incarnation of the Warrior that has stood in her way, and there is nothing that he can do to stop her from putting the Universe out of it’s misery…

Paul Grist’s linework on this book is some of the best in his career. Paul definitely has a recognizable style, as exhibited in his previous work on Kane and Jack Staff, with abundant use of inks, giving a negative-space look to much of his work. Here though he changes things up quite a bit, giving the art a much more fantasy meets cosmic look, and Grist it seems can do cosmic with the best of ‘em, eat your hearts out Jack Kirby and Steve Rude!

I really liked Paul’s original B&W artwork, and would still have bought this if it were printed in B&W, but this market is bad for black & white, and it’s a surefire way to make sure no-one buys your book, with a few obvious exceptions such as Walking Dead, of course! I was quite hesitant to see a coloured version of the comic, but Bill Crabtree has done a top-notch job here, using a slightly subdued palette of light blues, greys and browns that works really well against all that black background. In fact the colouring job seems to elevate the quality of the art a little, which is really saying something!

While this comic is listed as a one-shot, it is really the first issue of a much larger story that Paul Grist has planned. If he finds that enough people are interested in the story, Grist has a five-issue miniseries planned as a follow-up in 2010. In this first issue Grist has laid down the foundations of something very different from any of his previous work. The concept is very Sword & Sorcery, but it is transplanted into a cosmic environment, allowing for much more imaginative experimentation. Lots of seeds of intrigue are planted in this first issue, and I can’t wait to see this epic story come to fruition! If you like cosmic adventure comics, then this is for you!

I enjoyed this comic immensely and give it my top recommendation. I implore you all to get out and grab a copy, so that Paul Grist will go ahead with the follow-on miniseries. I really need to know how the rest of the story turns out!

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