1927, North Carolina. Down on his luck, pilot Hawk E. Baron flies from town to town, entertaining the locals with dangerous flying feats in order to earn a living. An accidental miscalculation gets him into serious trouble with a wealthy and seemingly powerful family. Yet there’s much more to Baron than meets the eye – and he may even find an ally amongst the enemies he inadvertently makes…

Wow, to say I was blown away by the first issue of this Bonnie and Clyde-esque adventure (as it’s described in the blurb) is an understatement.

Scott Snyder crafts a tale with some very noir-styled elements, including the narration which tantalisingly reveals plot details ahead of time. In some cases, way ahead of time. There’s also some serious narrative curveballs in here that I won’t spoil, suffice to say that it sets up an incredibly intriguing narrative.

Tula Lotay’s painted artwork is phenomenal. I assumed that the painted cover would just be a style used for the cover alone – but the entire comic is lavishly illustrated in the exact same way, perfectly evoking a 1920s painting style. It’s genuinely gorgeous.

As to where we’re headed by the end of the first issue, who knows? There are some real shocks here and it’s going to be a wild ride seeing how everything comes together as the series progresses.

Comixology may have alienated most of its users earlier this year thanks to the heavy-handed integration with Amazon, but they’re still finding new and exciting exclusive content to digitally publish – and Barnstormers is another great example of that.