The lethal warrior-angel from "Spawn: Evolution" goes on trial for her life. Spawn and Angela may have met originally as the deadliest of adversaries, but now Spawn finds himself coming to her defence when she is accused of high treason, and in danger of execution by her fellow angels.

2001-07-01 Good enhancment

After writing mostly Fantasy-influenced stories with throlls, faeries and wizards which worked out good for him, Neil Gaiman takes a risk here with the further creation of a character who later turns out to be one of the most popular members of the cast of a superhero title according to many. I myself take quite some characters over her (Billy Kincaid, Violator, Jason Wynn) but as a character that's supposed to be the perfect opposite of the Hellspawn she's indeed a very satisfying new (at the time) character. Luckily most of the story stages in Heaven and Hell, places Gaiman is familiair with since he explored them many times over already and THAT shows. His writing is being aided by the art of Greg Capullo who I think started here in showing himself to be worthy to take up drawing Spawn after McFarlane. It's obviously NOT the perfected art Capullo shows of later when he gets to draw 'Spawn' yet though, to be honest. I don't have a specific word for it but it's showing that typical "Image-look' that most Image books had in their early days.

About the story: The Angelic warrior Angela is celebrating her 100.000th birthday in her own unique fashion when all of a sudden the Hordes of Heaven come to place her under arrest. She's being put on trial for treason and conspiring with a Hellspawn (See the events in Spawn #9 to see what happened), among other things. It soon becomes clear to most that she's being set up and her friends attempt to help her. In doing so they need to get Spawn from earth and take him to heaven un-noticed to testify for Angela, the woman who once tried to kill him.

This story takes place right after #10 and is really a very good enhancement to the early days of the ongoing Spawn series. In saying that I'm also saying that it's definately NOT for people who haven't been reading the first 10 issues of Spawn, or at least #9 and 10 where the first Spawn/Angela meeting takes place. It explains a lot about some changes Angela went through between #9 and the later issues, which aren't addressed in the Spawn series itself. So when you've been a Spawn reader you must surely get this because it will only make your experience and understanding of Angela better, because it ties up some loose ends. If you haven't you should think about getting Spawn #9 and 10 first (#9,10 + the Angela minies makes a perfectly good stand-alone story without you having to go further into Spawn afterwards), or not get Angela at all. The story won't make sense otherwise.