This is one Image mini-series you will find plastered over the British press.  Where most comics don’t get a nod, Tuff is written by British broadcaster Jonathan Ross so you can bet there is going to be a lot of interest, good or bad.

Set in prohibition era New York, Turf has gangsters, vampires and space battles.  Two would have been enough but Ross seems intent on giving his reader the maximum amount of entertainment.  That isn’t a problem but the story seems a little rushed.

What happens when all these groups come together and wrestle for control?  You will find out as the series progresses but so far it has been bloody, brutal and mixed with just the right amounts of cool sophistication from the era.  It feels like it wants to be a hybrid ‘Road to Perdition’ - ‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ mix.  It is early days so maybe it will settle down into something much more cohesive.

Tommy Lee Edwards’s artwork is gorgeous and beautifully coloured, you get the impression he has had the luxury of spending a lot of time putting it all together.  One of the distractions of the book is the long conversations that take place between the characters; it becomes a little long winded and pulls you away from the art.

It will be interesting to see how the series develops, if the word count stays the way it is then it may run the risk of becoming annoying.  It almost feels like there should be a narrator included with every book, at least then you could switch it off.  This would make an interesting movie, but as a comic it needs to slow down and relax a little.

Ross could have started his comic writing career with a British publisher, but instead he went with an American one.  You can’t blame him, from a business point of view Image will give him a much wider audience and the setting suits the American market. BUT there are so many good comic publishers in the UK and it’s a real shame he didn’t use some of his exposure to give the industry a much needed boost.