Beautifully atmospheric comics and drawings from Malachi Ward

Californian comics artist Malachi Ward treads a fine line between outlandish superhero fiction and achingly powerful personal tales. The Pasadena resident is always feverishly busy working on new self-initiated stories, or collaborating with Matt Sheehan on drawing and colouring for Image Comics’ Prophet Strikefile series.

Personally I’ve always found sci-fi comics a little hard to swallow, but Malachi’s atmospheric personal work is right up my street, in particular his Ritual comics, that explore every facet of the human psyche and our depth of emotion. In fact much of Malachi’s work is gut-wrenchingly painful to read; bruisingly blunt in its astute observation of life.

His drawing’s pretty damn fine too, as you can see from this selection of works old and new. Particularly haunting is that glowing moon descended from the heavens, floating tragically above the surface of a lake. Sad but stunning.