At the first sight of the beautiful full-colour cover of The Rainbow Orchid you would be forgiven for thinking that Hergé himself had leapt from the grave, pencil in hand to pen a new story of the diminutive boy reporter, Tintin. You would also be forgiven for thinking that you had the measure of this new comic at a cursory glance, all the elements of a Tintin pastiche are present. There's the enthusiastic, slightly camp boy adventurer who lives with an older bearded gentlemen in circumstances that are never quite explained. There is a drunken bumbler who kicks of the unthreateningly occult storyline, ugly villains, ham-fisted goons. All it is missing is a white dog and set of policeman twins!

This straight forward imitation is pretty good, after all you have to be pretty soul-dead to not love this kind of brilliantly drawn and electric ripping yarn. It starts off with a flower competition, drags in the Crusades and by the time we have an air acrobat providing an escape from the villains you know that this is high adventure done properly.

What really lifts the book though is that it is not just pastiche. Huge elements of it are drawn straight from Tintin but the whole story ends up being distinctly different. Firstly the Tintin character is split into two different characters, the boy man Julius Chancer who is an assistant to antiquarian Sir Alfred Catesby-Grey and the cynical wisecracking reporter William Pickle.

This split immediately creates a difference, as Pickle is more like a Hammett style fast-talking detective than Tintin and it is he that drives most of the narrative forward. Chancer (for all his top billing) is essentially there to drive fast cars, pop thugs on the jaw and generally have a whale of a time while Pickle actually explains what is going on. The two completely different narrative threads have the same effect as blending The 39 Steps with Biggles. Pickle's story has a genuine sense of menace and mystery while Chancer's is far more straightforward and exciting.

The interplay of the two stories immediately make this comic far superior to most you can read at the moment. It is not just ambitious but it works and with élan. The different levels of the story and their attendant styles lend a tremendous feeling of depth to the whole book. It doesn't just pull you through the panels at speed, although it does that, it also brings you back to re-read and reconsider the story once the excitement has passed.

In achieving all this - the artwork definitely does no harm. It has a beautiful clean line style that shows that the artist has clearly being studying continental styles. It is also very dynamic capturing the same fluidity that Tintin has. The only problem with it is that it screams out for a full-colour on every page. This comic should be in colour and I hope one day someone stumps up the cash for the full colour hardback treatment.

Even without the colour though we have a vivid story that is possible the most exciting comic of the year. In fact it's so good that I've decided to buy it for my father as a Christmas present, he too loves a ripping yarn. How high a recommendation can you get?