Death Sentence follows Verity, Monty, and Weasel, three people infected with a new virus that grants them incredible powers – but which will kill them in six months.

Written by Monty Nero and drawn by Mike Dowling, it has a good claim on being the best British comic in a generation. We asked Nero to talk us through some panels from the book.

“Death Sentence is a graphic novel about the state of the world today, reflecting adult concerns and themes,” Nero says.

“The reaction to the project has been incredible. We’ve been favourably compared to Watchmen about six times in different reviews. Obviously it’s not as significant a work as that masterpiece, but it’s good going for our first book.

“What I’ve always liked about comics is their underground pulp allure, and their capacity for profound insight as highbrow literature.Death Sentence aspires to be both.”

“We approached the story from the characters’ perspective, with the themes and plot first, and then rethought superpowers in a way that added something new to the core drama.”

“What we see here is Weasel’s admirable refusal to acquiesce to violence, and his private thoughts in the face of death. That gets to the core of his character.

“It’s also the first glimpse of anything approaching superpowers. It was pretty late on that I settled on putting any kind of superpowered action in. But as I wrote the script I found they made fantastic visual metaphors for the kind of issues I wanted to write about.”

CONTINUES ON BUZZFEED HERE: