This July, lay out in the backyard and treat yourself with the visual splendor of Black Orchid by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.

Black Orchid, by famed author Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Stardust) is a three part comic book series about a crime fighting super hero by the same name. The original Black Orchid made her debut in DC comics in 1973 but in 1989, Gaiman with the help of illustrator Dave McKean and Vertigo comics brought her back with a vengeance and she remains relevant today.

Black Orchid (aka Suzy, Susan Linden-Thorne, Flora Black) is a master of disguise with superhuman speed, strength, agility, and of course, like all great super heroes, she flies. “Suzy” is a human plant hybrid with a deep and powerful connection to mother nature through a force called “The Green”.

In the beginning, Susan Linden-Thorne is mysteriously and brutally murdered and reincarnates into a beautiful and deeply troubled creature. Her plight to avenge her death and rediscover herself leads to a nail biting series of strange events and surprising twists (along with some tantalizing cameos by Poison Ivy, Swamp Thing and even Batman himself) ending deep in the mystical rainforests of Brazil for an epic showdown. Dave McKean’s exquisite series of illustrations utterly transport the reader into the hearts and minds of the characters and enhance the story to boundless depths.

Whether you’re a die hard comic book subscriber or completely new to the genre, Black Orchid’s unorthodox approach has something to offer everyone. Mikal Gilmore describes its unique quality best in the introduction: “…Black Orchid…uses violence as a critique of the uses of violence – that is, as a critique of not only how violence figures into our actions and our psychology, but also how it figures into our myths and our art…” and to take it one step further – how its figures into our environment.

Amongst an ever growing mass of important (yet sometimes dry) ecological reads, Black Orchid is a welcome fantasy thrill ride that manages to inspire and address our very real human link to the natural world. It successfully articulates the fragility, strength and wonder of this place we call Earth.