The Black Cloak explores life as a cop in a neo-noir fantasy world

gamesradar.com:

Crime happens every day - even in fantasy worlds. Despite there being magical beings and epic quests, fantasy realms still have their share of murder, petty crime, and everyday life - and a new series called The Black Cloak delves into those like a Law & Order spin-off in Middle-Earth.

The Black Cloak is a hard-boiled detective story set in a fantasy metropolis where elves, mermaids, and more live together and die together. Writer Kelly Thompson and artist Meredith McClaren are launching The Black Cloak on January 31 as the first in a series of planned comics on Thompson's SubStack newsletter. The duo worked together previously on the creator-owned original graphic novel Heart in a Box, but this time they're handling a straight-up crime/fantasy mash-up.

The police detectives in this story are the titular Black Cloaks.

"A Black Cloak is essentially the name for a homicide detective in this neo-noir fantasy world populated with wild creatures, who came together to vanquish a great evil a couple hundred years ago and are now struggling to get along in the last known city," Thompson tells Newsarama.

This new-noir fantasy world of Black Cloak s centered around the last-known city in the world, the only city to survive that war from hundreds of years ago - Kiros. 

The first few chapters of The Black Coat (which we got an early look at), reveal that this world is a nuanced but blended place, between the mermaids, the elves, the coffee shops, and technological devices like cameras. When asked about this world-building, Thompson says that it blossomed in the synergy between her and McClaren.

"I'd say that while a lot of the original ideas came from my concept, the vast majority of what's working is down to Meredith being an