Flint flies solo
Cringeworthy flashback from 2010. The audio is a bit wacky in this one. It’s painful…but it’s short! (That’s what she said!)
Podcast available via iTunes or the Libsyn Webpage as a direct download.
Retro
The Stainless Steel Rat Deluxe Edition
“Stainless Steel Rat”, “Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World” & “Stainless Steel Rat For President”
By Harry Harrison, Kelvin Gosnell & Carlos Ezquerra
Review by Luke Williams
This handsome hardcover collection collects all 3 of 2000ADs adaptations written by former Tharg, Kelvin Gosnell and the legend that is Carlos Ezquerra. For those of us who don’t know the Rat (prior to reading this book that your reviewer would fall into that category) the Stainless Steel rat is otherwise known as “Slippery” James Bolivar Di Griz. In a far future where crime is almost a thing of the past, Jim is a rebel, kicking against authority until authority finally gets the better of him. He is press ganged by Galactic Law Enforcement, Jim is as good getting out of scrapes as he is getting into them, making him an ideal candidate for the “Special Corps”, specialising in high risk, time and space spanning missions.
Through the 3 stories we see Jim tackle interplanetary espionage, corruption, theft, time travelling tyrants, a little bit of politics and most notably the pulchritudinous but lethal Angelina.
Gosnell and Ezquerra, adapt a fun packed world, Jim Di Griz is loveable rogue. A modern comparison in the Prog’ would be Nikolai Dante; someone who is spends less time grimacing and more on wise cracking, robbing you blind with a twinkle in his eye.
Gosnell was 2000ADs second editor after (Uncle) Pat Mills, but by the time the Rat was published in the Prog’ he had gone freelance, writing Future Shocks Time Twisters and went onto write the Oliver Frey painted Terminal Man in legendary computer magazine Zzap64 (Has that ever been collected?)
Never stopping to draw breath, the plot is pacey, the script punchy and witty. Despite being classed as sci fi, this is basically a collection of caper strips with ray guns, space ships and time travel and it’s great fun . Art wise this is classic period Carlos Ezquerra, Carlos’s curvy technology (and Angelina) dynamic layouts and some gorgeous double page spreads. Carlos again uses James Coburn as a template, Jim looking a bit like Major Eazy sans forage cap & cigar but avec cheesy grin.
Rebellion have reprinted colour pages from the centre spreads when the Prog was on toilet paper, but occasionally they have an annoying break in the middle due to the binding process, but that’s a minor complaint. The version that is reviewed was the webshop exclusive version, with a “likely to get dirty quite quickly unless you’re careful” white cover.
If you are a bit sceptical of comic adaptations of novels, (what’s the point etc?), put that to one side. This is old school 2000AD fun, prior knowledge of the character unnecessary. A good fit for the Prog’ fast paced, lots of action and most importantly, humour.
The book is now out of print on the 200AD webstore, but still available digitally or via other online outlets (or so they say anyway).
Mek Memoirs
By Jack Adrian & Kevin O’Neill
Published by Dark & Golden Books
Review by Luke Williams
Kevin O’Neill is a legend of British comics, his idiosyncratic, anarchic art style harking back to classic British humour comic artists like Ken Reid and MAD magazine contributors like Jack Davis and Bill Elder but with a hard sci fi edge. He is legendary for being “banned” by the Comics Code Authority (ask your parents) for his contribution to a “Green Lantern” strip written by Alan Moore, possibly even more noteworthy for being a controversy not instigated by Moore.
At the start of his career, O’Neill took various jobs, including design work for film magazines and comics, and to help raise his profile, worked on fanzines and self published comics.
Mek Memoirs is a reproduction of one of King Kevin’s earliest comic projects. Stuck in the dead end of IPC humour department, Kevin needed to find an outlet for his passions, the work that he really wanted to create.
Writer Chris Lowder, aka Jack Adrian famed of early 2000AD and Starlord amongst other work, and Kevin put together this first episode of what was going to be a reportage style future robot war story. It has a surprising amount of salty language, pitching this towards the more “adult” market and perhaps where both creators saw the future of comics, or at least what that future should involve.
Stylistically, it is unmistakeably Kevin O’Neill, the textures of his early work have a touch of Ron Turner about them, but you can’t hide that imagination. The robots featured are grand and bizarre designs, and the human characters belie that humour comics influence. This is the seed that would grow into classics such as Ro Busters, ABC Warriors, , Nemesis the Warlock his design of Walter The Wobot and this writer’s personal favourite, Metalzoic .
Thankfully, reports of his retirement following the end of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen were exaggerated and he’s working on a strip for this year’s Battle Action special, written by Garth Ennis.
Mek Memoirs is a “slight” volume. It’s unbound , has 8 pages of strip with another 4 pages of editorial and commentary from O’Neill and a new cover on top. For £8 plus postage that’s a little pricey. But it is a reproduction of O’Neill’s earliest work; a historical document for us Kevin O’Neill stalkers and a nice companion to the Cosmic Comics volume published by Hibernia and Gosh, reissued last year with added content.
It’s worth hunting out to see the earliest work of a true original.
https://goshlondon.com/mek-memoirs-pre-order/
Further reading
Nemesis The Warlock : A Potted History
ABC Warriors : A Potted History
Metalzoic Mega City Book Club Podcast
Skreemer
By Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins, Steve Dillon and Tom Ziuko
Skreemer is an oft overlooked collaboration between old mates, Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon. An odd fit for DC and a series you couldn’t imagine them taking a punt on now, it was Vertigo before there was Vertigo, later reprinted in TPB form under that sadly now defunct imprint. It’s an unusual strip which could easily fit in 2000AD now and is here by dint that 3 parts of its creative were working on lots for “The Galaxy’s Greatest” at roughly the same time as it was published.
Skreemer is an unusual mix of near future dystopia and gangsters, or perhaps to paraphrase Ewins’ from his introduction a sci fi “Long Good Friday”. Veto Skreemer is an orphan who is brought up in an America where gangs now run the country following some unexplained cataclysm. Skreemer rises to head one of these gangs, but throughout his life has had visions of his own doomed future, a future he tries to escape via a long term grand plan. The story is told by a mysterious narrator, jumping back and fore in Veto’s life and how it parallels and intersects with the narrator’s own family history.
In the introduction to the collection Ewins’ cites James Joyce as an influence on both himself and Peter Milligan , the latter revisiting Joyce in later works such as “Shade, The Changing Man”. In places Skreemer is horrifying and often brutal, this is a very grim book. Reader sympathies lie with the narrator and his family, but weirdly and despite being a psychopath, Veto himself is also a strangely sympathetic character; possibly because he sees himself as being so helpless and beholden to a future only he can see.
The Ewins / Dillon art team is an odd mix, they had previously worked together on a one off Bad Company called “Simply”. There are pages which look like Ewins has been inked or even finished by Dillon, whereas other pages were all Dillon and then vice versa. Ewins’ pop art sensibilities soon blend seamlessly with Dillon’s square jawed realism. Tom Ziuko’s colours are suitably sombre if a little on the muddy side.
A quick search on the internet reveals It can be picked up quite cheaply as a trade. A forgotten gem of a book.
New Statesmen
By
John Smith, Jim Baikie, Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo
Review by Luke Williams
New Statesmen was the ignored second child to the attention seeking first born Third World War in Fleetway’s late eighties / early nineties punt into “mature comics” Crisis.
Brain behind Tyranny Rex, Indigo Prime and various Future Shocks, writer John Smith was paired up with veteran artist Jim Baikie to create a retro futuristic political thriller cum Watchmen pastiche. Set in a future where genetics had advanced sufficiently for the USA to have won the superhuman arms race, where the EEC is a superpower, Britain had become the 51st state of a debauched and super powered celebrity obsessed USA
The US government had created the Optimen, gifted with “hard” (physical strength) and or soft (psychic) talents. Once their existence was revealed to the world, these Optimen were each assigned as the representative of each of the 51 states of the USA.
Five of those statesmen are known as the “Halcyons” “Ice queen” Meridian, the tortured and troubled Burgess, sleaze ball Vegas, stoic Cleve and party boy Dalton. The Halcyons are tasked with dirty undercover jobs for the government, which nevertheless still manage to attract significant attention. Their latest target is the Statesmen Phoenix of Nevada, an evangelist running for President, but on a wave of corruption and blackmail. He was too popular, he has to go; either by fair means, or more likely, foul.
As a strip New Statesmen is a bold attempt at rising the wave of “mature” comics. In his introduction to the collected edition, Smith describes it as a mystery story, but pare away the occasionally confusing story telling techniques and you are left with a fairly straightforward if under developed plot, swamped with ideas.
The late Jim Baikie’s art is beautiful, bold colours and dynamic page compositions adn underappreciated master of comics. The appearance of Sean Phillips on fill ins appears to attemptto copy Baikie’s style, but only achieves to break up the flow. It’s only toward the end of this collection that Phillips as we know and love him appears. The final visual is a young Duncan Fegredo, freewheeling, light and almost impressionistic, lovely stuff.
Baikie and Smith don’t shy away from violence, there’s plenty of claret spilled on these pages interspersing the dialogue heavy scenes and Smith’s often cryptic script. The jump cuts between scenes hide some uneven pacing and Smith gets side tracked quite easily. The plot builds slowly, before seemingly sprinting to the denouement. It feels that Smith wanted to clear the decks of the strip so that he could Smith could start developing the weird body horror and genetic experimentation themes that had been bubbling away in the background, sadly not realised.
An odd partner to Mills and Ezquerra polemical Third World War in the early issues of Crisis, its violence, political and science fiction trappings were an incongruous fit in the woke, before there was a woke, sister comic to 2000AD.For all its pacing flaws and the fact that reading it episodically made it occasionally incomprehensible, it has fully realised, believable characters, great dialogue, and beautiful art, but it’s not an easy read. The edition reviewed is the sole collection of the series, althought it was also reproduced in 5 US comic sized issues in a failed attempt to crack the American market. Out of print for many years, a digital edition wouldn’t go amiss – how about it Rebellion?
Further reading : Turn and Face The Strange : Script Droid John Smith
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NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED SHORTLY!
No new Progcast this week as Flint had a power outage! In the meantime…listen to this Blast from the Past!!!
Original Blurb: ‘With Flint unavailable Stacey once again steps in to help work through progs 1684-86, recap the Bristol Comic Expo and take the p*ss out of Flints “yappy type dogs”. As usual, spoilers throughout and language not suitable for the kiddies.’
Podcast available via iTunes or the Libsyn Webpage as a direct download.
Everything Comes Back To 2000AD 