Hawk The Slayer 1-5 (JD Meg edition)

 

Hawk The Slayer

By

Garth Ennis & Henry Flint

 

Review By Luke Williams

In the realm of geekdom I think I may be in the minority,  I have never watched the “Hawk the Slayer”.

I remember loving the less fondly remembered “Krull” when I was 10 (not seen it since), another 80s fantasy film but released a few years later and also starring “we need to cast a giant”; “Ladyhawke” (1985) all the others completely passed me by. This kind of admission attracts sideways glances from friends, tuts and the risk of being shunned.

Garth Ennis, who seemingly has returned to the 2000AD stable with glee and given almost free reign to do whatever the hell he wants, is clearly a big fan of cheesy 80s fantasy films with weird soundtracks (or at last I’m told it has a weird soundtrack) and alongside the distillation of a 2000AD artdroid Henry Flint, in resurrecting Ennis’ childhood favourite “Hawk The Slayer”.

Handily Ennis and Flint provide a brief recap of the events of the previous film before getting into this, a direct sequel to the film. Hawk is out for vengeance against his brother the evil Voltan – who sought the Mindsword, a superpowerful weapon held by Hawk and inherited from their father, and killed his girlfriend.

Accompanied by a motley band, Hawk seemingly commits fratricide at the end of the film. He settles down – threat removed, a companion or two fewer.

Of course, you can’t keep a good baddie down and Ennis & Flint pick up the story : Voltan is back, belligerent and stubborn tyke that he is, and after the Mindsword. 

Hawk picks up what remains of his old gang plus some substitutes, including a Cacofonix like bard to provide light relief, he’s off again to settle Voltan’s hash.

The five issue series adopted a weird publishing model. Released as in the floppies of “Judge Dredd Megazine”, a welcome relief from some of the material that has been bundled with the Meg’. It’s a remarkable way to release the work of two incredibly popular creators, on an admittedly obscure cult  “intellectual property” ( sadly, everything is reduced to IP now isn’t it?), I don’t suppose there was a lot of competition for Rebellion’s bid to buy the rights?

If you haven’t picked it up with the Meg (which has consistently been at least a good read for a few years) then you could buy it in the comic shop as an “American market” title with beautiful covers by Greg Staples, though wildly different in style to Flint’s interiors.

 So, as it’s Ennis you can expect lots of manly posturing and bonding, occasional splashes of toilet humour and extreme violence. But this time, instead of guns and bombs – it’s swords and sorcery – not a genre he is usually associated with.  Henry Flint – GOD of art pulls out the stops with work that is slightly surreal, dynamic, occasionally grotesque, scratchy and beautifully rendered art.

What’s not to like? I still haven’t seen the film, I may find the time to do it, but you don’t need to watch it to enjoy this. Essential? Hell no. Fun? Crumbs, yes. If you can wait, there will be a trade paperback out in March.  More from Ennis and Flint please: War, fantasy, science fiction : whatever genre, I’m not fussy.

WE GOT REVIEWED!

Check it out!
https://gazzareadscomics.blogspot.com/2022/06/

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 (Facsimilie Edition) : By Jack Adrian & Kevin O’Neill

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 Review

Metalzoic Mega City Book Club Podcast

Starlord

 

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 51^st 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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Deviations : Judge Dredd “Howl Of The Wolf”

Deviations : Judge Dredd

“Howl Of The Wolf”

By John McCrea and Mike Spicer, with Simon Bowland

Review by Luke Williams

 

Four years old now, but topical considering that Disney+ is now streaming their What If series, an animated version of their well established comic exploring  alternative universes where significant events in the MCU took a different path . 2000AD have tried this a few times in the past, and “Diversions”  is IDW’s take.

 The initials IDW on the cover of most comics with2000AD characters should make you shudder. But the feeling diminishes when an experienced droid is at the helm, in this case it’s John McCrea, ‘ritin’ and drawin’ and coloured by Mike Spicer.  It’s the alternative take on John Wagner, Alan Grant and Steve Dillon’s classic “Cry Of The Werewolf” Dredd strip from the eighties and McCrea’s tribute to his late friend and homage to one of his favourite Dredd strips.

For those not aware, in “COTW” MC1 is experiencing a series of werewolf attacks, the lycanthropes are traced back to the undercity.  Dredd is sent to investigate (read “exterminate”) them but gets bitten in the process. McCrea poses the question what if ™ Dredd was never cured of his lycanthropy?

McCrea has some fun with this, mixing in some other memorable strips from the period and his affection for the source material and that classic era shines through. McCrea’s anarchic, kinetic work is a distinct contrast art to Dillon’s clean, bold lines, but it’s a good fit, complemented by Spicer’s atmospheric colouring.

Rounding off the package is a short written tribute from McCrea, an insight into book’s creation and some top notch pin ups from Brendan McCarthy, Garry Leach, Mike Spicer, Jock and Duncan Fegredo.

Completist me bought this following a mention in the Mega City Book Club podcast. To labour a point , with the exceptions of some of the Dredd mini series and the brilliant “Rogue Trooper” mini most of IDW’s 2000AD output has been poor.  This is fits in with the minority, recommended.