Strand #1

Nov 1990. Cover price £1.25.
36 pages. B&W contents.
Trident Comics, Ltd.

Edited by Martin Skidmore.

Cover by UNNOWN.

Contents:

2 Strand contents page. / Credits / Indicia
3 Strand, part one, w: John Kaiine; a: Gary Caldwell, lettering by Ben Dilworth.
15 Where Angels Fear to Tread w:/a: Daniel Vallely.
23 Under the Bed w: Eleanor Hughes; a: Simon Fraser.
27 Tulpa, part one, w:/a: Richard Elson.
34 The Ultimate Confrontation - Saviour in-house advertisement for trade paperback collection.
35 Legions of Hell in-house advertisement.

Anthology comics, especially horror ones, are always a welcome sight, and Trident's offering - while not as polished or immediately enticing as some - is actually quite good.

Eternity smells of hot water bottles.

...warm and rubbery.

The smell of eternity makes you want to cough.

Infinity is coloured yellow.

The nicotine-stained fingers that have held a life of woodbines.

And its texture is that of dried spit in a tobacco tin.

The titular serial which initiates the title begins in a bar, where a patron reads a newspaper which reports killings in the Strand. One of the men who frequents this particular establishment is not like the others - he is immortal. Elsewhere, a man performs an occult ritual in order to attain demoniac power.

Much occurs, and is referenced, in the first installment, though how much of this is pertinent to the murders is questionable. A woman is reported to have given birth to a pig (shades of Mary Toft), and a priest has choked to death on his own crucifix. There is much Forteana here, though little progression to a solid threat which might establish itself. While one can piece together elements familiar from other works - secret organisations investigating supernatural occurrences is a solid concept - there are minor oddities here.

The main drawback is the lettering, which takes a little shine off the strip. A finely drawn, if narratively unremarkable, strip, with no sense of urgency to proceedings. It might work better when read in full, but there's simply not enough here to make any determinations.

The first complete piece, Where Angels Fear to Tread, is less a story than it is a sequence of events connected by a narrative. Not wholly effective, the artwork is mostly satisfactory, but there isn't enough development to make revisiting it worthwhile. It feels, more than anything, like a sequence of illustrations pulled together with a perfunctory textual connecting thread.

Under the Bed is an intriguing, and extremely accomplished, tale of isolation, fear (real or imagined), and an overabundance of imagination. While it is only tangentially a horror story, it is a beautifully constructed examination of the psyche of the protagonist, containing a few remarkably acute observations which elevates it above the standard monster-of-the-week threat.

Tulpa, begins slowly, and with a real sense of who each of the characters are - during a night of drinking and talking, they discover a strange pamphlet which refuses to burn. Finding an English translation, they begin reciting the words... This is a very promising start. Plenty of questions are left for the reader to ponder, and the artwork is strong. Some very attractive lettering, with inventive balloons, is the icing on the cake.

There's a lot of things which marred Trident (the lack of series logos in their advertisements, the wasted back pages), but when creators were on form they could provide real surprises - this isn't a wholly positive introduction to the title, but there are enough good points to mae it worth a second glance.