Bato Loco

rebel[14 Aug 2012]. Free.
68 pages. Colour & B&W.
Rebellion.

Edited by Keith Richardson.

Cover by Simon Coleby, coloured by Chris Blythe.

Free with Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #326 (14 Aug 2012).

Contents:

 2 Credits / Indicia

 3 Bato Loco title page; illustrated by Simon Coleby.

 4 Judge Dredd Bato Loco credits page; illustrated by Simon Coleby.

 5 Judge Dredd Bato Loco w: Gordon Rennie; a: Simon Coleby, lettering by Tom Frame, colouring by Chris Blythe.

r: Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #202 (11 Feb 2003).

17 Bato Loco True Romance credits page; illustrated by Simon Coleby.

18 Bato Loco True Romance w: Gordon Rennie; a: Simon Coleby, lettering by Tom Frame.

r: Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #208 (27 Aug 2003).

26 Bato Loco Head Job credits page; illustrated by Simon Coleby.

27 Bato Loco Head Job w: Gordon Rennie; a: Simon Coleby, lettering by Tom Frame, colouring by Chris Blythe.

r: Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #229 (08 Mar 2005) - #230 (05 Apr 2005).

39 Bato Loco Kiss Me Deadly credits page; illustrated by Andrew Currie.

40 Bato Loco Kiss Me Deadly w: Gordon Rennie; a: Andrew Currie, lettering by Simon Bowland, colouring by Peter Doherty.

r: Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #290 (10 Nov 2009) - #291 (08 Dec 2009).

58 Judge Dredd Meat Patrol credits page; illustrated by Simon Coleby.

59 Judge Dredd Meat Patrol w: Gordon Rennie; a: Simon Coleby, lettering by Tom Frame, colouring by Chris Blythe.

r: Judge Dredd Megazine (Rebellion) #224 (19 Oct 2004).

67 Bagged with Megazine 327 On Sale 15 August 12 in-house advertisement for Marauder.

68 Goin' Loco!

In the Big Meg's Barrio blocks, they called Carlito Agarra the 'Bato Loco' - 'Crazy Guy'. He's just trying to make an honest cred, but if it ain't the Judges on his back it's the Mob - Madon'!

You have to love a cover where someone steals Judge Dredd's badge.

So I know what it is you are thinking.

'Carlito,' you are saying, 'why is it you are doing this strange thing with this big fat dead guy, and all those Judges and bad news scary mob guys? Is this why they are always calling you Crazy Guy?

And so then I say to you, 'Patience, my friends, for soon you will be seeing that all this is not so crazy after all...'

There have been more eccentric beginnings to Dredd's stories. Not many, but there are a few which can top the image of a man riding a giant corpse on wheels.

A week earlier. Louie the Gut, returning from making his regular smuggling route through the Black Atlantic tunnel, collapses from a heart attack and dies, the haul of uncut diamonds in his stomach. Carlito Agarra is picked up by Don Morte's men for a sit-down, despite the fact that Don Morte is a taxidermied corpse, whose wishes are 'interpreted' by his consigliore, Vito Machievelli. Asked to retrieve the diamonds from the Resyk morgue, he discovers that two of his associates also have the same idea.

There are two corpses of similar size present, though the choice of which one is their corpse is settled when Guido Guisperre - 'Grand Guignol' - bursts from a corpse's stomach wielding his chainsaw. Hearing the disturbance, Dredd orders all squads to move in on the morgue, though Carlito and Guignol burst through the morgue's doors riding Louie the Guts' corpse. Managing to escape from both Guignol and Dredd, Carlito makes a run for freedom, and fate is smiling on him as he searches for a way to square things with Machievelli.

While most of the time I would have a problem with coincidence playing a part in the resolution of a story, here it works to the advantage of characterisation and the overall mood of the strip. Yes, there is a whole series of unlikely events, but in Mega City One this is business as usual.

Okay, so here we are again, and every time we are doing this, it seems as if you are catching me in the middle of something crazy happening.

Catalonia, Carlito's girlfriend, who he met when she took the contract on his head, is angered that a year has passed since Carlito promised to marry her within a year. Catalonia promised to herself that she would kill him if he didn't keep his promise, and she gives him a week to purchase her a ring. As the days tick by, without money or a ring, things look bleak for Carlito. Hearing that the Slyrrm, aliens seeking ingredients for narcotics on their homeworld, he scams them out of enough money for his needs.

As Carlito is ready to ask Catalonia to marry him, the Slyrrm catch up with him.

With a good sense of the variety of life in the setting, Rennie manages to weave a very funny - and quite light, given prior strips - action-adventure story. Catalonia is fantastic character, and it is pleasing that she is so much more competent than Carlito.

Head Job crosses Carlito's path with that of Judge Dredd once more, as Machievelli orders him to deal with Cubans from the Wastes who are running an organ-legging racket. A bulk shipment of executed politicos turns out to be merely their heads, and Carlito doesn't want to pay for something he can't sell on. As the deal goes south, Dredd leads an assault on the exchange. Recognising Carlito from Resyk, Dredd chases after him, as the other Judges clear up the organ-leggers.

Seeing Dredd covered in body parts is amusing, though somewhat predictable now. The circumstance in which he manages to get in such a predicament, however, is rather fresh. Unlike the rotting head thrown at him.

Okay, so I know what it is you are thinking -

"Carlito", you are thinking, "is that Abadonna Morte I see you with, beloved daughter of your boss, Don Morte? Why is it you are in this situation with her, when everyone know she is crazy as hell, and liable to get you in very serious trouble indeed?"

And I say to you, "that is a good question my friend, with an answer that is maybe long and not so simple to explain..."

Called in to deal with Abadonna's latest break-up, Carlito is told to assist Billy-17 cleaning up the mess. While there, Abadonna asks him to accompany her on a date, as she has invitations to the Cocabandito, and can't turn up alone - for appearances sake. A kidnap crew hits their car before they reach the club, however, and his worries about Abadonna killing him are replaced with a worry he's going to meet his end another way. Carlito's (entirely unintentional) heroics impress Abadonna enough that she kisses him, and Machievelli informs him that he should consider Abadonna his girlfriend from now on.

Which, considering his fiancée is a contract killer, isn't the best news he's had.

Catalonia orders Carlito to meet her on a rooftop, which he agrees to, as Abadonna tells Machievelli that she fears he is cheating on her. Obviously this means he must die, but Abadonna insists she be there to witness Carlito's demise. Things soon escalate out of control.

The final story in the collection is a very sombre and low-key Dredd story in which he takes night shift on meat wagon pick-up with a Judge whom he failed. It isn't often that we get to see the less glamorous side of the judicial system's tasks, and here we see what it takes to go out every day and collect corpses for Resyk. Following a relatively normal night of pick-ups, Dredd answers a call, drawing the truck into a fight which it isn't designed for.

Not as funny as Low Life, though a fine example of the less dramatic side of Mega City One's inhabitants. Following through on the promise of an excellent introduction to the character, Gordon Rennie delivers on Bato Loco's promising premise with one unlikely event after another, increasing the stakes with each installment. Gloriously illustrated by Coleby and Currie, there isn't a dud panel in the entire collection.

Dice Man #1

Mar 1986. £1.45.
68 pages. B&W contents.
IPC Magazines Ltd.

Fantasy Game Special

Edited by Simon Geller.

Painted cover by Glenn Fabry.

Contents:

 2 There are worlds beyond our own... text introduction by Steve Geller; illustrated by Kevin O'Neill.

 4 You Are Judge Dredd House of Death w: T.B. Grover, game design by Pat Mills; a: Bryan Talbot, lettering by Tom Frame.

25 Play in two new world-beating Play-by-Mail games from Mitregames. advertisement.

26 You Are Nemesis the Warlock Torture Tube w:/game design by Pat Mills; a: Kevin O'Neill, lettering by Steve Potter.

45 From the legendary co-creator of THE DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAME (half page) advertisement for Sagard the Barbarian Gamebook / Alchemy Metal-Wear (half page) advertisement.

46 You Are Slaine Cauldron of Blood w:/game design by Pat Mills; a: David Lloyd, lettering by Gordon Robson.

65 Odyssey (half page) advertisement. / Grenadier Models UK Ltd. (quarter page) advertisement. / Axle says: WHY NOT VISIT THE GUARDROOM (quarter page) advertisement.

66 Rolling Soon next issue information.

67 Forbidden Planet advertisement.

68 Know Then, O Prince.... advertisement.

Fabry's deliciously odd cover, a fantasy melange entirely disconnected from the actual contents, is the perfect way to introduce the concept of a game-based comic title - the yellow background really stands out, especially in this large format. While there is probably a good argument to be made for featuring bankable 2000 A.D. characters for the launch, this speaks to a slightly different audience - one, hopefully, familiar with titles such as Imagine or the Game Master module-magazine-thingamajig.

There are worlds beyond our own... The worlds of if...

If Judge Dredd had been a second slower drawing and firing his gun...
If Slaine had failed to prise open the doorway to doom...
If Nemesis the Warlock had taken that turning too fast in his Blitzspear...

Their worlds - their lives - would have been different. There is only one key to those alternative realities. YOU hold the key... THE DICE. For they control the worlds of IF... the savage, phantom worlds of Dice Man.

Dredd (or the reader/player) drives down Dock Street to Croglin Mansion, parking his Lawmaster to survey the building. A scream from within urges him on to investigate... There are choices to pick from, and here is where the title has an edge over similar choose your adventure publications - unlike the Masters of the Universe book (taking a well known example) this is completely told in comic strip format. It may be a small step, moving from a full-page illustration and a block of text to comic panels, but this provides an important shift in tone. There's more immediacy in the journey.

The point-of-view illustrations are extremely effective, and one has to wonder if the imagery herein played any part in the development of visually similar computer games. There's even a panel (37) which will cause anyone familiar with the Doom franchise to smile, so familiar is it, alongside callbacks to 2000 A.D. strips ("Gaze into the face of fear!" makes an appearance). This is groundbreaking work which has been largely ignored in the intervening years, and it is well worth revisiting.

There is no let-up in pace with Nemesis the Warlock, as Torquemada has captured Purity Brown and is enacting his Edgar Allan Poe fantasies with her. Well, the PG-rated ones, at any rate. With Torquemada threatening to kill Purity at the stroke of midnight, there is an urgency to the story which feels more essential than in Dredd's adventure - this isn't merely a job to be undertaken, but a mission to save a character we like. O'Neill gives this strip everything he's got, and the level of detail worked into the main characters is astonishing.

This strip, unfortunately, encourages players to mark their speed on the images, so... Yeah. There's an unholy amount of blue and black ink in my copy, along with (for some reason) three highlighter colours.

Thank you, Mr. Mills.

The view from inside the Blitzspear is phenomenally cool, and makes me hunger for a racing game based on this story, especially if we are treated to scenes like panel 42, which may be the ickiest thing O'Neill has ever drawn. What the hell is that coming out of Nemesis' eye? Actually, scratch that. I probably don't want to know.

I'm not sure what, exactly, I was expecting from Sláine's story, but Cauldron of Blood is far, far better than anything I could have imagined.

You are the legendary Warped Warrior - a Celtic Berserker who fights with the strength of ten men. YOU are about to begin a new and dangerous quest...

To steal the mystic CAULDRON OF BLOOD from the Tower of Glass.

The evil Drune Lord SLOUGH GRUNSGUL rules the Tower, which is guarded by hideous monsters like the MAGACH - the Beast with a Hundred Heads.

The cauldron is the source of Grunsgul's power.

There's plenty of humour, horror, and genuine drama in the journey through the tower, with certain panels (16, in particular - a photograph) instantly familiar despite not having looked at the issue in nearly twenty years.

Quality paperstock make this infinitely better looking than the parent publication, though the contents were, perhaps, a tad ahead of their time. Worth seeking out for the artwork alone, yet by investing a little time in the games you will appreciate how good the contributors are. Brilliant and a little bit mad.

One of the best comic launches of the 80s.

Judge Dredd Mega-Special #1

1988. Cover price 75p.
48 pages. Colour & B&W.
Fleetway Publications.

Edited by Richard Burton.

Cover by Brian Bolland.

Contents:

 2 Contents; illustrated by Glenn Fabry.

 3 Judge Dredd The Blob w: Alan Grant; a: John Higgins, lettering by Tom Frame.

11 Judge Dredd The Blockers w: John Wagner; a: Jose Casanovas, lettering by Jack Potter.

16 Odyssey 7 (quarter page) advertisement. / Dredd Siting in Leicester (eighth of page) advertisement for Another World. / Please Mention Judge Dredd Holiday Special When Replying to Advertisements (eighth of page). / Having Trouble Getting Your Comics? Try a Virgin Comic Shop (half page) advertisement; illustrated by Kev Hopgood.

17 Dredd by Day text introduction (uncredited).

18 Judge Dredd Weirdies! [130-154] w: John Wagner & Alan Grant; a: Ian Gibson.

r: The Daily Star (Northern & Shell Media) #???? (07 Jul 1986) - #???? (07 Aug 1986).

23 Dredd's World illustrated feature; a: Brendan McCarthy.

24 Dredd's World poster; a: Brendan McCarthy.

26 Say Gidday to the Good Life mock advertisement for Oz Judges; a: UNKNOWN.

27 Judge Dredd Weirdies! [155-194] w: John Wagner & Alan Grant; a: Ian Gibson.

r: The Daily Star (Northern & Shell Media) #???? (08 Aug 1986) - #???? (03 Oct 1986).

35 New in the Cubes creator fact files (uncredited).

36 Chopper's Odyssey illustrated feature by Mike Butcher; illustrated by .

r: panels from Oz in 2000 A.D. (Fleetway Publications) #545 (24 Oct 1987) - #570 (16 Apr 1988).

39 Judge Dredd The Fall Guy w: Alan Grant; a: Will Simpson, lettering by Tom Frame.

47 Catch Judge Dredd... in-house advertisement for 2000 A.D., Best of 2000 A.D., 2000 A.D. Sci-Fi Special, Judge Dredd Annual and 2000 A.D. Annual; illustrated by Steve Dillon.

48 Judge Dredd and 2000 A.D. Merchandise advertisement for Forbidden Planet.

The first Mega-Special is much like Dredd's appearances in 2000 A.D., but with greater room to maneuver. Under an impressive cover by Brian Bolland (who hasn't drawn a bad Dredd yet), there is a superb Fabry illustration. The contents pages allow artists to show off a little, and this is no exception - Dredd's Lawmaster really looks like a real piece of technology, though colouring is perhaps a touch too bright for Mega-City One.

The Blob begins on Pier 17 at Mega-City One's docks, where a jelly-like tentacle grabs the leg of Eric, a crane operator who is in the process of unloading cargo. The crate breaks open while dangling above his co-workers, showering them with its' contents - knives imported from New Sheffield. Dredd is dispatched to investigate, and discovers Eric's body, along with several others, in the lumber stacks. The blob-creature has made its escape, however, making its way to safety.

Forensics examine the crime scene while Dredd trails it, and they come to the conclusion that it is mutated slime-mould, most likely a Black Atlantic mutation which grabbed a lift from a passing ship in order to get into Mega-City One. The forensics team warn Dredd that it is extremely carnivorous, dosing its victims with acid, before absorbing the resulting sludge through its pores. Dredd confronts the blob, despite obvious dangers, but discovers his bullets have no effect. Worse, it begins eating through his uniform.

Firing an incendiary at the blob, Dredd orders fire teams and a med-squad to Steve McQueen Block, before seeking medical attention for his wounds. From the briefest touch, it managed to eat through Dredd's leg nearly to the bone. You can tell that everyone is having a lot of fun with the story, and some of the dialogue is solid gold:

...and now, on the Early Late Horror Show, we have a real rave from the Grave. Sylvester Stallone is the Blob of Notre Dame in Alan Moore's Oscar-winning remake!

Alan Grant's script is, if you hadn't guessed, a joy to read, despite (or because of) being a retread of The Blob. John Higgins' artwork really shines in black and white, looking suitably grimy and tarnished. One has to wonder if this was among the material sent to Stallone in preparation for his role of Dredd.

Where The Blob excels at setting and tone through largely understated moments, The Blockers is less restrained. It is the kind of story which, if it appeared anywhere else, would be black comedy, but is - unfortunately for citizens of Mega-City One - more of a day-in-the-life strand. The focus of events is Adolf Hitler Block - 400 floors, containing 18,000 housing units, schools, shopping centres, and a hospital. 64,301 citizens crammed in like sardines, slowly going mad...

Frank Dolby, of apartment 39F, prepares for a Citi-Def combat exercise, while his wife knits a book. As Citi-Def organiser for the floor, Frank makes his way to 39G, where Carlton Einstein (a television addict) has barely left his chair for twelve years. Edith Einstein, his wife, and a compulsive shopper, is doing the family accounts as Willis, Edith and Frank's son, makes a prank call to Ed De Bono Citi-Def to warn them of Hitler Block's aggressive maneuvers against them.

Three floors above, in 42X, Rudyard Quincy decides to kill himself before he goes insane, hoping to take out the rest of the block in the process with a home-made nuclear weapon. The De Bono block cuts down Frank's unit with firearms, thanks to Willis' intervention, as the wayward youth watches on in amusement, hanging out his window. Rudyard's nuke fails, and he throws it away in disgust - landing on Willis' head as it falls.

Overjoyed at a nuke - almost literally - falling into her lap, Edith sees a way to make some money in order to feed her family. Frank returns from the unsuccessful raid, and asks if Edith knows where he can lay his hands on a nuke... Despite not getting a lot of background to the story of the block, we don't need extraneous detail. These are people instantly familiar from Mega-City One, the unfotunates who have been abandoned to their fate in a towering, impersonal, chaotic city.

While it is always nice to get newspaper strips reprinted on better paper, Weirdies! isn't a classic slice of Dredd history. A return for Citizen J. Snork, he of the rather large schnoz, in a celebration of the odd, the strange, and the downright weird. There's a nice conclusion, yet this story is lacking a certain urgency. Ian Gibson's great artwork is reproduced sharply and without feeling too crammed in. It shouldn't need to be pointed out (again) that Gibson's style is refreshingly light and breezy.

New in the Cubes covers Liam Sharp, Barry Kitson, John Higgins, and Will Simpson, though the half-page format of biographical information pieces doesn't allow for a great deal of personality to shine through - these small glimpses into the creators' lives are a long-running 2000 A.D. tradition, and is something which always appealed to me. Such features are much better use of pages than recaps of stories, such as... Well, Chopper's Odyssey.

The Pie-in-the-Sky mid-air restaurant makes a welcome return, where Don Pesci is celebrating his hundredth birthday in the Mississippi Mud Suite. Don Pesci's celebration is abruptly interrupted when a Judge emerges from his birthday cake, only to be immediately shot to death by Pesci. His men assure him that it was a singing telegram, and the body is removed by the easiest means available - being thrown out the building. Which is where things start to escalate...

An early evening Batglider, soaring in the thermal updrafts, is the first to be hit by the corpse. The Norrin Radd Block skysurf club, practising their close-formation pyramid move, are next to have a very close encounter, which leads to a very large mess for the real Judges to clean up. Discovering a business card for Party Poppers, Dredd talks to the owner of the company. and - finding that the dead man was paid to appear at Pie-in-the-Sky - arranges transport to the restaurant.

Pesci and his associates have long since departed, and (despite a sincere attempt at stalling from robot staff) Dredd finds that, as a birthday present the Don, his men have arranged a heist for his participation. With time running out, Dredd rushes to meet the location of the robbery. Stunning artwork, a great, twisty story (with all kinds of little nods and homages), and a ticking clock plot - this is prime Dredd material, served up expertly.

An extremely strong start for the series.

On This Day: 19 Oct

Victor and Champ (D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd.) #1288 (26 Oct 1985).
Doctor Who Magazine Tenth Anniversary Special (Marvel Comics Ltd.; 1989).
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: The Official Movie Magazine (Marvel Comics Ltd.; 1989).
Thunderbirds the Comic (Fleetway Publications) #01 (19 Oct 1991 - 01 Nov 1991).

Births:

Tom Taylor (1817); Tom Frame (1931); Peter Weston (1943); Philip Pullman (1946)

Deaths:

Alejandro Blasco (1988)

Notable Events:

The Perishers newspaper strip began in the London edition of The Daily Mirror in 1959.
Stan Lee began a series of British television radio and television appearances to promote Marvel UK in 1975.
Michael Ffolkes was a castaway on Desert Island Discs, on BBC Radio 4, in 1984.
Preston Speculative Fiction Group’s Bash Street 40th Birthday Bash held in 1993. John Coulthart filmed the event.
Hannah Berry, Paul Grist, Paul Gravett and Bryan Talbot attended a comic panel at the Manchester Literature Festival, which took place at the Whitworth Art Gallery, in 2008.

Star Lord #1

13 May 1978; Cover price 12p.
32 pages. Colour & B&W.
IPC Magazines Ltd.

Edited by Kelvin Gosnell.

Cover by Ramon Sola.

Free badge.

Contents:

.2 Planet of the Damned UNTITLED, part one, w: R.E. Wright (Pat Mills & Kelvin Gosnell); a: Horacio Lalia, lettering by Bill Nuttal.

.8 TimeQuake UNTITLED, part one, w: Jack Adrian (Chris Lowder); a: Ian Kennedy, lettering by Peter Knight.

14 Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind - Fighting for Star Lord Introduction by Kelvin Gosnell; illustrated by Ian Gibson.

15 Starlord Survival Blueprints! (half page) content information. / Starlord Star-Squad Equipment free gift information.

16 Strontium Dog UNTITLED, part one, w: T.B. Grover (John Wagner); a: Carlos Ezquerra, lettering by Jack Potter.

21 In Starlord Next Week

22 Ro-Busters Day of the Robot, part one, w: Pat Mills; Carlos Pino, lettering by Tom Frame.

Since 1945, more than 100 planes and ships and 1,000 men have mysteriously disappeared between Bermuda and Florida in an area of ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle.

Anita 20,000 ton freighter -crew of 32 -disappeared March 1973
M.S. Marine Sulphur Queen -crew of 39 -disappeared February 2, 1963
Flight 19 -five Grumman Avenger Bombers -disappeared December 5, 1945
PBM Martin Mariner Flying Boat -went to find Flight 19 -disappeared December 5, 1945

Examining these disappearances, scientists have suggested they somehow broke through the Earth's Time-Space Continuum - into another dimension - and are lost on another planet. A planet of no return - A...

Planet of the Damned

George X. Sand has a lot to answer for. There was a publishing boom during the late sixties and through the seventies expanding and expounding on the notion that a nebulous area of water (variously described, but corresponding to a roughly triangular shape) was responsible for mysterious disappearances. It was, of course, complete nonsense, but that didn't stop a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon with their own takes on the concept.

Arriving on the heels of The Fantastic Journey, it isn't difficult to see Planet of the Damned's main inspirations, though at least there is a touch of originality in the handling. An AWT Tri-Star jet on a transatlantic flight is sucked into an abyss, whereupon they discover that they are above a landscape which they don't recognise. As the magnetic compass spins madly, the plane lands.

Lew Kerr, a business tycoon, and Stan Hackmann, a well-known science fiction writer disagree as to where they are. Their location is confirmed to be somewhere other than a remote island when a vaguely-humanoid creature with no eyes or mouth approaches. A rugged chap in a loin cloth leaps in and kills the creature, before introducing himself as Bosun Flint of the brig "Gallantine," and is shooed off as a barbaric murderer.

More of the creatures arrive, and silently lead the passengers to a lake of water. It turns out to be poison, and when one of the creatures is confronted it responds by spitting acid in the co-pilot's face. Flint returns and dispatches the creatures, before striking a dramatic pose and stating that "on the planet of the damned... the only way to survive is the barbarian way.

The Ab-Humans are unsettling, with folds of flesh in haphazard configurations, the passengers are... well, they are prospective food for whatever lives there. Flint, though taking inspiration from Tarzan and the like, is an intriguing enough character. The comment about being a bosun raises the hopes of some Robinson Crusoe style backstory. While the opening sequence feels rushed, there's plenty of detail in the telling to smooth over qualms about pacing issues.

newsflash 0714 gmt 1st May, 1978 Paris Agency I.P.

LONDON, NEW YORK AND MOSCOW HIT BY NUCLEAR STRIKES - STOP - FURTHER STRIKES EXPECTED WITHIN MINUTES - STOP - CATASTROPHE CAN BE TRACED BACK TO MAN BELIEVED CALLED KEMAL AZWAN - STOP

One could politely conjecture that TimeQuake is very, very loosely inspired by John Varley's Air Raid, but a background of the third world war raging significantly raises the stakes for the characters. James Blocker, skipper of the steamer Azwan, is in an empty carriage of a London underground carriage when a man appears from a shimmering light. Blocker is told that he has a mere twenty seconds, but doesn't want to hear more. Two more figures appear, and he is pushed through the warp with barely two seconds to spare.

When Blocker awakes, he finds himself 85 million years in the past. He attempts to leave, believing that he has been kidnapped by crazy people, but the sight of a dinosaur stops him in his tracks. Informed of the destruction of London, Blocker is told that he is the direct cause of the devastation. This is where things get more interesting - the Droon, a highly-developed but brutal race from the Rigel system are mentioned as an aggressive element in the far future.

"In 1997 a man called Lyon Sprague discovered a means of travelling faster than light. The Sprague Interstellar Drive carried man to the stars and beyond. By the 40th century man was the greatest power in the universe!"

The Droon, in some means we aren't privy to, managed to steal the secret of temporal warp-displacement. Or, for laymen, time travel.

The group which pulled Blocker from London are introduced as Harl Vinda (controller of the station, from the 38th century), Suzi Cho (princess of Haniken Empire, from the 32nd century), Quexalcholmec (pure-strain Aztec), and Marcus Geladius (a centurion attached to the 9th Legion), and they are all members of Time-Control. By changing the past, the Droon have managed to defeat humanity in the future.

At which point the Droon arrive to kill everyone.

Lowder has so many big ideas to play with that the story risks being overloaded, but there is a remarkably clear set of problems for the characters to solve. Reading the story now, there are hints of everything from TimeCop, through Time Trax, Seven Days, to the adaptation of Varley's story, Millennium. The timewar angle has since been beaten to death by Star Trek: Enterprise, though nowhere near as skillfully, yet none of the various properties riffing on the idea have so varied or interesting a cast.

The quality doesn't flag. Strontium Dog begins as it means to carry on, with an action-packed scene of Johnny and Wulf being fired upon. Their attackers are wearing chameleon cloaks, making it difficult to accurately defend against the attack, but the attackers aren't prepared for Johnny. Using his x-ray vision, he sights the position of the two men, and both Johhny and Wulf return fire.

Using advanced technology, Wulf returns one of the men to life so Johnny can interrogate him for the location of Max Quirxx, convicted of multiple murder on Bario-3. Learning what they need to know, they let the man die a second time. Setting off to take down their target, the anti-mutant prejudice is clear in the jeers and offhanded comments of the citizens they pass.

Carlos Ezquerra brings a comprehensively futuristic setting to life, with ridiculously detailed backgrounds and faces full of character. It isn't the kind of strip which can be called traditionally beautiful, yet is gorgeous to look at all the same.

The prologue for Ro-Busters contains an unnecessary jibe at Japanese imports (with stereotypical dialogue) which takes the sheen of the strip a little. Ro-Jaws, F.R.E.D. 2L (Federal Recycling and Environmental 'Droid) and Hammerstein (an army surplus war 'droid) are sent to Mek-Quake to be destroyed, but Howard Quartz, a billionaire who had his organs replaced to extend his life (thus the nickname Mr. Ten Per Cent), has done a deal to purchase them for his international rescue operation.

A colour two-page splash kicks off the story properly, and is an insanely detailed disaster. Pages which follow this are peppered with homages to sixties Thunderbirds comics, with jagged borders and angled views of the ships used in the rescue missions,clearly signaling that the story isn't to be taken too seriously. While the strip may be simple in comparison to the other contents, there is a real sense of love for the characters. Even the secondary robots (Angel and Chatterbox, in particular) get interesting scenes which play to their abilities.

This is a great start to the title, with the only downside being a vaguely-unlikable host in the form of Starlord himself. He looks far, far too smug. The overall package is a step up in quality from 2000 A.D. (better paper, more colour pages), and even the slight mis-steps can be overlooked as teething troubles.