Strip #2

...The Comic Grows Up!

03 Mar 1990. Cover price 95p.
40 pages. Colour contents.
Marvel Comics, Ltd.

Edited by Dan Abnett.

Cover by Don Lawrence.

Free pull-out Marshal Law poster.
r: Cover from Strip #01

Contents:

 2 Marvel Graphic Novels in-house advertisement.

 3 Contents illustration by Don Lawrence. / Indicia

 4 Marshal Law Stars and Strippers part two, w: Pat Mills; a: Kevin O'Neill, lettering by Phil Felix.

18 The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad part two, w: Alan Grant & John Wagner; a: Ian Gibson, lettering by Bambos Georgiou.

20 Storm The Pirates of Pandarve title page; illustration by Don Lawrence. / Credits

21 Storm The Pirates of Pandarve w: Martin Lodewuk; a: Don Lawrence, lettering by Helen Stone.

29 Davros Says Don't Buy It. (half page) in-house advertisement for Doctor Who Magazine. / Subscribe! (half page)

30 Before Excalibur There Was... Captain Britain in-house advertisement for Captain Britain trade paperback.

31 The Man from Cancer, part two, w: Glenn Dakin; a: Phil Elliott, lettering by Phil Elliott, colouring by Euan Peters.

39 Next Issue illustrations by Gary Erskine & Kevin O'Neill.

40 Get Doctor Who Magazine Now in-house advertisement.

A hefty second issue, thanks to the large poster bound in its centre pages, and with a fabulous Don Lawrence cover, there is much to be excited about in this issue. While there isn't an introduction, this issue's contents page displays how to present the material properly - where other titles often merely list the strips with a page number, there is enough information about what is happening in the strips to inform readers of what to expect. It is only by going back and forth through the series looking for specific stories that this becomes noticeable, and it is a detail which is appreciated.

At the bottom of the page is a rather nice note regarding the fold-out poster contained in the middle of the issue. As if the poster could possibly be missed... Gloriously large, it is the perfect free gift with which to showcase the character, relishing in Marshal Law's madness.

In Marshal Law it is possible to see Pat Mills' thoughts about the medium's most persistent hybrid-genre given life. Augmented by Kevin O'Neill's art, which continues to resist any pigeon-holing. Battling a group of former superheroes, Marshal Law in overpowered, his weapon taken from him in the fight, and his hunt for the killer known as Sleepman seems no closer than before. There are more details filling in the history of the war, with some telling details sprinkled through extensive text boxes. While I'm not particularly fond of this method of storytelling, it is an effective use of space.

From the Panama Canal Zone to the Amazon Jungle, it was known simply as "The Zone."

The war, as described, certainly sounds as it it sprawled over an impressive area, and given the abilities of those involved must have been more brutal than any conflict up to that point. While immense battles featuring numerous superheroes had, by the early nineties, already developed something of a reputation, this is unlike many depictions from the other side of the Atlantic.

Far more chilling, and a counterpoint to generally-bloodless superhero romps from the Big Two, is an account of an earthquake:

The official explanation for The Big One - the megaquake that took out San Francisco - was the Jupiter effect - the tidal pull of the planets on the San Andreas fault.

60,000 buildings were destroyed and 8 square miles of the city. The quake measured 9 on the Richter Scale, hitting the city with a force 300,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

The tidal wave that followed hurled ships inland, leaving the U.S. aircraft carrier John Paul Jones straddling the freeways, then came the fire... and the death cloud from Diablo Canyon nuclear plant...

You couldn't measure the human misery...

The Chronicles of Ghengis Grimtoad continues to pose storytelling problems by introducing yet more characters, while refusing to propel the narrative forward more than absolutely necessary.

And the door of the great hall did open and the ladies of the court did avert their eyes. For therein towered the awesome figure of Quanah-

He, of the painted tribes of Torbeck - savages, untamed men who lived and died by the blade!

And who, unfortunately, appears to be made of pink bubblegum.

While the character designs are impressive (Ian Gibson is on top form here), at two pages of story every two weeks, this isn't going anywhere fast. There's a difference between developing back-story and showing one's work, and this feels (rightly or wrongly) as if it is a discarded Dungeons & Dragons proposal, dusted off and changed just enough so that nobody is going to raise an objection. I want to like this, as there are minor glimmers of what could be a rattlingly good story, but it is so slight in this form as to discourage interest.

The universe is infinitely more vast than the human mind can ever comprehend. Merely writing the light-years that separate Earth from the planet Pandarve would take a lifetime... But no matter how vast the distance may be, it is not unbridgeable...

...and it is Marduk, the theocrat of Pandarve, who intends to span the distance between his planet and Earth...

Affixing the Egg of Pandarve in place, a beam is shot across the galaxy to the planet Earth, millions of years in the future.

The tissue of space and time is disturbed by the sudden glare from Pandarve's Egg as it finds its way through bare and lifeless solar systems...

It passes dark planets. Spreading fear and awe among the followers of mysterious religions. Priests predict death and calamity, witnessing the dreadful omen in the sky...

Until the fateful moment when the beam from Pandarve reaches its goal... The anomaly!

Hmm. A mysterious, powerful red orb capable of miraculous events? Did J.J. Abrams read this story at some point? The depictions of the beam hitting Storm, and Ember's attempt to rescue him, are wonderful, as is the pair's arrival at Pandarve. Or, I should state, above the planet. Realising that their situation is relatively safe for a while, the possibility of burning up with friction as they descend occurs to Storm. Encountering a flying whale, Storm and Ember are separated.

It is impossible to pay too many compliments to Storm.

Mr. Crust Acean is placed in a coffin, and Mr. C. Urchin investigates his death - despite him being very much alive, and trapped inside the casket. It's the kind of story which you either instantly fall in love with, or which remains tantalisingly out of reach. I doubt I'm ever going to understand the intricacies, or have a strong interest in the series.

Liking two out of four strips in an anthology is, surely, not enough reason to consider the title a success, though others might disagree as to the value of The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad and The Man from Cancer.

#01

Strip

#03

It's Wicked! #1

20 May 1989; Cover price 30p.
24 pages. Colour & B&W.
Marvel Comics Ltd.

Edited by Helen Stone.

Free Green Fangs.

Contents:

.1 Slimer UNTITLED [Draculala] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

.2 Chamber of Horrors! editorial by Helen Stone; illustration (uncredited).

.3 Gordon Gremlin UNTITLED [Wig Fishing] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

.4 Ghostman Bat and his Black and White Rat UNTITLED [Heavy Male Today] w: UNKNOWN; a: John Geering.

.6 Best of Fiends UNTITLED [Shear Excitement] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

.7 Dunstable D. Dragon UNTITLED [Yoke's on You] w: UNKNOWN; a: Nick Miller.

.8 Winnie the Witch Doctor UNTITLED [No More Spells] w: UNKNOWN; a: Barrie Appleby.

.9 Are you troubled by strange noises in the night? in-house advertisement for The Real Ghostbusters Collected Spring Special #01.

10 Clare Voyant UNTITLED [A Great Burden] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

11 Mummy's Boy UNTITLED [Coffin Fit] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

12 It's Slimer UNTITLED [Doc Frankystein] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

14 Slime Time! readers' jokes.

15 Bat Chat! readers' mail.

16 Ghoul School UNTITLED [First day of a new term] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

18 Toad in the Hole, part one, In the Beginning... w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

20 The Ghosthunters UNTITLED [Moe & Joe] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

22 Inspector Spectre, Private Eye UNTITLED [Handbag Snatcher] w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

23 It's Wicked? Sorry, Son We've Sold Out (half page) subscriptions. / In Next Week's Issue... (half page).

24 New from Marvel in-house advertisement for Cartoon Time.

Something of a nightmare to index, as the spartan index above shows.

While a Slimer spin-off had been published in 19##, and the character had made appearances in Marvel Bumper Comic, this marks the first major exploitation of the character in a creative manner. No longer tied to reprints or unconnected anthologies, but as the lead attraction in a horror-comedy anthology, Marvel looked back to IPC's Shiver and Shake and Monster Fun for content inspiration, while appropriating the appearance of D.C. Thomson titles. It isn't an entirely convincing mixture.

Slimer, naturally, takes the cover spot, with a strip tying in to the free gift. There's no attempt at a punchline for the strip, but it doesn't really matter - the image works whether the free fangs are attached or not. Chamber of Horrors!, which is a perfect title for a horror-themed editorial, sets out the mission for the title - horror and comedy, hand in hand, every week. The illustrative border is perfect for the title.

Sticking with tried and tested gags, Gordon Gremlin didn't need a horror character for the story in this issue. It isn't as if the joke is good enough to overcome the disconnect between character and story, and only the artwork redeems the strip.

Ghostman Bat, punning off Postman Pat, is a vampiric postman with a pet rat. This is the closest It's Wicked gets to a high concept idea. Actually, that isn't fair, as the strip has a further twist - the main character delivers ghosts rather than mail. There's a flurry of gags and some great art. There's not, unfortunately, any indication that this is going to be more than a series of two-page jokes.

Best of Fiends are, basically, hairy Madballs. I didn't find the strip amusing, but being outside the target demographic it is impossible to say if this would have had the desired humour quotient for readers of the title. One of the problems is the pay-off relying on a seriously unfunny game - golf is a tedious "game" which has no redeeming elements, and by throwing in an act of violence perpetrated by a golf club seems a concept better served in animation than a comic strip. Also, the fact that the character looks like a testicle doesn't help.

Things don't improve drastically with Dunstable D. Dragon, which has two awful puns in three panels. The "Dragon Facts" section beneath the strip is wasted with a hand-wave for the character knowing his own name, but should have been used to deliver something which might have been of use to readers - the names of dragons from myth and legend, famous dragonslayers, great dragon books... The permutations are endless, and by using it to excuse a plotting defect is really annoying. So much potential here, and to throw it away for that...

There's a strong D.C. Thomson flavour to Winnie the Witch Doctor, which features a witch who is a doctor. Treating witches. Funnier than it deserves to be, the art and script combine to make an amusing strip which introduces the character in a funny sketch. While it is a ways from being considered a classic, it is the first strip in It's Wicked to overcome imposed limitations.

Clare Voyant is about a gypsy fortune-teller, with all of the subtlety that implies. There's a slight improvement with Mummy's Boy.

Have you ever wondered what goes on in a museum after the last visitor has gone... Who knows what could be lurking in these dark corridors..?

It anticipates Night at the Museum with exhibits coming to life at night, and is amusing enough to warrant its place. This is more the type of strip I was expecting. The art is attractive, and the handling of the jokes (as they are) isn't bad, but at a single page there isn't anywhere for the narrative to go.

Despite taking the cover, a further three-page strip is devoted to Slimer, in which he visits Doc Frankystein. The punchline is one which has adorned at least three or four stories over the years, but the crafting of the story and art is competent enough. I'm not convinced that a heavy Ghostbusters influence is really necessary for the title, and you can have too much of a good thing. Slimer reappears as host of a joke page, which is as groan-worthy as you might imagine.

Ghostman Bat takes the readers' mail, in Bat Chat!, and Ghoul School resumes the strips with the least frightening bunch of ghouls to ever appear in comics. The story isn't bad, but this continues a run of strips which don't really deliver of frightening comedy in a manner which Trap Door or even the 1972 animation Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters managed.

Once upon a time, in a castle that could really do with a lick of paint...

There lived an inventor who was a little ... odd.

Toad in the Hole is a tad different in that it intends to be read as an ongoing narrative, though the humour is present here as well. Introducing the (unnamed) inventor, and his errant creation, Toad, who emerges from a rubbish pit fully formed. It has the making of an interesting story when it gets going, but there's not much here to get stuck into.

Ghosthunters is the story of the Mole Brothers, Moe and Joe, hunters of horror, trackers of terror, sleuths of the supernatural. Unfortunately, they're not very good at it. Along the lines of Major Jump, Horror Hunter, the pair of incompetents manage to ignore monsters in plain sight while mistaking ordinary people for vampires and werewolves - it is going to get very tiring if the formula isn't mixed up a little in future installments. This is a strip which has become more pertinent over the years, with the rise of ghosthunting television series, and a comedic take has much opportunity..

Inspector Spectre, Private Eye is ghost PI who, as of the first installment, has a perfect record. While it is not in the same league as other strips of its kind, it isn't a bad start. I'm favourable to the notion of ghostly investigators (a childhood love of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) goes a long way to explaining that), and there are many things that a ghost can do to solve a crime... While it isn't a strong start, there's enough in the notion for me to forgive the blatantly plotting-by-numbers here.

This is a comic written by people who don't seem to have a love of horror. It isn't necessary to know who directed Antropophagus, or have read the whole of Varney the Vampire, but a little appreciation of the form is essential in conveying a watered down version for the consumption of younger readers.

Instead of foisting this title on a kid, buy them It's Behind You! by Paul Cookson and David Harmer instead. They'll thank you.