It’s been a long time coming, 37 years in fact, but finally I’m going to find out how Wildcat’s Turbo Jones strip ends, thanks to the first of Rebellion’s graphic novel collections. Containing all of Turbo’s strips from the entire Wildcat series, including the Winter and Holiday Specials, it’s the strips from the merge with Eagle that I haven’t read yet. As such, I was a bit disappointed to find out on the contents page the character didn’t last long in that comic. Oh well, let’s dig in to what’s here.
A word of warning, I’m looking at these as classic strips just like the rest of Wildcat, so while this is a review of a book on sale it could contain some spoilers if you’re thinking of buying it and would prefer to go in fresh. After an introduction by Wildcat’s creator-editor Barrie Tomlinson, the preview issue and all 12 Turbo Jones strips from the regular comic, we get to Eagle and Wildcat and the conclusion to the Trial of Death Turbo had been forced into at the end of his own comic.
After the big build up the trial itself only lasts one issue before Turbo and Robo spot the Arglon army moving towards Borovia. Seeing a way back in with his former allies, Turbo assembles the army before promptly kills a dissenter! Then the rest just fall in line. What? Throughout Wildcat, Turbo was always quick to anger and get into a fight. Some leader of the human race, right? He was always taught the error of his ways though, but not here. It doesn’t feel right when I think back to Wildcat and the stories it told, the characters and situations it involved, and the morals it portrayed for the kids.
Then the battle-to-end-all-battles is hyped on one page as a fight that will be taught to successive generations, before it gets wrapped up after one page. Even more incredulously, after this one defeat the entire Great Ark council of talking skeletal heads just self-destructs. So no answers about who they were or their history. Nothing. After such great pacing, world building and storytelling in Wildcat this feels very rushed, which is all the more frustrating since I never bought the merged comic and have waited all these years for this!
As our heroes leave to return to the ship they crash land. Again. In what feels like a tacked-on two-part story they meet the Sens Protens, a race of psychic aliens who Turbo instantly distrusts and even gets into fist fights with. But it’s actually a funny little tale, from beginning as it does with Turbo and Robo about to be sacrificed by the aliens, to them becoming best friends within a few pages. However, just as it feels like it’s getting going it ends. Again. The problem is that Wildcat was meant to contain long-form storytelling. There were no individual tales as such in each of the main strips. Instead, they were designed to be never-ending, naturally moving from one scenario to the next. I loved that about it. But of course this simply wouldn’t work in Eagle.
There were four main character strips in Wildcat plus the anthologies, the Wildcat Completes. There was only room for two at a time in Eagle, and the little panel at the end of the above story tells the reader Loner’s story would restart the following week. It’s painfully obvious Turbo’s was curtailed to make room for other strips in a shared environment. Then there’s another two-part tale which ends with news of Joe Alien returning, so Turbo was clearly also used to fill some gaps between strips in Eagle.
It’s a shame, because the character development for Turbo was excellent in Wildcat, yet here it has to stop in order to get the stories told quickly and out of the way. As such, he’s back to being the person he was at the beginning, including shouting constantly at poor old Robo, their developing friendship in Wildcat all but forgotten. Robo also never stops calling him ‘Master’ despite protestations, which I’ll admit does lead to some laughs when Turbo tells him off for it at the most inopportune of moments.
There’s a scene where Turbo is furious when an alien kills a human upon meeting because it deemed them unimportant. Bit of a cheek getting angry about that considering his own actions when meeting some of the more imaginatively designed alien characters! Speaking of designs, the art is as superb as always. Ian Kennedy gets top artist billing despite only drawing the first two strips (however he did design all of the main characters and the Wildcat itself). Vanyo is our most prolific artist here and their monsters are as imaginative as always. I’m sure these would’ve thrilled Eagle readers just as they did for me in Wildcat back then.
There are a few one-shot stories for Turbo as well. Some are a bit like the Wildcat Completes, however whereas those were satisfying and told a complete (clue is in the name) tale with a proper beginning, middle and end, these Turbo Jones stories feel frustratingly short. One introduces two species of fish-like aliens with what seems like really interesting origins, and in another a full-scale intergalactic war forms the background to the story, but both of these are just dropped, never to be heard about again. Were these ideas of Barrie’s he was originally going to flesh out in Wildcat later on?
There are other genuinely funny moments, such as when we see Robo trying to calm a terrified Turbo. As it turns out, this heroic, chisel-chinned leader of humans who takes no nonsense from any alien monster is terrified of the dentist. The final Eagle tale then shows just how horrible humans can be and questions whether we deserve to settle on another planet at all. It’s something Wildcat often considered in its stories. This tale seems to mirror the real world even today and the hateful minds of far too many people. Thankfully, the more enlightened version of Turbo Jones is on hand to make them see sense. In his own way, naturally.
I’ve loved rereading the Turbo strips from Wildcat again, it’s just frustrating how the epic nature of that comic had to be so obviously cut short because of the limited space and time available in the comic it merged into. If anything, the stories I’ve finally read now for the first time only confirm just how different Wildcat was, and just how original its style of storytelling was compared to the more episodic nature of its contemporaries. However, I still look forward to seeing how Loner’s story pans out in the second graphic novel. He proved very popular with Eagle readers and hung around for a lot longer as a result (his book is somewhat thicker than Turbo’s).
For now, volume one ends with the strips from the Wildcat specials and a selection of covers and pin ups featuring characters from the Turbo Jones strip. Unfortunately, the gorgeous cover for #1 by Ian isn’t included. Parts of it are used for the book’s cover but it still would’ve been nice to see it in full colour alongside the rest. That kind of sums up the continuation of the story after Wildcat’s premature end. What’s here is good but it could’ve been so much more, reaffirming my belief that the end of Wildcat was one of the cruelest cancellations in comics history.
You can purchase both Wildcat volumes at the Rebellion online shop.
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