Comic Reviews, The Sleeze Brothers

SLEEZE BROTHERS #5: DOWN THE PAN

1 Comment

With no ‘Next Issue’ dates in any of these Marvel UK (Epic imprint) comics I had to do a little research in order to find out the specific release dates. Just as I did for Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head I dug through my extensive Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters collections and checked every one of their Mighty Marvel Comics Checklists, which the publisher printed for 18 months in total around this time.

It was worth it because every other online resource simply states the month on the cover, which as you can see is somewhat out. Arriving only three weeks after #4 but a whole nine weeks before #6 (I’ll get to that further below), the penultimate issue of The Sleeze Brothers arrived today in 1989 and the incompetent detectives don’t exactly appear to be flushed with success. (Sorry.)

Each month the inside cover has been given over to a different character in an original take on an editorial where they wax lyrical about something that’s on their mind, something which also acts as an introduction to an aspect of that month’s story. In this case, the President’s mistress Marilyn Blondclone informs us in her own way of the Scoopers, a band of mutated humans living in the sewers far below the city.

The first strip page shows us a couple of such people digging about the sludge for food, their speech patterns conveying that they purposely block their noses to deal with the stench. Upon discovering a cabbage one states, “Dover dare, a nabbage. Lovely – notten right frew!” Everything in the city is recycled, but what can’t be ends up down here. But that’s not all to be found.

I love how every month the double-page title spread acts almost like a movie poster for the story. They convey everything we need to know about the humour and the imagination that’ll be on display for the next 20 pages, probably none more so than the Psycho-inspired spread in the previous issue. I particularly like the little in-jokes the comic is so good at, such as here with the replacement for the usual “Stan Lee presents”.

The same team as always are present and correct: John Carnell (writer), Andy Lanning (pencils), Stephen Baskerville (inks), Steve White (colours), Helen Stone (letters) and Dan Abnett (editor). The story sees Marilyn about to attend the Phoney awards where it’s been fixed for her to win yet again, but her previous year’s trophy has been stolen and it contains her insurance policy against the love of her life (the President), something to guarantee her luxurious lifestyle.

The Frog Burglar has it secreted away inside his stomach and only his sidekick Scuzz can retrieve it

Stolen by The Frog Burglar (he’s exactly what it says on the tin), the national security head J. Edgar Hairdryer makes a return and threatens the frog with a Terminator-type villain if he doesn’t hand the award over. The Frog Burglar has it secreted away inside his stomach and only his sidekick Scuzz (who reminds me of Rizzo from The Muppets) can retrieve it. Following a lead, the Sleezes end up at the Frog’s emporium where he sells his extensive stolen goods to the masses.

Have a very close look at that first panel and lurking in the shadows of the queuing public you should spot it’s actually Freddy Kruger who’s having a “nightmare” of a time alongside a certain floating green (and most definitely slimy) apparition from the other comic this creative team had a huge hand in. Reading The Sleeze Brothers has me gagging to finish my Real Ghostbusters collection so I can get stuck into reading that too!

While waiting outside El’ Ape and Deadbeat seem to confirm what I suspected back in #1, that they know they’re in the pages of a comic. Then, after acquiring what he came for, a heavily armed religious nut job soon causes death and destruction in the name of peace, love and god (some things don’t change in America it would seem, even in a far future that’s taking place in a comic).

Amongst all the chaos Frog Burglar is captured by the local police and the Terminator-type is damaged but still able to take its secret commands from Hairdryer, below. (There’s a sentence!) The brothers seem to be nowhere nearer the reward money but things are about to go in their favour. If you can call being covered in frog (and everyone else’s) poo a turn up for the books. 

In prison the two-headed chief of police Pigski learns where Frog Burglar has hidden the Phoney all this time, so you can imagine his horror when he finds out the inmate has been granted a toilet break. It’s a very funny scene that could’ve been lifted right out of an issue of OiNK, complete with toilet humour puns and even a mention of a plop. Then, just as you think things couldn’t get any ickier, the Burglar’s attorney arrives.

So, let’s take a look at the situation at (smelly) hand here. The police simply want to retrieve a stolen object, an object Marilyn Blondclone has hired detectives to track down because it contains dirt on the President, who Hairdryer wants to protect, and because of this fact it’s worth a fortune on the black market, and it’s now in the sewers. The same sewers where the story began by introducing us to the people and monsters that dwell there. So the two plots have merged in a brilliant piece of writing that also happens to be bloomin’ hilarious.

However, as one of Pigski’s officers explains, “You’d have to be a crazy, no-brained, lowlife, sonofatube to go down there” with a vicious monster on the loose. So who do you think the police will choose? Ding, ding! Yep, with the Sleezes currently in the clink for interfering in a police investigation, Pigski agrees to drop the list of ludicrous charges he was going to use against them if they retrieve the Phoney. What they find when they venture down makes for a wonderful full-page background.

I’ve already mentioned the licenced Marvel UK comic the team behind The Sleeze Brothers also worked on, so I’m positive that third panel is a funny reference to a famous line in the original movie. Among the Scoopers their leader speaks through his own blocked nose to tells us his name is Broken Potty (although I like to think the bunged up version is his true name) and as per usual with Andy and Stephen’s work there are a lot of funny details the longer you let your eyes wander over the page.

The intricate illustration of this page leads on to the biggest laugh of the whole issue. While The Sleeze Brothers was aimed at a more mature audience than the likes of the company’s licenced fare, I’m sure kids would’ve still got this next gag and had a private chuckle to themselves, their parents none the wiser. There’s a lot of potty humour here but it’s top quality potty humour. (Yes, it exists.) For example, while looking down upon the scene from their sewage pipe El’ Ape senses something and tells Deadbeat, “Shhh! There’s a movement behind us!” Brilliant.

The last handful of pages rush towards the climax. The brothers are captured and tied up as a sacrifice to the monster of the sewers, then a cute little doggie turns into the monster on a whistle command, the frog coming to a suitably grisly end. However, Deadbeat uses his own whistle to transform the monster back to the cute puppy to save him and brother, whistling again to destroy the Terminator with the monster, and one more time to give them a cute pet to get home!

At the awards show President Sinartra, Marilyn Blondclone and J. Edgar Hairdryer are on stage for Marilyn’s “outstanding bits in Silicon Valley” award, and as each part of the finale plays out we’re treated to their reactions, below. In order, their reactions are to El’ Ape appearing with the stolen Phoney on stage, then to the head of the Terminator bouncing out to seek revenge, then they see a camera film fall out of the busted Phoney, and finally they react to El’ Ape opening the film to take a look and ruining it in the bright lights.

To say it’s a madcap story would be to sell it short. It simply doesn’t stop to allow the reader to catch a breath! While the early issues were incredibly funny and original, this and last month’s stories have shown not only that the team has really got to grips with the premise, but that they can continue to outdo themselves every time.

It bodes well for #6, the final issue, but unfortunately for whatever reason there was a big gap before its release. According to the Mighty Marvel Checklists #6 of The Sleeze Brothers wasn’t released for another nine weeks! So you’ll just have to wait until Monday 23rd December 2024 for the next review. That should be a great early Christmas pressie though. But fear not, there’s a little extra treat coming your way on the blog on Sunday 10th November. You’ll just have to wait to find out what it is.

iSSUE FOUR < > iSSUE SiX

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS MENU

Comic Reviews, OiNK Contributors

COMBAT COLiN #5: MARVEL-OUS MiRTH

5 Comments

Fancy 32 very high quality pages containing 28 equally high quality and hilarious Lew Stringer comics? Surely for every reader of this blog the answer to that is a no-brainer. After a lengthy delay, Lew’s fifth collection of Combat Colin strips from Marvel UK’s Transformers comic arrives and it’s a belter. Lew’s humour strip just got better and better during the last couple of years of that comic’s life and now we’re deep into that part of the run.

Covering over half a year’s worth of misadventures from 1990 and 1991, Colin had been upgraded to a full page for a while and Lew really took advantage of the extra space. He included so many gags and background jokes per page his work was often a highlight for many readers of the Robots in Disguise. He also wrote more multi-issue stories which were among the best he produced.

Combat Colin with Semi-Automatic Steve in The Secret of the Combat Trousers is the first such tale in this collection and features baddies in disguise, multi-dimensional travel and even the honest-to-gosh “true origin of Combat Colin”. It’s a brilliant three-part tale that I remember well, not just from my recent real time read through of Transformers, but from the actual time of its first printing.

However, the yampiest tale here has got to be Battlefield Wallytown which originally ran for a whopping six weeks. Returning villains, returning heroes, warping of realities, time travel… anything Lew could come up with seems to have been squeezed into this one and it all works. It’s been combined into one story like in previous collections, although the other multipart series here appear in their original forms.

Lew’s art is just as funny as his scriptwriting, such as Colin’s enigmatic face or that brilliant panel where he conveys the bright light of a hero’s downfall on a black and white page. Story wise, there’s also the return of a robotic foe that’s much more cumbersome than the original (perfectly spoofing RoboCop 2 in my eyes) in a strip with an ending that has us re-reading the previous chapters to see the clue we all overlooked. Then there’s the perfect example of how a common everyday phrase can take on a whole new meaning here.

Every page includes details of the issue of Transformers they originally appeared in and its cover date (instead of release date, but this makes it easier to find the issue if you wanted to) and one of my very favourite Combat Colin pages finally makes its appearance. To see a preview of it just go and have a look at a special Christmas post from last year.

In Lew’s editorial he explains how some of the strips are printed in greyscale because they’ve been taken from the pages of the published comic after Marvel UK lost his original artwork and he hopes this doesn’t spoil our enjoyment too much. On the contrary, I think the greyscale pages are some of the best looking here, with a lovely retro feel like reading a classic Dandy or Beano annual, and the printing finish is smoother.

With an appearance by a certain Autobot, Lew’s token funny reference to The Prisoner and even a classic Airplane/Leslie Nielsen quote (you know which one) there’s so much to enjoy in here that I don’t have the room to include them all, nor would I want to! You should be surprised by them and enjoy them for yourself and you can do so by buying the comic directly from Lew.

Even the advert for Lew’s personal blog is funny with the cosiest looking Daleks you ever did see!

So how do you get a hold of #5 of Combat Colin for yourself? Just head to Lew’s eBay shop where you can buy this hilarious comic, printed on extremely high quality paper with a card cover no less, for just £5.00 (plus £3.50 p+p). A bargain if ever there was one! There’s just the one volume still to be published, which promises to include not only the remainder of the Transformers strips but also material I’ve never read before. Let’s hope we haven’t got as long to wait this time!

OiNK CONTRiBUTORS’ RELEASES MENU

OiNK CONTRiBUTORS MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

Book Reviews, The Sleeze Brothers

SLEEZE BROTHERS #4: OH, MOTHER!

Leave a comment

This cover perfectly sums up our inept private detectives from the far future of Earth and welcomes us to the first issue of the second half of The Sleeze Brothers’ run. Time is flying and soon we’ll be all out of misadventures for this duo, so I’m glad each episode has proven to be such a riotous, laugh-a-minute ride.

In this issue Mr. A. Mystery has invited the greatest detectives in the city to his outer space murder mystery weekend. Sam Spud, Vanity Case, Charlie Chin, Miss McMuffins and Mike Mallet are all present and correct as spoofs of the most successful fictional detectives. Plus the brothers have been invited too. While the rest enjoy first class snobbery, El’ Ape and Deadwood make the rocket journey in the cargo hold on their way to Norman’s Flotel, and if that name made me giggle to myself then the title spread made me grin from ear-to-ear!

It’s clear that the whole mini-series of six issues is going to be one pastiche after another. While the brothers were (as launch editor Richard Starkings admitted) heavily… ‘inspired’ by The Blues Brothers, it appears every other character, setting and storyline is a parody of some popular cultural icon or other. Well, as a huge fan of Psycho this one was right up my street as soon as it began, with the Bates Motel sitting atop an asteroid floating about in space. As you do.

Murder in Space is brought to us by the same crazy team of John Carnell (writer and co-creator), Andy Lanning (pencils and co-creator, as mentioned), Stephen Baskerville (inks), Helen Stone (letters), Steve White (colours) and Dan Abnett (editor), and this wouldn’t be the same if any one of them had been replaced by someone else. They are the perfect team for this comic!

So it’s The Sleeze Brothers does Agatha Christie meets Alfred Hitchcock and I can comfortably say this is the best issue yet. Not only is the subject matter right up my street but it feels like there’s two issue’s worth of gags squeezed into one and every single one of them lands. Every. Single. One. I’m not exaggerating here, folks. This is hilarious from beginning to end and even the inclusion of what could be seen as a somewhat problematic character today doesn’t detract, as long as you remember when this was written.

The Greebas are an alien race somewhat based on Asian stereotypes of the 80s, with ninja characters in previous issues and the ‘Charlie Chin’ detective here. There’s nothing in this or any other issue so far that pokes fun at any real ethnicity, indeed if anything they come across as aliens who have come to Earth and landed in a part of Asia instead of the clichéd American landings, and have simply learned to fit in there instead of, say, Los Angeles.

So, if you can ignore the very-80s clichéd name you’ll find they’re just another good natured spoof alongside the jokes taking aim at American capitalism, Western politics, US police corruption and the many, many other parodies you’ll see on every page. The characters end up gathered around a table watching a video of the mysterious person who has summoned them, who tells them it’s not a game; a murder is about to be committed and they have until morning to solve it, their very lives depending on it.

“Agghhh! Dieee chip-suckerrrr!”

El’ Ape reacting to a wine cork pop

The loudmouth American, Mike Wallet becomes so outraged that while confronting the spineless Norman Normaller the butler, Norman collapses to the ground, dead. This is one murder the butler didn’t do, as El ‘Ape tells us. There’s no sign of foul play, it’s like a switch had just been turned off on Norman. Then, one-by-one they all start dropping like flies. The film noir detective, Sam Spud (you can guess who he’s based on) croaks it next, poisoned by his drink.

In a particularly funny moment when El’ Ape is making some bad puns about the death, he’s acting all tough until it’s pointed out to him that he’s about to drink the same wine. After two murders right in front of his own eyes it takes things to (almost) affect him directly before he clicks there’s a murderer among them. They decide to split up, the Sleezes taking the wine cellar and one cork pop is enough for El ‘Ape above!

The searches are fruitless and as they gather together again the Greeba’s comment had me roaring. (I’ll be using that one whenever I can.) Concluding the murderer is one of them (hilariously described as “a detecticidal maniac”) they decide to go to their rooms to sleep for the night and all lock themselves in at exactly the same time. But in the morning someone has been hung in their room! A corny poem is left by the murderer at every crime scene and soon they realise they’ve only one option left and sit around a table watching each other until their shuttle back to Earth arrives.

With all the killing making her nervous, Vanity Case, the lady who the male detectives have all been drooling over, heads for the loo but after 20 minutes the remaining three start getting nervous themselves. Deadbeat kicks the door down and they find the room empty and another note. The Greeba panics and sprints to the nearest emergency escape pod which gets ejected from the hotel with a satisfying spitting sound effect.

There are only the Sleeze Brothers left and no murderer has been found, a fact that slowly (very slowly) seeps into El’ Ape’s brain when he finds what he thinks is a goodbye note. The over-the-top comedic guy and the straight guy routine works brilliantly here as one brother’s detective skills crumble (if he had any to begin with) leaving it to Deadbeat to offer up his own elegant solution.

When I turned the next page I saw a large panel with Vanity Case still alive and holding a gun over someone so I assumed for a second she must be the killer, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. There’s no way I could’ve predicted this ending.

So, she’s being held prisoner instead of being murdered because the killer fancies her, of course. We only see him in silhouette for a page or two and he says if any of the so-called “greatest detectives” even bothered to look for secret passages they’d have solved everything and he reiterates the “oldest trick in the book” gag from #1. At this point El’ Ape does indeed find a secret passage, although it’s by fumbling luck of course, and what do they find? Well…!

Nope, I didn’t see that coming! Even with the Psycho parallels, too. Taking the controlling nature of Mother to the extreme, this team’s creative imaginations are either sheer brilliance or evidence of some crazed minds. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. As for this issue’s conclusion, Norman hadn’t died, he’d been put in a comatose state by the “sharp mind” of his parasitic brother Jacques, but as the killer does the usual long-winded explanation (and El’ Ape doesn’t miss a beat with a “I had a hunch” moment), Norman begins to wake.

The ludicrous slapstick of it all is brilliantly realised, isn’t it? The skill of John’s script and the artists’ in bringing it to the page cannot be overstated. From the image of Norman and Jacques fighting it out to Vanity getting accidentally thrown to safety by a panicked El’ Ape, and of course the idiocy of Jacques getting so mad he kills the person in whose body he resides, then pleading with him not to die!

The story ends with El’ Ape and Deadwood thinking they’ve got it all sown up, including the reward. All they have to do is sit on top of the cupboard Vanity is stuck inside until the authorities arrive, explain they solved it all and collect their cash. Then we see the newspaper headline: “Vanity Unveils Vile Villain” and the brothers are back in the luggage haul of the rocket on their way home, only this time inside a wooden case. All that’s left is for El’ Ape to have the final, brilliant word.

What an absolute blast this has been! If you only ever pick up one issue of The Sleeze Brothers make sure it’s this one. Then again, I’ve yet to read the final issues, so maybe hang fire and see if anything trumps this one, although I can’t see how they could. However, after the laughs I’ve had here I won’t underestimate this team’s ability to outdo themselves yet again. The penultimate regular issue will be reviewed right here in only three weeks on Monday 21st October 2024.

iSSUE THREE < > iSSUE FiVE

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS MENU

Comic Reviews, Transformers: Generation 2

TRANSFORMERS GENERATiON 2 #1: FOUR MiLLiON YEARS iN THE MAKiNG

4 Comments

Finally here we are, ready to begin a brand new (to me and thus the blog) series of classic Transformers comics. Reading the entire original Marvel UK run in real time was one of the very best comics reading experiences of my life and here is the sequel, the highly regarded Transformers: Generation 2, the original US series. The hype I’m feeling is somewhat tempered by the fact there’ll only be 12 reviews over one year compared to the 375 posts I made on Instagram for the previous run(!), but it’s still all brand new to me, I’ve never read an issue of this, so the excitement levels are still very high.

This first issue is a chunky 68 pages, although cheekily the middle 16 are one long advert for Marvel’s new Midnight Sons so it’s not quite as chunky as it first appears. (And yes, it’s not a sample comic strip, it’s an actual 16-page advert.) However, chapter one of the new Transformers, entitled War Without End continues to be written by Simon Furman and comes in at 37 pages. That’s a good start. As for that shiny foil version of the cover, it opens out into this lovely gatefold image.

Before we get stuck into the meat of the story I do have one issue with that cover. I may not have read any of these yet but I’ve seen this front page umpteen times over the years, and it’s been peering out at me on my shelves since I completed the collection a few years back. It’s that tagline at the top. It had only been two years since the end of the first generation of Transformers comics, how young did Marvel US think people were having kids?!

Anyway, let’s roll out!

The story begins with a space cruiser’s captain being informed of an attack somewhere far out in the galaxy, far away from both Earth and Cybertron and the title spread shows some familiar faces surprisingly spearheading that attack. Hound, Broadside, Sideswipe and Blades (on the following pages) are seen killing everyone around them, with Blades taking particular glee in doing so.

The way it’s been conveyed to the reader is meant to lead us down the path of thinking these Autobots’ allegiances have changed. The war was meant to be over. The scene is reported as a surprise strike attack. The Autobots are the instigators. But then we see one of the so-called victims of their attack transform and the dramatic entrance of an old friend, it’s confirmed there’s More Than Meets The Eye here. How appropriate.

These pages of rollicking action art come courtesy of new Transformers artist Derek Yaniger (Hellraiser, Web of Spider-Man, Alpha Flight) and the colours of Sarra Mossoff (Deathlok, Darkman, Mighty Thor). This is some wild imagery. I’d only ever seen the occasional panel or some of their covers when used on Fleetway’s UK Generation 2 comics, but this is the first time I’ve held any of it in my hands and it’s right up there with the very best UK Marvel stuff from the likes of Geoff Senior, Andrew Wildman, Stephen Baskerville and Gina Hart.

“Early digital lettering days, so why not use a more robotic looking font?”

Richard Starkings, letterer

This is just gorgeous to look at. It’s genuinely exciting and begs to be studied at length before moving on to the next page. The lettering is also rather unique and it’s the creation of friend of the blog Richard Starkings (editor on The Real Ghostbusters, Dragon’s Claws, The Sleeze Brothers). It’s mentioned elsewhere in this issue by Simon that it was Richard who came up with Generation 2’s lettering style and so I just had to ask Richard directly about it.

“Early digital lettering days, so why not use a more robotic looking font?”, Richard told me about his and John Gaushell‘s work when we spoke. “We suggested color coding the boxes on the left to match the Transformer and gave the Dinobots a different style. If there was a bold word, we hit the boxes with black. Rob Tokar was the editor, one of a handful of editors who was happy to see digital lettering on his books. And this was a perfect fit.” No arguments here.

It’s actually Grimlock who comes out with a couple of rousing speeches during this story rather than Optimus Prime, including one where he wipes away the dirt from his body to reveal the new look Autobot logo Hasbro had designed for the new toy range. Simon has given him a speech pattern somewhere between the original UK strips and that of the famous cartoon voice, and it works. Then we find out that the robot called Jhiaxus (a creation of the comic), to whom the report of the attack was given aboard his spaceship Twilight, is actually the leader of the Decepticons. How so? Where’s Bludgeon? Intriguing.

So anyway, we find out the Autobots were actually saving some rather thin-looking humanoid aliens from an invasion by Decepticons they’d never encountered before, and Jhiaxus’ minions questions why they’re fighting. They’ve never heard of the term “Autobots” and thought they were all Cybertronians so should be working together. Jhiaxus describes the name as an acronym from the distant past and something to disregard. Curiouser and curiouser.

Four million years of conflict, stretching between Cybertron and Earth, and finally… all the old ghosts laid to rest!”

Optimus Prime

We finally catch up with Optimus Prime who seems to be having some sort of vision. A vision of him standing upon a dead world, surrounded by screams, dead beings rising from the ground and as soon as they touch him he turns to dust. It’s a recurring waking nightmare and he describes it as a vision of him “running from something unspeakably ancient and evil”. Again? After the whole Unicron and Primus thing we’re going down that route again? Then, as if in answer to my query we get this lovely next page.

I really like this. The story can be read with no previous knowledge of what came before, which Simon touches upon in a special page later in the comic, but this adds a bit of weight for new readers and an acknowledgment to fans. The best way I can describe it is if you started watching Doctor Who when Christopher Ecclestone or Ncuti Gatwa took over the role. These were two moments when the whole show reset itself and welcomed in new viewers while also showing them there’s a rich history there they can delve into if they so wish. I get that same vibe here and as a fan who has read everything that came before it’s an exciting feeling to have.

One thing that could’ve used a bit of explanation for long-term fans is how some characters such as Optimus and Grimlock can transform again after using the Nucleon energy source which gave them incredible powers but stopped this fundamental ability. We UK readers had the explanation in the prose story of the final annual but US readers didn’t, so I’m curious how this was met by them at the time. Not that the transformations occurring here are anything to write home about.

This is the one and only thing I can criticise the incredible art for. We don’t get those intricate drawings from issues past showing how each character changed from one form to the next, not even the wavy lines of Dan Reed. Instead we see the before and after shots in the same panels, with nothing in between. I have an overwhelmingly positive view of this comic as the start of something brilliant, but not showing these feels misguided in a Transformers comic. Although look closely and I do like how we can see Hot Rod‘s cannon fire continue through his (invisible) transformation.

At least Prime’s name isn’t plastered over the side of his trailer.

It’s interesting that they’ve kept their Earthen modes despite leaving the planet behind. Maybe they’ve grown attached. They find themselves out in the cosmos seeking out the worlds Bludgeon and his Decepticons have attacked as they look to build a new Cybertron (seemingly never finding out it wasn’t destroying itself at the end of the previous run but going through some kind of rebirth). Prime questions his own motives and those of Bludgeon until Grimlock gathers everyone together, having summoned them to this planet in the first place.

Reading the spread above the mystery deepens for the Autobots but the readers are aware of who is actually behind the creation of all of these “Little Cybertrons”, and possibly behind all of the conflict they’ve found in this sector of the galaxy. It’s a neat twist that we’re up to speed before the main characters and to see them trying to work it out. That is, until Jhiaxus’ ship arrives and blasts their base to pieces.

Before they get to meet him we get a very quick double-page spread for an update on the whereabouts of Megatron for anyone who hadn’t been on board with the G.I. Joe crossover event. It’s a neat addition and makes me wish David had been the artist on that comic after Andrew Wildman and Stephen Baskerville’s earlier chapters!

So it all comes together with Optimus Prime and Grimlock hauled in front of Jhiaxus at gunpoint and he explains he and his cohorts left Cybertron four million years ago after Prime, Megatron et all went missing in deep space. Escaping their dying world and leaving behind those he deemed unworthy to lead (including a nice image of Lord Straxus for long-term fans, especially UK ones), they set about constructing new worlds. At least, that’s how he puts it.

To him, they are one race now: Decepticons. There is no more good or evil, he says. That way of thinking is for lesser beings than Cybertronians, like the Autobots who he sees as a strange “offshoot” of the true race. If beings can’t co-exist with them then they are simply deemed unworthy of sharing the universe and are exterminated. Jhiaxus has spent millions of years building new Cybertrons and a great galactic empire. He’s a genuinely original and interesting character for Transformers, bringing some social commentary with him.

Afterwards, it’s Grimlock who gives another speech (and is that a pictorial reference to the classic story with the best title ever?), this time for Prime’s benefit and in response something awakens inside Optimus. The war was won, but for what? He has fought for Cybertron and its people and all the while those very people were conquering the universe in the name of expansion and some higher calling. We see a battle to escape over the final pages with a more violent Prime not taking prisoners. He is disgusted at his own race and afterwards he goes over the task that lies ahead in his mind.

The final page, those final thoughts, sum up what this Generation 2 comic will be all about. Plus there’s that pesky ancient evil thing too, of course, which I’m still sceptical of because it feels well-trodden. It could be something brand new, but so far the pitch for it seems all too familiar. Still, the Jhiaxus storyline is fantastic! This has been an incredible opening chapter to what should’ve been another multi-year epic. It certainly has the potential, even without that apocalyptic vision which feels unnecessary with everything else here already being on such a grand scale.

What will eventually become the letters page is instead a personal message from writer Simon Furman in this premiere issue. He mentions Richard Starkings’ great lettering design and also the return of Geoff Senior. Fantastic! Between this and the back page advert for the series (below, taken from the back of the gatefold issue), a lot is made of the point I talked about regarding new readers. The thing is, with a name like ‘Transformers: Generation 2’, which screams “SEQUEL” I wonder how successful that goal could possibly be in reality.

The next issue box promises a return to the storyline involving Megatron and Spike from #142 of G.I. Joe and with that this big, fat first issue of this fondly remembered series comes to an end for the first time for this new reader. I know it ends up cut short after only 12 chapters, but this next year still promises to be an incredible experience for this Transformers fan. I can’t wait to jump back in on Sunday 27th October 2024.

G.i. JOE iSSUE 142 < > iSSUE TWO

TRANSFORMERS: GENERATiON 2 MENU

MAiN TRANSFORMERS MENU

Comic Reviews, G.I. Joe, Transformers: Generation 2

G.i. JOE #142: BiGGLES-JONESiNG FOR MORE G.i. JOE

Leave a comment

Our last cover for G.I. Joe in this Transformers: Generation 2 read through, by William Rosado. I’ll miss some of these characters but it does mean the actual Transformers sequel series is about to begin. In fact, #142 of G.I. Joe and #1 of Transformers: Generation 2 went on sale on the same day (despite advice to the contrary inside this issue) so there’ll be two reviews today, you lucky lot. Let’s begin where we left off last month, though.

Scarlett was seemingly going up against the newly rebuilt Megatron all on her lonesome during the last issue’s cliffhanger but here that old pantomime adage, “They’re behind you!”, could’ve been used by Cobra Commander and Zarana. The title spread for this last crossover chapter, Final Transformations (with credits in the photo below) shows no less than six Autobots were somehow able to sneak up without anyone spotting them.

I was tempted to conclude that Scarlett must’ve known they were there and that’s why she was so adamant she could stand up to Megatron, but we clearly see her running away in surprise, just being missed by incoming fire so clearly she wasn’t in cahoots. The fact none of the human characters saw them until this exact moment is highly ridiculous but it does speed things along.

It’s a somewhat random selection of characters to bring back. Brawn hasn’t been seen since the early years of the original comic, we’ve an Autobot cassette without Blaster on the planet and some Special Teams members without the rest of their combining pals. Then again, looking at the range of toys available at the launch of Generation 2 Larry Hama could’ve been somewhat restricted with who he could choose from to show a good cross section of the range.

The robot illustrations have certainly gone up a notch since last month. Brawn in particular comes off really well in almost every panel he’s in. Megatron doesn’t fair quite as well on some pages as his proportions seem to change from one scene to the next, but they’re all suitably solid, definitely feel their size and the fights pack a punch. Megatron also shows off his new abs and opens a compartment in his torso to plop Dr. Biggles-Jones inside.

I’ve always found it particularly funny when comedic moments come courtesy of the mute and deadly Snake-Eyes

It’s a high-octane issue once more, the culmination of the last few months of storytelling but at least there’s a proper plot this month, with the attempted escape plan for Biggles-Jones. Unfortunately, we don’t get to find out the secret she told Scarlett in #141 that saw the Joe lay her life on the line for her, that’ll have to wait until I can read the rest of the G.I. Joe run. But whatever it was, Scarlett is easily able to convince her teammates to get on board with helping the Cobra member.

There’s also room for some of the trademark humour these characters imbue. I’ve always found it particularly funny when comedic moments come courtesy of the mute and deadly Snake-Eyes. Last seen surrounded in the hospital ward he does as he’s told, lets go of the person he’s fighting and turns to face the masses. Terror flows through them as they instantly recognise who they’re facing, and as he opens his arms to show no resistance… out falls a handful of grenades from his hands.

I love the moody silhouettes used on this page, ending with his attackers continuing the fight amongst themselves, unaware he’s long gone.

There are some properly dramatic moments here, some of which definitely wouldn’t have had the same level of impact with the readers who were introduced to these particular Cybertronian characters for the first time here. But for long-time Transformers readers there are plenty of shocks. Steel Jaw and Chase are both destroyed and Override is literally pulled apart by the all-powerful Megatron in the final scenes.

The need for writer Larry Hama to translate his own character’s speech continues with this funny moment involving Cobra Commander and Zarana, then in the background of the battle a teeny tiny human makes a brief appearance in a few panels here and there, including one where he mentions his internal sensors. Given where things were left at the end of the first generation of comics this must be Spike, the Headmaster companion of Fortress Maximus, the only Autobot left on Earth.

Scarlett provides some laughs of her own in her fight sequence against the Cobra top brass. Distracted by what’s happening with Megatron and the Autobots, she’s able to take them both on before the troops Cobra Commander has summoned even make it to the scene. Her quick witticisms are classic 80s action movie stuff and apart from that awful new costume she remains one of my very favourite characters in the franchise. (She’s recovered pretty quickly from her ordeal last issue though.)

After much more action with the Transformers themselves the plan to rescue Dr. Biggles-Jones before Megatron extracts her brain (to put it to use developing new world-destroying weaponry back on Cybertron) is put into play. Enlisting Storm Shadow and Spirit who disguise themselves as Cobra troopers, they steal a vehicle and Skydive deactivates himself on a timer! This means he can be sneaked past The Ark’s sensors (which would sound a warning alerting Megatron) and automatically be reactivated inside.

It’s a neat idea and one the humans actually came up with. The only problem is that Megatron, who is trying to use The Ark to get off Earth with the doctor, is standing right outside. Another distraction is needed and Override bravely puts himself forward for the job. He puts up a good fight but as mentioned above he comes to a particularly grisly end. His death at the hands of Megatron has a profound effect on the conclusion of the story, though.

Override’s bravery doesn’t go unnoticed by Biggles-Jones, who questions how a robot could exhibit such a thing. The rescue mission continues with her, Scarlett and Snake Eyes on the back of the Cobra vehicle with Megatron in hot pursuit, and he’s about to wipe them all out when Biggles-Jones jumps off and surrenders in order to save the others; “I can be as brave as a mere machine.”

Megatron ends up taking off in The Ark, where Spike has smuggled himself on board, and leaves Earth. Looking at the doctor in a cryo tube, he notices she’d put a virus into the rail gun he had installed in his body. He’d deactivated the virus of course (and planted one himself in the weaponry he gave Cobra as part of their deal) but he still admires her intelligence. He decides not to kill her but to find another way to use her instead. I’m glad she’s not dead. I’d never met the character before this crossover and she’s an interesting addition.

Before rounding things up, the usual Marvel Bullpen Bulletin harps on about their Hallowe’en parties but of interest to blog readers is the inclusion of Dan Abnett (The Real Ghostbusters) and Andy Lanning (The Sleeze Brothers) and I’m a bit jealous of the Americans reading the continuing adventures of the 90’s version of Deathlok after Havoc’s cancellation in the UK. Plus, mention of the Biker Mice From Mars reminds me of teenage mornings watching The Big Breakfast before school.

The letters page sees some differing opinions about the inclusion of Transformers in the comic. There are certainly some overly dramatic readers here, their anger coming across like social media posts from certain corners of the ‘net before that was a thing. And, “realistic”? Yes, Larry grounded his characters and the military stores were well researched, but they’re based on toys. There’s sci-fi aplenty, body cloning, mind-bending, super-human ninjas… but okay.

Having read #1 of Transformers: Generation 2 for today’s other review I’m glad this got such an open ending with Dr. Biggles-Jones because of a litte preview of things to come in that other comic today. But I’m going to miss the rest of them, as I did during the Transformers G1 Instagram read through when they were unceremoniously kicked out of that comic’s back up strip spot. But I know I’m only months away from reading the whole of Marvel’s series, so this has acted not only as a great introduction to G2 but also as a great piece of hype for taking delivery of that Skybound G.I. Joe set next year!

For now, it’s goodbye to the Joes and Cobra and onwards into the depths of space. To say what’s ahead is truly epic in scale is selling it short, and that’s only after reading the first issue so far. You too can pick up where this crossover left off in the second of today’s reviews. It’s a cliché to say it, I know, but it truly only has begun.

G.i. JOE 141 < > TRANSFORMERS G2 iSSUE 1

TRANSFORMERS: GENERATiON 2 MENU

MAiN TRANSFORMERS MENU

Aliens, Comic Reviews

ALiENS #4: THEY MOSTLY COME AT NiGHT… MOSTLY

Leave a comment

This atmospheric cover by John Bolton promises much for the tale of the Aliens film seen from Newt’s point of view that continues within these pages. What a shame the chapter inside issue four of Dark Horse International’s Aliens comic doesn’t deliver on the promise of this terrifying image, or indeed its previous instalments. In general this is the weakest issue so far but that’s not really the fault of the UK publisher or its editor.

Editor Dick Hansom’s comic, like most UK comics of the era, chopped up the US stories into smaller bite-sized chunks and serialised them across more issues than American readers would’ve had. This meant we got to have no less than four individual stories in this monthly anthology, which is always a good thing. However, upon occasion it did highlight weaker elements of those stories. You’ll see what I mean later in the review. First up though, is chapter four of Hive.

Written by Jerry Prosser, drawn by Kelley Jones, coloured by Les Dorscheid and lettered by Clem Robins, main character Doctor Stanislaw Mayakovsky provides the narrative captions as we see android alien Norbert finally enter the hive of the title. While the doctor’s words actually describe his previous experiments involving ants on Earth, they are no less relevant here and show how his previous research would lead on to this trip to deep space.

In the ‘What Has Gone Before’ description of previous issues we’re told Max the dog wears an inhibitor that makes him imperceptible to the aliens. What? This hasn’t been explained in previous chapters and we’re given no explanation here on how it’s meant to work either. Also, given how the doctor discovered another team’s much easier way of extracting the alien jelly he craves, why is he still going through with his much more dangerous idea?

Yes, he has learned of an almost risk-free way of achieving his goal but let’s go and annoy an alien Queen anyway. And let’s sacrifice the pet dog at the same time, turning off his inhibitor so Norbert can present Max as food to the real aliens. Unless the doctor’s ego is such that he must see his own plan succeed, this makes no sense. What also doesn’t make sense is even considering that the reader might feel any kind of tension about Norbert entering the hive.

This results in me not caring about what happens to any of them

It was already established in the films that the aliens couldn’t care less about androids, only if one posed a threat would they destroy them. So there’s no tension in his entrance and once threatened they terminate him, which is actually rather sad. After this there’s a confusing turn of events when the human observers crash land, apparently hit by lightning although it’s hard to tell what’s happened, leaving them stranded on the surface. Quelle surprise.

Now that we’re a few months in to this initially intriguing story the cracks are beginning to show, the main problem being there isn’t one single likeable human character in the cast. They’ve deliberately been painted as selfish profit driven cretins, the likes of which Ripley would’ve gone up against in the movies. This results in me not caring about what happens to any of them, completely negating any suspense or tension the script and art tries hard to rack up.

The Motion Tracker news pages bring another interesting insight into the early 90s, beginning with the reveal of an Aliens Vs Predator movie. In reality, while videogame crossovers would happen soon after, it wouldn’t be until 2004 that the two franchise behemoths met on the silver screen. (I must look out for that trophy in Predator 2.)

I’m sure I borrowed that Earth Hive novel from the library as a teen and really enjoyed reading it very late at night in bed by lamplight. The news about Ridley Scott’s Alien Special Edition needs a bit of clarification. The Director’s Cut I’ve seen since is, as Ridley himself explained, a recut rather than one which adds in missing scenes. The “controversional” scene mentioned here wasn’t controversial at all. It involved Ripley discovering Dallas metamorphosing into an alien egg but it was removed because it slowed down the tense ending. Later, Aliens would reinvent how the eggs are produced and Ridley didn’t want to contradict James Cameron’s film.

“You think you know what’s going on, but I’m telling you – you don’t have a clue.”

General Mavis, Predator: Cold War

Also, $100 for a laserdisc release? No wonder those things never took off over here! Finally, under the ‘Sly Fox’ section about the upcoming releases of videos in the series, for some reason it’s stated Aliens wasn’t shot in widescreen when it very definitely was. A strange error there. Did the writer assume it wasn’t when it was released on video in 4:3 ratio? All films were released that way into the home market until widescreen transfers really took off in the 90s.

Mark Verheiden’s Predator strip, Cold War (pencilled by Ron Randall, inked by Steve Mitchell, coloured by Chris Chalenor and Rachelle Menashe, lettered by Clem) finally sees Russian Lt. Ligachev reappear but unfortunately not until the final page. Before this we’re treated to more human tension between America and the Soviet Union and, while it all starts off rather well with secretive manipulation by the US, it all boils down to a plot involving the sole survivor of a Predator attack (Ligachev) being sent to the site of another attack while coming up against people who wish to exploit the situation for profit and who don’t care about who is expendable (the Americans).

So basically, it’s the plot of Aliens reworked to fit the Predator series. Surely this isn’t a great fit for a comic based on Aliens? Wouldn’t fans see this for what it is? It might have been a decision out of editor Dick Hansom’s hands depending on what the parent company and the UK branch wanted to print over here. Oh, and it appears Detective Schaefer was in a previous Predator strip and that’s why he’s been brought in for the mission. But my point from previous reviews still stands. It still feels like he’s nothing more than a way to bring in Arnold Schwarzenegger without actually doing so (he’s the brother of Arnie’s character).

In the middle of the comic are four extra, glossy pages which make up a survey for the readers. I can’t see how useful listing favourite artists etc. would be to DHI, it’s not like they had any say over who would be creating the strips in the States, but I do find it intriguing that text stories are mentioned. Something tells me they appear later and I hope they do, it could be like reading those exciting novels again, but don’t ruin the surprise for me if you know. The readers are also given the option of choosing whether the comic should stay as a monthly or change to a fortnightly, or even a weekly! I doubt these answers had much sway though.

The Technical Readout page this month details the Remote Sentry Weapons, perhaps to the chagrin of one of the comic’s contributors, seeing as how they were used exclusively in one of the deleted scenes (the Special Edition was heavily criticised in an earlier issue). Then in the two-page Aliens Vs Predator II strip (written by Randy Stradley, drawn by Chris Warner) we find out one of the Predators is actually a human woman!

This could possibly be following on from the original strip but of course it hasn’t been printed in this volume. Regular blog readers will know that this and the chapter in Alien³ #3 were printed in the wrong order so at least the naming of Shorty is explained at last. Still, I want to find out a lot more and only getting two pages at once makes for a frustrating read, and now it’s only going to be two pages a month!

The final strip is Mike Richardson’s Newt’s Tale, which began as the brilliant idea of retelling the story of Aliens from the perspective of Newt. We’ve had some nice building of character and tension, and then last month the scenes where Newt witnessed the death of her mum and brother were truly horrific. You really felt for the child. It brought home the horrors she had to have seen in order to be in the situation we found her in during the film. Chapter three begins in suitable fashion too, as she discovers she can go places the aliens aren’t aware of simply because she’s so small, and we get this great double-page spread of her trying to survive over the next few days pencilled by Jim Somerville, inked by Brian Garvey, coloured by Gregory Wright and lettered by Pat Brosseau.

These were the moments I was looking forward to the most in the story. After the horrors she’d faced already, how exactly did Newt learn to survive in the complex, surrounded by the terrifying aliens. Unfortunately, these two pages are all we get. You can see at the top it says “Days pass…” and yet that last panel continues on to the next page and the moment Ellen and the Colonial Marines find her. Days? When Burke recruits Ripley they’d already lost contact and it took what I thought were at least weeks, possibly longer, to get there!

The rest of these pages see the interesting set up jettisoned for a typical, bland comics adaptation of the movie. We start to see scenes that don’t involve Newt and eventually she’s completely ignored for scenes of the Marines infiltrating the alien nest. The moment where Newt finally breaks her silence and tells Ellen her name is heavy with emotion and plays brilliantly after the trauma we saw her face last month, but then she just disappears from her own story for several pages.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind prompted the trend of re-thinking a movie after its initial showing and releasing it in a new cut

This is hugely disappointing. That cover promised so much and I hope next issue we’ll see more of Newt’s own story that we don’t already know. The particular section of the tale used for this issue might just be a blip in the overall original comic, unfortunately highlighted by being a chapter in and of itself in the UK comic. I can but hope, because right now I’m feeling like we’ve been sold one thing and are suddenly getting something else entirely. The issue does end on a high note however, with an interesting two-page feature on the new fad of Director’s Cuts, written by Dave Hughes.

I remember my friends and I being particularly excited for certain Director’s Cuts of films back then. Aliens is the obvious one, The Lawnmower Man was a completely different film in its lengthier cut, and some of my peers cheered when news of a Blade Runner special edition was announced. Here, some information on scenes cut from the original Alien film are notable and it goes into depth about Ridley Scott’s cyberpunk thriller. I’m glad the Aliens scene with Burke that’s mentioned was never reinstated because it was clear from his final moment that he was being killed, not taken away for implantation.

It may not have been recut by its director, but my favourite special edition is still that for Alien³ which reinstates a lot of David Fincher’s original vision, cut scenes, effects and whole story and character arcs the studio originally excised. It’s a phenomenal recut and the version which should’ve been released into cinemas at the time. It takes Alien³ (a film I already enjoyed) up to the level of the first two masterpieces and concludes an incredible trilogy for Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Ripley.

To round off the issue it’s nice to see I wasn’t alone in my thoughts about the review for the Aliens Special Edition a couple of issues back, although I do hope they don’t change their heading font, I think it’s perfectly readable and highly unique. With a comics checklist that shows how Dark Horse International was just beginning to grow, the fourth edition of Aliens comes to an end.

These may not have been the most enjoyable chapters of any of the main stories but Predator and Newt’s Tale still have the potential to correct course and, if nothing else, at least I can enjoy the humans in Hive meeting a predictably grisly end soon enough. Including the Alien³ Movie Special mini-series I can’t believe we’re already seven issues deep into this real time read through. The fact there are still so many to go, with many different stories for this anthology to tell yet, I can’t wait for #5 on Tuesday 22nd October 2024.

ALiEN³ iSSUE THREE < > ALiENS iSSUE FiVE

ALiENS MENU

Comic Reviews, Transformers

TRANSFORMERS G1 iN REAL TiME (iNSTAGRAM READ THROUGH)

1 Comment

UPDATE: I’m fully aware that the continued ensh*tification of anything Meta touches means the whole idea of using hashtags to enjoy the read through on Instagram no longer works! Come back on 22nd August 2026 to see how I intend to fix this…

This site may be named after OiNK but my complete collection of Marvel UK’s epic Transformers is my pride and joy. Back in 2017 I wanted to do something with the comic for the original blog but two things stopped me. Firstly, reviewing a weekly comic for seven years was too daunting at the time (I was just starting out) and secondly, the stories had already been covered in depth all over the internet.

I landed upon the idea of a photographic journey through the series instead, as a way for former UK readers to reminisce and relive treasured memories, and to show the physical comics to those in the UK and elsewhere who had read the stories in book form but had never seen the original covers, the back up strips, fact-files, letters pages, special features, competitions and even the contemporary adverts.

The perfect place for such a journey was Instagram. So for seven years I read Transformers in real time, taking a handful of photographs of each issue and posting them up on the original release dates. When it all ended in January 2024 I realised that if I gave blog readers links to the posts, Instagram doesn’t let users navigate between them when accessed from an external link like that. Damn.

No one was going to scroll back over seven years of social media posts just to check them out, and the more time passed the more out of reach that mammoth project would become.

Well, to mark the comic’s 40th anniversary I’ve come up with a solution.

TRANSFORMERS G1

I’ve gone back over all 375 Instagram posts I made during that read through and added two hashtags to each and every one so that you can locate any issue you want, in any order. You can check out your favourites or go right back to the beginning and see the whole lot in order. It’s taken me over a month to do this and they’re now ready for you to check out any time you wish.

When I began the read through the blog didn’t have its own social media accounts so it started on my personal one. I also only owned a handful of issues from the first year of fortnightly comics. However, by Transformers’ 35th anniversary I’d been able to buy all of that first year and finally covered all those issues. Confused? You don’t need to be, just use the hashtags below and you’ll get them all in their proper reading order from issue 1 to issue 332.

The early posts on my own account have a few photos and a write up with some basic details. As the series progressed on to the OiNK Blog’s account however (issue 71 onwards), I was taking more photos and writing more and more information in the captions, including full art credits.

HOW IT WORKS

Every single post contains the hashtag #OiNKTransformers and Instagram will throw them up in random order when you search it. However, I’ve also included an individual identifying hashtag to each and every post, eg. #OiNKTransformers192. Listed below are the groups of hashtags you can use, beginning with the regular issues and then all of the special editions released during the run.

If you’d like to read the entire collection in the correct order, with each of the special editions and personal posts slotted into the correct reading order amongst the regular comics, further below you’ll see the full ‘Reading Order’ to follow.

(Please note all hashtags work with all lower or upper case too, they’re presented here as they are for ease of reading.)

REGULAR iSSUES (332)
#OiNKTransformers1
to #OiNKTransformers332
Issue 192 has two additional posts:
#OiNKTransformers192a
and #OiNKTransformers192b

ANNUALS (7)
#OiNKTransformersAnn1
to #OiNKTransformersAnn7
The fifth annual has an additional post:
#OiNKTransformersAnn5Answers

COLLECTED COMICS (19)
#OiNKTransformersCC1
to #OiNKTransformersCC19
Collection Comics 11 has two additional posts:
#OiNKTransformersCC11a
and #OiNKTransformersCC11b

COMPLETE WORKS HARDBACK BOOKS (2)
#OiNKTransformersCW1
and #OiNKTransformersCW2

TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (2)
#OiNKTransformersMovie1
and #OiNKTransformersMovie2

FREE GIFTS (2 additional posts)
#OiNKTransformers54gift
and #OiNKTransformers200gift

ACTION FORCE CROSSOVER EVENT (4)
#OiNKTransformersAF1
to #OiNKTransformersAF4

INSECTICONS SPECIAL
#OiNKTransformersInsecticons

TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE
#OiNKTransformersUni

MARVEL BOX ANIMATION
#OiNKTransformersBoxes

FINAL COVERS
#OiNKTransformersFinalCovers 

READING ORDER

To read the entire collection in the correct order, alongside each of the following issues you should read the accompanying issue/post:

Alongside #OiNKTransformers22
read #OiNKTransformersCC1

Alongside #OiNKTransformers35
read #OiNKTransformersCC2

Alongside #OiNKTransformers41
read #OiNKTransformersAnn1

Alongside #OiNKTransformers54
read #OiNKTransformers54gift

Alongside #OiNKTransformers56
read #OiNKTransformersCC3

Alongside #OiNKTransformers62
read #OiNKTransformersCW1

Alongside #OiNKTransformers66
read #OiNKTransformersCC4

Alongside #OiNKTransformers90
read #OiNKTransformersMovie1

Alongside #OiNKTransformers93
read #OiNKTransformersAnn2

Alongside #OiNKTransformersAnn2
read #OiNKTransformersInsecticons

Alongside #OiNKTransformers94
read #OiNKTransformersMovie2

Alongside #OiNKTransformers108
read #OiNKTransformersCC5

Alongside #OiNKTransformers108
read #OiNKTransformersCW2

Alongside #OiNKTransformers116
read #OiNKTransformersCC6

Alongside #OiNKTransformers126
read #OiNKTransformersAF1

Alongside #OiNKTransformers127
read #OiNKTransformersAF2

Alongside #OiNKTransformers128
read #OiNKTransformersAF3

Alongside #OiNKTransformers129
read #OiNKTransformersAF4

Alongside #OiNKTransformers136
read #OiNKTransformersCC7

Alongside #OiNKTransformers145
read #OiNKTransformersAnn3

Alongside #OiNKTransformers160
read #OiNKTransformersCC8

Alongside #OiNKTransformers169
read #OiNKTransformersCC9

Alongside #OiNKTransformers176
read #OiNKTransformersCC10

Alongside #OiNKTransformers189
read #OiNKTransformersCC11

After #OiNKTransformers192 read:
#OiNKTransformersCC11a/192a (same post),
#OiNKTransformersCC11b
and #OiNKTransformers192b 

Alongside #OiNKTransformers198
read #OiNKTransformersUni

Also alongside #OiNKTransformers198
read #OiNKTransformersAnn4

Alongside #OiNKTransformers200
read #OiNKTransformers200gift

Alongside #OiNKTransformers220
read #OiNKTransformersCC12

Alongside #OiNKTransformers227
read #OiNKTransformersCC13

Alongside #OiNKTransformers241
read #OiNKTransformersCC14

Alongside #OiNKTransformers250
read #OiNKTransformersAnn5

Alongside #OiNKTransformersAnn5
read #OiNKTransformersAnn5Answers

Alongside #OiNKTransformers256
read #OiNKTransformersCC15

Alongside #OiNKTransformers271
read #OiNKTransformersCC16

Alongside #OiNKTransformers279
read #OiNKTransformersCC17

Alongside #OiNKTransformers285
read #OiNKTransformersBoxes

Alongside #OiNKTransformers302
read #OiNKTransformersAnn6

Alongside #OiNKTransformers313
read #OiNKTransformersCC18

Alongside #OiNKTransformers327
read #OiNKTransformersCC19

Alongside #OiNKTransformers331
read #OiNKTransformersAnn7

Alongside #OiNKTransformers332
read #OiNKTransformersFinalCovers

I hope you enjoy reliving (or even discovering for the first time) this incredible Transformers series from Marvel UK. Currently elsewhere on the blog the US Transformers Generation 2 series is enjoying its own real time read through and from this Christmas there’ll be a new yearly series of posts about this original G1 series. There’ll be much more from the Robots in Disguise over the years to come, so keep it tuned to the OiNK Blog.

EXTRA POST

After reading the entire G1 series in real time I gathered
my thoughts and looked to the future in this post

MAiN TRANSFORMERS MENU

Alien³, Comic Reviews

ALiEN³ MOViE SPECiAL #3: DOWN THERE… iN THE BASEMENT/ATTiC

Leave a comment

On this day back in 1992 Art Suydam‘s cover welcomed us to the final issue of Dark Horse International’s special Alien³ Movie Special mini-series. It’s another 48-pager but unfortunately there are a lot less of the fantastic features that made the first two editions so enjoyable. This is because the movie adaptation comic strip is a bumper final chapter, taking up 33 pages. Even with such an increase in page count it still rushes through and isn’t any better than previous instalments.

Steve Grant’s script (lettered by Clem Robins) continues to be a word-for-word reprint of the movie script, the only time it deviates is when it cuts down key dialogue, even giving some to different characters which makes what happens on the page even more confusing than it already was. I won’t go over all of the reasons why I’m not a fan of this strip again, I’m sure I bored you enough with that last time, but what I do love are penciller Christopher Taylor’s, inker Rick Magyar’s and colourist Matt Webb’s take on the alien itself.

This scene above is part of the moment when Ellen Ripley makes her way into the metaphorical basement of the complex (for some reason referred to here as the “attic” instead) to confront the alien and try to get it to kill her. The xenomorph in this movie was somewhat different to what we’d seen previously as we learned that they change depending on what organism they gestate inside, and I think the art team do a great job of bringing that difference to life on the page.

At some points the xenomorph even seems to be taking some delightful glee in the amount of killing it’s doing. That same amount of delight does not extend to the reader or the human characters, who once again are impossible to differentiate between. Even the settings are confusing, such as this depiction of the lead works below. In my head it doesn’t make sense when thinking about the architecture of the film or what it’ll be used for.

The most thrilling part of the film was always the chase sequence, when the inmates would act as bait to lure the alien down certain corridors before closing off doors, forcing it towards the lead works where they planned to trap it. The use of the alien’s point of view as it sprinted along floors, walls and ceilings at equal speed was incredible to watch the first time and it’s not something that could easily be adapted to a comic strip.

However, while this is one of my favourite sequences from the movie I’d have preferred it if the comic had just taken the essence of the chase and built something new, rewriting the script to tell this important part of the story in a way that made sense on the page. Unfortunately, what we end up with is a load of identical people running around in blind panic.

It’s not even explained well by Dillon and Ripley and in the end what everyone is doing makes no sense at all and it’s pure luck the alien ends up where it should. It’s really, really confusing. I can’t tell what’s going on and that’s coming from someone who has seen the film countless times over the years. In the end we all know how it ends, although there’s another change. Sticking with the theatrical version of seeing the alien Queen bursting from Ripley’s chest as she falls towards the molten lead, there’s an additional neck break thrown in too as Ellen somehow still has the ability to twist the creature and kill it, even though both are about to die anyway.

The art team’s depiction of the alien shows that Christopher, Rick and Matt deserved to have a chance to draw a regular Aliens strip together

I’ve covered a few comics adaptations on the blog by now and only the original Jurassic Park one showed a good deal of promise, but even it dropped the ball with its rushed final chapter. Now, having read the adaptations for it, its sequel and Transformers: The Movie (and remembering others from childhood), this one is sadly the worst yet and has done nothing to win me over to the genre. Comics can be adapted to celluloid but going in the other direction just doesn’t work.

This hasn’t been without its good moments though and the art team’s depiction of the alien shows that Christopher, Rick and Matt deserved to have a chance to draw a regular Aliens strip together. I can only imagine how enjoyable the Aliens Vs Predator II mini-strip could’ve been in their hands. As it stands, it remains a curiosity, written by Randy Stradley with art by Chris Warner.

What’s more curious is how they’ve messed up the order of the chapters, which I noticed upon seeing the ‘To Be Continued’ caption. I wondered if it was skipping Aliens #4, which hadn’t been released yet. I went back and checked Alien³ #2 and it’s caption said the next chapter was to be in Aliens #4, and in it (which I quickly checked) it was to continue back into this issue. So it seems editor Dick Hansom forgot Alien³ was being released every three weeks instead of monthly (or perhaps it was originally intended to be monthly) so this chapter and the one to come next week in Aliens #4 are in the wrong order.

I was wondering why all-of-a-sudden we’ve got named Predators. I thought perhaps they’d been named in the previous story (since this is a sequel) but it might just be because we’ve skipped forward a chapter. I’ll find out next week. In the meantime, it seems it’s shameful to be saved by another Predator in battle and the story is from the perspective of a female Predator. Can you imagine the backlash from horrible, sad little corners of the internet if this was released today?

Thanks to the extended main strip the only behind-the-scenes access we get in this final issue is a three-page feature showing off some of the storyboards used in the pre-production stage of Alien³. Comics artist Martin Asbury worked alongside David Fincher on creating these, which would be shared with all of the creative departments. Martin’s comics work has included Captain Scarlett (Countdown), The Six Million Dollar Man (Look-In) and the tabloid strip, Garth. In films he’s worked on several Bond films since GoldenEye, as well as the likes of Batman Begins and Children of Men. Quite the resumé.

Stan Nicholls‘ feature is more of a general introduction to the art of storyboards and their use in moviemaking, rather than going into any depth on Alien³’s particular sketches. You can see some examples though, of the climax and that aforementioned chase sequence, showing a much better depiction of the scenes in question than the finished comic strip.

To finish off with there was also a competition to win some Alien³ merch and this October comics checklist for Dark Horse International.

The Terminator was quite expensive for a fortnightly comic in 1992, however it seems to be as chock-full of strips and features (and a free cardboard cutout figure, no less) as Aliens. Not sure why it’s fortnightly, but seeing as how this is the first time it’s appeared in these checklists and is already at #14 I’m guessing it’s another comic Dark Horse took over publication of (since the American strips were theirs in the first place). A quick internet search and it turns out it was originally published by Trident too, although The Terminator wasn’t given a fresh new volume to enjoy like Aliens was, for some reason.

It could possibly be another one for the blog at some point in the future, who knows. But for now this issue ends with a double advert on the back page for the brand new Star Wars (which I spoke about in the review for Aliens #3) and #13 of The Terminator. The caption makes the latter sound like a brand new comic despite the issue number.

With that we come to the very end of this three issue run of the Alien³ Movie Special. I was able to pick them all up on eBay for a few quid in total and for that money I’d recommend them for fans of the movie. Not for the adaptation necessarily, rather for the contemporary features and incredible access the comic had to information on the making of the film. For those pages it’s worth the price of admission.

From now on though it’s pure Aliens action every month with the ongoing regular comic, the next issue of which (#4) will be reviewed right here on the OiNK Blog on Tuesday 24th September 2024. I’m sure future issues of it will continue to cover Alien³ in its features now and again so watch out for them as we go along. This is Philip Boyce, writer of the OiNK Blog, signing off.

ALiEN³ iSSUE 2 < > ALiENS iSSUE 4

ALiENS MENU

Obituaries

REMEMBERiNG MARK RODGERS

3 Comments

If there’s one name synonymous with the 80s humour comics a lot of readers of this blog grew up with, like OiNK, Buster, Whoopee etc., it’s Mark Rodgers, whose birthday it would’ve been today. To say Mark was a prolific comics writer is probably the largest understatement I could make. Working across a multitude of titles for the likes of IPC/Fleetway, he’d often write up to a dozen scripts a week.

These were for comics he’d eventually feel were a little outdated in their humour, but that’s not to say he didn’t love reading them. OiNK may have taken shots at Beano and The Dandy, but Mark was known to love both comics, even making sure there were copies of their annuals in the bathroom of his house for visitors to read while on the loo.

During a visit to a local Manchester library one day he spotted Patrick Gallagher writing scripts for the same comics Mark did and they immediately hit it off. Patrick had already met Tony Husband and together the three of them went on to create a new kind of children’s comic, an alternative to the old-fashioned jokes and traditional weeklies kids were becoming tired of in favour of television and computer games. Obviously, this was the beginning of OiNK.

When I began reading OiNK as a young child, thanks to there being no credits in comics at the time, I’d always assumed the cartoonist had written everything they’d drawn. While this was the case with some of OiNK’s contributors, there was one person who wrote so much of the comic for loads of different art styles. The volume of Mark’s work was phenomenal.

When you look through any issue you’ll see his name (or “MR”) on the majority of pages. My favourite creations of his were of course The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile, brought to the page in all of its jaggedy-art glory by a young Ian Jackson, and Mark’s riff on Saturday morning cliffhanger television serials, The Street-Hogs, illustrated by J.T. Dogg. Highly original and unlike anything you’d have read elsewhere, Mark’s imagination was let loose, finally able to express his sense of humour without the restrictions he’d faced in other comics.

Where else could we be squeamish over Hadrian’s disgusting hobbies or laughing at the torture he put his long-suffering parents through one minute, then enjoying a heartwarming moment at the birth of his baby sister the next? Almost all of Uncle Pigg’s and Mary Lighthouse’s hilarious confrontations were written by Mark and any issues that contained a full-length strip of theirs have been favourites of mine (for both young me and young-at-heart me).

Mark wasn’t shy at starring on the pages of the comic either, sometimes alongside his fellow editors Patrick and Tony, sometimes with his partner Helen Jones. Whether it was as the captain of the Enterpies in Star Truck or as a terrifying alien invader alongside Ian while learning a lesson in love from their spaceship (really Mark and Helen’s boiler in their basement). 

OiNK writer Graham Exton was a close friend of Mark and Helen’s and after he moved away to lived in the Bahamas the couple decided to visit, and while there they photographed a few pieces for OiNK. One was Castaway, a hilarious one-off written by Graham with the two of them in mind. That washed up body/dinner for Helen? That would be Mark. Mark wasn’t above writing in some funny little cameos for his other half too!

Mark’s productivity, his dedication to making kids laugh and his commitment to the comics medium can all be summed up in one bittersweet joke he wrote for a back page spread in the Time Travel edition of OiNK, drawn by Ed McHenry. You’ll notice that long before modern day A.I., Mark had predicted Uncle Pigg would be using a ‘Script Computer’ in the future to produce his comic. But upon closer inspection you can see who was still writing those scripts, long after he  would have left us.

The bittersweet nature of this gag comes from the fact that we did indeed lose Mark to cancer in the 1990s. I know it’ll sound like a cliché to say it, but there really has been no one like him in children’s comics since. OiNK never spoke down to us, it’s three editors understood this and together they were an unbreakable team whose work brought so much joy and laughter to so many people before, during and after its run.

Apart from a few early strips Mark never drew for the comic and, until I started to notice the signatures and little initials beside so many of my favourites as a child, I’d no idea that Mark was so instrumental in moulding my young, developing sense of humour. Several years back, when I mentioned online how I’d lost my OiNK mug decades ago, Helen very kindly sent me a special Christmas present. I can’t begin to describe how happy I was when I unwrapped it and found out it had been Mark’s! I’ll always treasure this.

There are simply too many highlights of Mark’s for one post. In fact, there are literally too many highlights of Mark’s for this entire website! Believe me, I’ve tried. The man was a creative giant in the UK comics industry and when I spoke with Tony a couple of years ago he had possibly the nicest thing to say about his departed friend.

Tony often likened working on OiNK to being in a punk band and that kind of anarchic, rebellious sense of humour was at the forefront of everything they did. “Mark was the glue,” Tony said. “He was the drummer.”

Patrick, Mark & Tony
Royal Television Awards for Round the Bend

OiNK OBiTUARiES

MAiN OiNK MENU

Comic Reviews, The Sleeze Brothers

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS #3: SiGNED, SEALED, DELiVERED

3 Comments

Before you ask, no I did not get this third edition of The Sleeze Brothers signed by co-creator and artist Andy Lanning. Clearly someone did back in 1990 but the only reason I got my hands on it was through a lucky find on eBay. So lucky in fact that the owner clearly didn’t know the cover had been signed, there was no mention of it in the description and I was able to get it for a pound or two. Bargain, and a unique addition to the collection.

Inside, you could say it was a brave or a risky decision in only a six-issue mini-series to have a story which hardly features our two lead characters at all. Personally, I don’t think it was brave or risky, it was done for one reason and one reason only: because it’s bloody funny. Over the first 17 pages of comic strip El’ Ape and Deadbeat only appear in a small panel at the bottom of four pages! But it works.

A vast array of brilliantly-named characters take the reigns of the story instead, from President Sinartra (son of an embryo farmer who has caterpillar tracks for legs and feet after an accident) and his mistress Marilyn Blondclone, to Man Hugh of the Human Liberation Front (he prefers his name to be reversed, to Hugh Man) and the local mafia head The Cosmos Father and his faithful fixer Caneloni. Then there’s the six-eyed Hairdryer, leader of the Galactic Investigation Bureau and his secret service agents Clint 116, Eastwood 244, Bronson 245, Nimoy 94 and De Niro 124.

The imagination on display here from writer John Carnell and of course penciller Andy is amazing. Stephen Baskerville’s recognisable inks and Steve White’s gorgeous, outlandish colours round off the art in superb fashion as they always do, however this issue’s story, Big Leap, contains more imagery and more written/drawn gags than ever before. Combined with Helen Stone’s letters and all edited by Dan Abnett, Richard Starkings having resigned, although he had commissioned the whole six-issue series. Credited as ‘originating editor’ here by Dan, according to Richard (thanks for leaving the comment!) he left very little to do. This truly showcases everyone’s talents and what Marvel UK was capable of.

Throughout, the Sleezes are sitting in their office waiting for the phone to ring on a quiet day in The Big Apple. Meanwhile, the H.L.F. have sent an alien (The Bugger) capable of rendering itself invisible into The White Wash (future version of The White House) with a little insect capable of recording video in order to catch Sinarta and Blondclone together in a tryst (hence the alien’s funny name). Their plan is to hold him to ransom for their demands.

Things of course do not go to plan and after the recording has been taken the actual bug itself (unaware it’s being used in this way, the recording capabilities are part of its natural evolution) is seen crawling away from his owner, who then ends up falling from the high perch he’d crept to outside the White Wash. Now, when I say it’s a high perch, I’m not kidding.

We’re told at the start of the story this is taking place at 09:00 and over the next few pages we see all the major players out after The Bugger and time creeps on in narrative captions to 09:20, 09:33, and 09:40. We assume The Bugger has met their grizzly end and these characters are rushing out to find the splatted corpse to retrieve the video. But nope, 46 minutes later we see a workman on the side of a building somewhere get a surprise.

This is a running gag throughout most of the story and it genuinely had me in stitches every time. In previous issues we’ve seen how this futuristic city was very much a spoof of Mega-City One from 2000AD’s Judge Dredd strips, and here the sheer size of the megastructures in that comic are taken to extremes. To say the least. So why is everyone clamouring to find the landing spot of this unfortunate clandestine individual?

Well, the H.L.F. want to get the footage they’ve paid for, especially since they’ve already given their (ridiculous) demands to Hairdryer at the G.I.B. The G.I.B. themselves want to protect the country’s leader. The cat-like Greebas, who have sent a ninja to retrieve the tape, have been secretly recording Cosmos Father and as a result now know about it, and the mafia leader himself intends to profit from bribery too. I’m guessing about the Greebas’ intentions because their alien language is never translated apart from the occasional funny word.

This is the moment the Greebas see, when we get an explanation from Caneloni about the bug’s natural recording abilities and why on Earth (or whatever planet they’re from) they have this ability. It’s just more evidence of John’s insane sense of imagination and fun, and we even get to see the end result of the “playback signals”, complete with a minute bucket of popcorn. Brilliant.

There are so many characters and interweaving plots the whole issue is completely chaotic in the best possible way. Despite it jumping from scene to scene and from one group to another incredibly quickly throughout, it’s always very easy to follow and you just go along for the ride, genuinely laughing aloud with every single turn of the page. There are some more subtle adult gags, a career snitch working for all sides who is nothing but professional and the inability of the deadly ninja to be taken seriously.

Some great examples there of the range of comedy in this issue. Soon (at 09:59 as a matter of fact) all of our main protagonists are gathered around the same building awaiting the arrival of The Bugger and their bug. Hugh Man, still living with his mum, is worried she won’t be happy at his failure despite being a sweet old lady, Caneloni fears for his life and in a hilarious nod to the actor, agent De Niro 124 has to convince Hairdryer who he’s talking to.

It’s only after this page that our comic’s namesakes finally take a leading role. Looking out of their window, El’ Ape thinks all of the people looking up at them means their adverts are finally paying off. That is, until their roof crashes in and a strange alien creature, dead from the impact, takes out El’ Ape’s brand new desk. Furious, his temper doesn’t improve when he takes a drink from their water fountain and discovers some form of insect has fallen inside.

Spitting it out and squashing it with his foot he has no idea of the significance of his actions. Not even when their door (and half their wall) is kicked in and the combined forces of the Cosmos Father’s Caneloni, the H.L.F., the G.I.B. and the Greeba all enter, weaponry at the ready. One look at the scene in front of them though and the whole string of plots come to a sudden, funny end.

I particularly like the third panel on this page with De Niro 124 saying with all sincerity that the destruction of the evidence of what the president was actually doing, and thus keeping his ability to lie about his scandalous relationship, will preserve truth and justice! Hugh Man heads home for tea, Caneloni’s time now seems to be short and the ninja Greeba utters one of the few English words they know.

More annoyed at the state of their office in the space of a few minutes than the fact they’ve a dead body and a bunch of crazies on their doorstep, El’ Ape continues to grumble until they check the news and see a reward for The Bugger. In the final panels, El’ Ape’s attitude predictably reverses and he congratulates himself and his brother for all their hard work in finding him!

I definitely would’ve been compelled to buy the next issue of The Sleeze Brothers after this side-achingly funny issue

Only appearing on four full pages and a few panels elsewhere hasn’t blunted the attraction of these two characters. They don’t even need to be the leads in their own comic to be able to steal the story for themselves and in doing so deservedly reclaim their lead status. These two are classic comics characters through-and-through and only three issues in they feel so well established that John and Andy can get away with a Sleeze-lite episode. There aren’t many characters that could get away with that so soon.

The issue ends with a floating Dalek staring down at the reader, weapon pointed and at the ready in an advert that really needed the magazine’s logo at the top. As much as I love the Daleks, this wouldn’t exactly have compelled me to fork out for the latest issue. What I definitely would’ve been compelled to do would be to buy the next issue of The Sleeze Brothers after this side-achingly funny issue. Luckily I already have and it’ll be up for review on Monday 30th September 2024.

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS MENU

Classic Comics in Real Time