Wednesday 27 May 2009

Thrill power overdose one: Canon fodder

Mark Millar born in Coatbridge, Scotland…..

His best known works include: The Authority, Wanted, and Civil War. But everyone had to start somewhere and he started in 2000ad (okay he did a few independent projects before that but this is a 2000ad based column and I focus on that thank you very much.)

He like many writers started out on what are pretty much the tryouts for writing in 2000ad called thargs future shocks. In my opinion the best of his was "Nightmare On Ses*me Street " after this he created silo a short horror series which managed to rip off two different films and yet was still pretty good. He then relented robot hunter but that never really happened in my revised history of 2000ad so we shall skip that.

In 1993, Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith created a controversial eight-week run on 2000 AD called The Summer Offensive. It was during this run that Millar and Morrison wrote their first major story together, the highly controversial strip Big Dave. This story is wrong on so many levels and deserves a column on it alone.

Now we skip to the end of 1993 as we look in on today’s subject. He is the only surviving member of the priest patrol. He is canon fodder!



Our story begins at the end of the story with a scary looking bloke in fetish gear soundly thrashing our hero. We do not know much of what has happened aside from the canons rather cryptic words



After this flash-forward we go back to the beginning as Dr Watson (yes that one) is called in by the police to investigate a gay suicide pact the victims….



Yeah this story is gonna piss off a lot of fans of Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. Which leads into plot hole one. Holmes, Moriarty, Watson, lestrade and Mycroft are all fictional characters how the hell can they be around? This is not meant to be a League of extraordinary gentlemenesque story this is supposed to be set in the future…..

Back to the story and we meet the good canon for the first time and he is just doing his thing…..



The canon getting away from the scene is harassed by the paparazzo and just brushes them aside. He then gets a call from Watson



Part 2 begins with an explanation of what happened. In the glorious far off space year of 2004. Judgement day happened, all the worlds dead risen hoping to be taken to their final reward but it was not to be for god never showed up. Pissed off at this Holmes and Moriarty committed suicide to go to heaven and kill god. This is of course plot hole 2 as no one can truly die in this story and they would certainly not go to heaven if they tanned in their wrists.

Watson is invited back to priest patrol hq and meets the canon and his housekeeper Sadie. It is revealed in a caption that there were once four priests who shocked and horrified at the dead sticking around after the rapture decided to form their own task force. The canon is the only one left the others disappearing after a battle with the anabolic atheists. We find out the whole story of this battle in the sequel.

Another thing explored a bit more in the sequel is the unspoken love between the canon and his housekeeper. Enjoy it folks this is all the character development the good canon gets in this entire story!



The canon decides to go recruit someone who claims to be Mycroft. Err anyone who has read a book can tell you that Mycroft is not a skinny Hannibal lector wannabe!



Part 3 begins with more pipes being laid by Watson who appears to be in purgatory now writing down the events of this story. He explains a bit more about the state of the world after judgement day and how it pissed off Holmes and Moriarty….

The scene changes to Holmes shooting an angel just for laughs and the two explaining their plan. Holmes is badly written in this entire story you got to wonder what he and the other Conan Doyle characters are doing in this story. This isn’t supposed to be some kind of League of extraordinary gentlemen type story. Which makes the appearance of the Conan Doyle characters even more odder….

Meanwhile the canon busts into some kind of weird festistic club. Inside the cellar is a place where Mycroft did research into opening a gate to hell. They walk through the door and end up in hell which is strangely empty….

Part four reveals the reason for that…..

Holmes and Moriarty reach heaven only to find the pearly gates have been broken into and the place itself in a right state of decay. Angels are being tortured by inhuman creatures and it is quite clear that the men who came to kill god are a little bit late to the party.

And who killed god?



Yep its that scary looking bloke in fetish gear from the beginning of the story and he reveals himself as Lucifer himself. And what did he do to the lord?



Phallic imagery overload!

Meanwhile in the abandoned hell the canon finds Judas Iscariot and gets the low-down on what happened.



After this bombshell the canon and his two cannon fodder friends make it to heaven and witness what Lucifer and his chums have done to Holmes and Mycroft



They are then attacked Watson is dragged under by demons, Mycroft is eaten alive by rats and the canon himself loses an arm to the demons.



The next part is one long fight as we go back to the beginning of the story and witness the canon getting his arse kicked by Lucifer.



Just as Lucifer was ready to pluck the canons eyes out a blast of light fries all of Lucifer’s demon army and suddenly Deity ex machina happens as god is revealed to be harder to kill than chuck Norris….




God is rightly pissed off at the cheek of what Lucifer did and he kills the first of the fallen once and for all.



He turns his anger on the canon and threatens to wipe out humanity as a failed experiment but some quick thinking on the part of the canon saves the day!



The epilogue reveals that Watson was brought back alongside some of the greatest minds both alive and dead to work on the riddle asked by the canon. Watson’s job was to catalogue every single soul who has walked on the earth and what we read was one of his journals.

As for the canon…..



Next time dark matters as the canon faces off against evil creatures while a new writer writing the series upsets mark Millar!

Friday 13 March 2009

Monday 2 March 2009

Well bugger me!!!


The uk reprints are going to do final crisis after all!

going by that list I am guessing that alongside the seven issues we'll get submit beyond and the already announced jla prologue as well

Sunday 1 February 2009

The bell tolls for whom?!? in which David hammers in the nails of titans dc reprint coffin

I believe that the UK reprints of Both batman and superman are coming to an untimely end soon....

Its kind of tragic to think that way but Titan have had it coming to them for a good while now. Seriously a freaking monkey could run a reprint better than Titan could. From the bizarre choice of printing up to date stories (in the case of several such as all star goddamn batman, all star superman and the superman confidential kryptonite story a little too up to date)



I mean look at the cover above we are on part three of R.I.P part three!!!!

incidentally its the contents of this issues batman legends which has convinced me that the comic is ending soon. Last issue we were promised part three of R.I.P and parts 1 of both the R.I.P robin tie in and the heart of hush storyline (see too soon) However that particular story never appeared this issue and instead we got both parts of the robin story instead.And next issue has two parts of r.i.p and the jla final crisis tie in for no reason whatsoever (nail)


Superman legends seems to be having a story clear out in their next issue out in February (yes titan went to a bi monthly schedule with their two books more on that nail in a moment) With the end of superman and the legion of superheroes and what I am guessing are the two concluding parts of the third kryptonian (which makes bugger all sense in the context of superman legends as the actual story in which the auctioneer showed up was never reprinted in its pages another nail folks)



As mentioned above titan went to a bi monthly schedule with their two titles slowing things down to a grinding halt. Now call me insane but I do believe that flooding the shops with four reprint titles in secession is not the greatest idea in the world. First was batman, then superman followed then justice league (which I will talk about in a future post ohhh boy did that title have problems of its own) and finally dc comics presents....



Justice league and dc comics presents were cancelled fairly quickly but both batman and superman managed to hang on despite a minor controversy involving Titan stupidly putting goddamn batman (and the general violence)into what they were marketing as a kids comic (I know if a Jli era bwah-ha-ha was needed it would be now right?)

So all we can pray as the nails are finally hammered into titans bloated coffin is that Panini buy back the license and we get a good batman comic like the old days...



Special thanks to the panini forums cover image database for the covers

It is returned

Welcome to dead'll do a comic blog with a difference

what's that difference?

Well its done by an insane scotsman for a start

heh I kid really

I will be focusing on the uk comic scene mostly with the odd plunge into the murky world of the usas big two