John Smith (2) (1967–)

‘Indigo Prime: Anthropocalypse’ collects three stories from the ‘Indigo Prime’ series that originally appeared in Britain’s greatest comic magazine ‘2000AD’. All are scripted by John Smith and the artists are Lee Carter and Edmund Bagwell, who has sadly departed this vale of tears.

First up is ‘Dead Eyes’ with art by Lee Carter which doesn’t seem to fit here. However, since Indigo Prime is ‘an ultradimensional organisation which oversees the integrity of the millions of parallel universes that make up the Multiverse’, there’s a lot of scope. In this one, they don’t show up until the end. Hopefully, as the book has Indigo Prime written all over it, that’s not too much of a spoiler.

‘Dead Eyes’ is about an evil British Establishment conspiracy to obtain the lost secrets of an ancient underground civilisation. A small role is played by MI6 Agent Harry Nightingale, rumoured to be ‘the man who poisoned John Paul I and made the hit on Lady Di’. The main hero is Danny Redman, a soldier who is gassed when serving in Iraq and wakes up in Porton Down Research Laboratory, England’s no longer very secret top-secret biological warfare facility.

Injected with an experimental drug, he has strange visions that lead him to Cumbria and great adventure. Entertaining story and the art was probably excellent but scanned through ten dirty milk bottles as it’s too murky to enjoy. Unless the production staff meant it to look like that, which I consider an error. Why draw beautiful pictures and then make them hard to see?

Danny Redman’s adventures continue in ‘Everything And More’, which is a proper ‘Indigo Prime’ story, though its main purpose seems to be to introduce all the characters. Poor Danny is plunged into different realities to get him used to the idea of the Multiverse but keeps committing suicide because he’s driven crazy. Fixing a new body is easy but the Indigos really want him straightened out as he now exists in a state of quantum flux and could be a useful agent. Getting him sorted out and showcasing the setting seemed to be the main purpose here.

In ‘Anthropocalypse’, Danny has to tame a Bewilderbeast so that its transdimensional transport abilities can be used to rescue Spacesick Steve, an agent stuck in a failing universe. Indigo Prime risk upsetting the Overseers by doing this but saving a comrade takes priority. The Overseers are god-like beings that give artist Edmund Bagwell an opportunity to do some great visuals.

Actually, everything gives artist Edmund Bagwell such an opportunity. Perhaps the whole story is written just for that purpose. I absolutely loved the art! Checking the Internet, I found that Bagwell does a variety of styles but here it’s grand, epic scenes rooted in Kirbyism, except it’s even better than Kirby. The mind-boggling machines, vast beings and glorious pulsating energies are combined with well-drawn human figures and faces.

Kirby used to draw a variety of people but when he went cosmic he settled for one stock stocky figure and one face which was differentiated from others only by hair. Bagwell does the best Kirby of every era, combined with other influences, to make a bright beautiful spectacle. The figures are inked in the style of Chic Stone so they stand out clearly against the complicated backgrounds. It’s all terrific.

The writing was fine but there were too many characters for a first-time reader to get a grip on. One of the flaws with long-running series is that a new audience doesn’t know all the background stuff and can feel a bit lost. In this respect, despite the dark art, the story of ‘Dead Eyes’ worked better because the reader followed Redman. The last two tales lacked that focus on one person. It didn’t really matter and Edmund Bagwell’s art made it all wonderful anyway. Did I mention that I liked it?

Eamonn Murphy… (plus d'informations)

The most notable thing about this collection is that it contains the issue that first established Constantine as bisexual. The issue itself is pretty weird and reminded me a lot of Delano's work.

As for the other stories, some are better than others. The longest, "Royal Blood", was also my least favourite. Which is unfortunate, but that's how it goes sometime.

As for the stories I enjoyed, "The Diary of Danny Drake" and "Guys and Dolls" are probably the stand outs. And they both come towards the end, so the collection ends on a high note.… (plus d'informations)

‘Swimming in Blood’ is a collection of adventures featuring Devlin Waugh, an exorcist and assassin working for the Vatican in the era of Judge Dredd. He is a muscular, sadistic, tea drinking Olympic flower arranging champion who prefers the company of young men. The title story, ‘Swimming in Blood’, was my introduction to Devlin and I wasn’t hugely impressed. It was a routine 2000AD adventure, heavy on gore and violence. As ever with material from that source there was a degree of invention. Aquatraz was the popular name for an undersea prison in the Bahamas to which Waugh is sent when it is taken over by vampires. He beats them but gets turned into a vampire himself and decides to retire. The story by John Smith was okay, not great, and the art was likewise, marred by the appearance of being filmed through a dirty milk bottle. This was apparently the fault of some problems in reproducing Sean Phillips’ original paintings.

Happily, it got better. ‘Brief Encounter’ is entertaining. Devlin goes to Mega-City One and is stopped at customs because his luggage contains tobacco, alcohol and several other illicit items, including blood. Dredd can’t touch Waugh because he has diplomatic immunity but finds a way to get at him even so. This was more promising.

Next is a prologue for ‘Chasing Herod’ in which a paparazzi tells us a bit about Devlin’s history before revealing that ‘something’ is coming to the world and there is no one to save us. Cue Devlin Waugh, coming out of retirement when the skull of the Herod is stolen from the vaults of the Vatican. The skull of the Herod! It was stolen by the Fakir, recruited by Lady Fading Light who then has an auction attended by four-armed oriental fiend Harry Kiri and other evildoers. ‘Chasing Herod’ benefits from a sharper script with more wit and less bloodletting and very neat art from Steve Yeowell with colours by D’Israeli. The former Tory Prime Minister must be a vampire too, as he’s still around and working in the comic book industry. He used to be a writer, you know.

‘Chasing Herod’ is followed by several other episodes but it’s all part of the same apocalyptic story about which it would be unfair to reveal more, except to say that it’s very good. Devlin Waugh is assisted by various other characters and the interesting cast makes for a much livelier narrative. Waugh is a cross between Rambo and Oscar Wilde which is okay for a few laughs but you need more to make a substantial story. You get more here.

The book tails off with ‘A Mouthful of Dust’ in which Waugh helps an old friend try to find a cure for a demonic disease and ‘A Love Like Blood’ which is a text story about a fan obsessed with Devlin. Both are okay but it’s the ‘Herod’ saga that makes the book.

As there are a few collections of Waugh out there it’s worth summarizing the contents so the buyer doesn’t inadvertently duplicate unnecessarily. This one contains ‘Swimming in Blood’, ‘Brief Encounter’ ‘Chasing Herod’ ‘Reign of Frogs’ ‘Sirius Rising’ ‘A Mouthful of Dust’ and the text story ‘A Love Like Blood’. That seems to be all the Waugh stories extant except ‘Red Tide’. Shop carefully to maximise your value.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/… (plus d'informations)