Obscure Comic of the Month - The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                             

The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten by Danny McLaughlin and Adam Prescott – Uproar Comics 2013

Based on the Local Legend of John “Half Hanged” MacNaghten

Contains Spoilers for a 250 year old folk tale.

The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten was produced as a special project by Uproar Comics to coincide with Derry's status as the UK City of Culture for 2013. The comic retells a local folk tale of star crossed lovers with a tragic end.

The comic has a charismatic start right from the get go. It's not often I go right into talking about the art, but here the slick presentation by Adam Prescott is really what sells the story from the start. There's a loose, expressive quality to his lines and characters that give this tale a bit of an easygoing flavour, despite the rather grim tone. 

It's the kind of presentation that brings to mind recounting tall tales in the corner of a pub on a wet Thursday evening, which is perfectly appropriate for the telling of a folk legend. Prescott's art swings back and forth between sugar-sweet idealised romance and dirty, sleazy streets, and the grayscale art shifting from light to dark keeps the reader from ever felling dragged along.

But what of the writing though? Well, given it's background it's no surprise we hit the ground running with cliché. A character stands singing Danny Boy as early as page two. Still, the Irish do tend to have a taste for ironic self-deprecation, and it's clear that's the attitude the creators are trying to go for.

The tale itself is one that's been told a million times before. The lowly, unreliable John MacNaghten falls in love with the noble Mary, who's father is set against their relationship. John and Mary try in vain to elope, which leads to tragedy and John facing execution. John survives his hanging but refuses live without his beloved. In the end, everyone is together in death.

 

No doubt every culture has a variant of forbidden love ending in tragedy, The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten hardly holds a monopoly on that, but in a way, that's what makes it great. The comic itself is a true part of folklore. A retelling for the ages. It's been romanticised, it's details tweaked, but as the writers say themselves in the comic's afterword; “We wanted to take a leaf out of “Mac's” book, and be that little bit daring and roguish, and use the history to tell the more romantic tale of the legend.”

The creators don't waste time on the fine details, just use every advantage the graphic medium gives them to put a new spin on the story. It's a sad tale, and also a very violent one, but it's also great fun, and none of the folk spirit is lost in the translation, quite the opposite. I'd never heard the tale of John “Half Hanged” MacNaghten, but through my love of comic books he's now part of another world I'm eager to explore.

The comic's connection to the UK City of Culture almost feels perfunctory. The retelling didn't need an event, or an occasion, and the comic itself stands on it's own. However, it's important to note that folklore isn't just about the people but the place. The comic is as much about Derry, and Ireland, as it is MacNaghten himself. The preservation of his tale communicates the values of it's storytellers, the underdog spirit, the friendship of community and optimistic determinism, as well as what is deserving of scorn, cowardice, defeatism, and most of all arrogant authoritarianism.

Folklore and legends live on for many reasons. Some are great stories, some come from an important time in cultural history. I like to think that The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten is a combination of both, and a great retelling like this is exactly where it belongs.

                                         

Jack Harvey 2016. The Ballard of Half Hanged MacNaghten (c) 2013 Uproar Comics, Danny McLaughlin and Adam Prescott. Images used under Fair Use.

Leaving the EU and Plans for the Future

You probably know by now that Britain is leaving the European Union, and you don't need me to tell you how that's all going down. I'm not here to give my thoughts on it, but inevitably these circumstances will be affecting my plans for the future, so here's a shot update on how that looks to pan out.

- My plan to start anongoing webcomic is being put on hold. I'll still be working on Sea of Spheres here and there, but with the climate currently uncertain I'm not sure I'll be able to dedicate the time or the hosting costs to a three year project.

- The time I would be spending on the webcomic will now likely be going in to working on some single issue, small press comics. This is mainly to get some practice in and get my stuff out there. The first one is going to be about John Paul Jones' attack on Whitehaven Harbour during the American War of Independence and the various interpretations of that story.

- Less than Three will be publishing a follow up to The Reminiscence of Good King Carnack. It should be fun. Since I sent the final manuscript off for the Carnack short this time last year I expect you'll probably see a similar release period.

- I'm going to try to get at least one Modern Realms illustrated novella out some time by the end of the year. My original plan for this was a much larger project of a whole series illustrated by different artists. I think that plan was a little ambitious, so right now I just want to take it one step at a time.

- There are other, further plans in development too on the Stand Up Comedy side of things, but I'm not going to say too much before I have more concrete certainty.

- Other than that, it'd really help if you'd check out my book Tales of the Modern Realms, and my Ebook The Reminiscence of Good King Carnack.

Whatever my thoughts are on the matter, this is where we are now and I have to start making plans to deal with that. In the words of Conan “He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?”

Obscure Comic of the Month - The Pennyfarthing Project

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                                    

The Pennyfarthing Project by Philippe Cottarel and Jean-michel Philibert – Six of One 1997

The Pennyfarthing Project is a special publication of Le rOdeur, the french language Prisoner magazine. It is published for the French and overseas members of Six of One, the official Prisoner Appreciation Society.

Mild Spoilers

We'd already taken a look at the official Prisoner comic, Shattered Visage, last year, and as such it'd be tempting to take this opportunity to compare. The Pennyfarthing Project, however, defies such comparisons. While Shattered Visage was an attempt to expand the scope of The Prisoner, The Pennyfarthing Project is instead a faithful tribute, an attempt to ape the tone and mood of the TV series without trying to do something inherently different.

The Pennyfarthing Project is one of the main reasons I wanted to start Obscure Comic of the Month. It's probably the weirdest part of my collection. A self published, personally bound, French fan-comic of The Prisoner that I picked up at Portmeirion . The fact that it even exists just makes me smile.

As mentioned, The Pennyfarthing Project is simply Cottarel and Philiber's tribute to the TV series, nothing more complex than that. What they set out to do is produce a story that could be seen as a 'lost episode' of the TV series, just unburdened by budget or imagination, and for the most part they succeed.

The Pennyfarthing Project plays closely to a lot of the TV series best episodes. Number 6 is brainwashed and convinced that The Village is a recovery resort for amnesia cases. Number 2 plants the charismatic Number 7 to coax information out of Number 6, who slowly figures out their plot with the suggestion that he and Number 7 have met somewhere before.

All in all, it's a pretty good Prisoner story, with the expected twists and turns. Cottarel and Philibert also make great use of The Pennyfarthing Project's own format, with psychedelic visuals very in keeping with the TV series but in ways the budget would never allow. Spiralling panel layouts reinforce the feeling of distortion and unease. Antagonists morph into hallucinated figures.

Philippe Cottarel's art deserves high praise, really capturing the atmosphere of the village, though it is clear that at times he's copying from stills of the TV show, making the characters feel somewhat stiff. But the black and white is crisp, and the story has a momentum to it that gives a life to the artwork.

On the other hand, some of the translation feels a little clunky and the lettering choice is really weird. Still, the visual storytelling is really creative and the bonus artwork at the back is capital B beautiful. There's lots of visual nods to the classic series, with references to the opening, the finale and an appearance near the end of Leo McKern's Number 2 that really taps into the chemistry they had on screen.

If The Pennyfarthing Project has one main problem though, it's in the character of Number 7. Based in appearance on Sam Fox, she visually sticks out from the rest of the comic in a way that feels jarring. She looks smoother than the other characters visually, far more 1980's in both fashion and beauty standards, but more than anything, she's just too sexy.

The Prisoner always had a sterile, sexless quality to it, not least because it's star Patrick McGoohan, was allegedly uncomfortable playing sexually liberal characters. That always worked in the shows favour though, adding an extra layer of 'wrongness' to the village.

So hot pants wearing, midriff baring Number 7 is a weird anachronism. That's not to say there isn't something interesting you could do with that, especially in a Prisoner comic, but that doesn't seem to be what The Pennyfarthing Project is going for here. It seems more likely that Cottarel and Philiber simply wanted to draw Sam Fox in a bikini.

Which is a shame because sexless McGoohan vs sensual Fox could have been a fascinating concept and an interesting statement, but the writers just try to slot her into a standard Prisoner story without minding the seams. It damages the overall experience too, which would otherwise be a tightly paced, lovingly rendered homage to a classic series.

Philippe Cottarel and Jean-michel Philibert still seem to be cracking out new stuff for the comics scene over of the continent, and they still seem to have a love for The Prisoner too. It's that love that shines through for The Pennyfarthing Project the most, despite it's flaws.

Ultimately The Pennyfarthing Project is a fun ride of the merry-go-round one last time. A reminder of what made The Prisoner great and, more chillingly, why it's still as relevant now as it was when it was first broadcast.

The night is long for he who watches.

                                           

Jack Harvey 2016. The Pennyfarthing Project (c) 1997 Six of One, Philippe Cottarel and Jean-michel Philibert. The Prisoner was created by Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein and produced by ITC Entertainment. Images used under Fair Use.

Announcing The Reminiscence of Good King Carnack AKA BUY MY EBOOK

 If you've been paying attention to my stuff over the last year I'll have talked about Less Than Three picking up one of my stories as an Ebook. Finally the day of release has arrived.

Carnack rules a vast kingdom, with millions of people looking to him for leadership and protection.

But he wasn't born royalty, and never had any interest in taking care of anyone but himself. So what changes a cold and ruthless mercenary into a trusted and caring king?

That story begins with a belt buckle, and the unexpectedly complicated adventure required to obtain it...

I had a lot of fun writing the story, so if you like your fantasy hard-ish and your characters unconventional then I recommend checking it out.

The cover is by the fabulous Meg Daunting .

It's my first real published work, so if you're interested, of you know anyone who would be, I'd really appreciate you spreading the word.

And it'sonly $1.99. You can find all the details for purchasing the Ebook here. 

And while you're there, feel free to take a look at the great work other authors have got going on. You can't go wrong really.

Thanks for reading!

Why The Eighth Doctor Comic Strips are Some of the Best Comics Ever Written

This column has been taking a look at obscure comics for twelve months. For every every sixth month, instead of taking a look at a comic that nobody talks about, this special edition will take a look at a comic I feel not enough people talk about.

                                            

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Comic Strips by Scott Gray and various artists – Doctor Who Magazine 1996 to 2005

Contains Spoilers

It was a strange time to be a Doctor Who fan in the mid nineties. The series had been off the air long enough that people had basically assumed it was never coming back. Few official stories had been released within the decade by the BBC, but the desire from both fans and writers for a return was only getting stronger.

Then everything changed, and at the same time, nothing changed. The 1995 Paul McGann movie proved there was fertile ground for the character to move on to, but it was an abject failure at courting new audiences.

As a young kid who didn't really understand the peaks and troughs of film and TV politics, I was waiting, with bated breath, for the TV series to return. It was bound to happen right? Only a matter of time?

In a post Doctor Who The Movie world there was a great feeling of betrayal. We had something so close and had been denied. And so we sought solace in the only place we could, The Doctor Who Magazine's monthly strip. It was the closest thing we'd get to seeing Paul McGann back on the screen.

It'd be easy to look back on DWM's Eighth Doctor strips with nostalgic fondness when that's practically the only Doctor Who you were getting at the time. And that's true, I lapped up what I could as a kid. With no TV series in sight, to me the DWM strip was Doctor Who.

I slipped in and out of reading it over the years, and I mostly read the colour strips when my brother was buying it regularly. But my interest fluctuated, and I had an egregious, homophobic reaction to the later stories which we'll get in to later.

I was in university by the time Doctor Who was back on the screen. I'd started buying the comic's reprints but I never went back and reappraised the Eighth Doctor stories until 2013, when I decided to finally complete the collection and read them as a single body of work.

It wasn't nostalgia. I enjoyed The Eight Doctor Strips so much more the second time round. They are some of the best Doctor Who stories ever written, maybe even some of the best comics I've ever read.

The whole four volume arc is itself relatively self contained, so I'd be interested to see what a reader with no foreknowledge of the TV show would think of the stories (I think they'd come across quite well.)

But what is it about these strips, written predominantly by Scott Gray, that makes them all time greats? Well, there’s a sense that Gray is really trying to break new ground with these stories. Long before we saw Doctor Who return to TV under Russell T Davis, Grey brought us a breezy, hip, forward thinking Doctor Who that could drop pop culture references at any moment, but still keep one foot rooted in classic Sci-fi, maybe even more so than the TV series, before or since.

In the beginning we're introduced to the Doctor's newest companion, Izzy Sinclare, a tomboyish science-fiction fan who is practically thrilled at the prospect of space-faring adventures. She's a great match for McGann's Doctor, who is at once level headed and serious, but also so full of hope and curiosity. Izzy can irritate him at times, but he just can't help but admire her enthusiasm.

The early stories are rather throwaway in tone, but they build an important foundation for what was to come later. Endgame sees the return of the Celestial Toymaker, and does what comics do best by creating fantastical and wonderful scenes that a TV budget would never get you.

The Daleks return, in Fire and Brimstone, a story that really does it's best to try and make them ultimately terrifying again, albeit in a very 90's Rob Liefield kind of way. The story has cracking action, and the art is a perfect fit for high concept sci-fi. Even so, it's the character driven stuff that really draws the appeal here. 

Alongside Izzy we're also introduced to androgynous super-spy Fey Truscott-Sade, who, though easy to miss at first, Izzy seems to be rather smitten with. It's the story The Final Chapter though, where the strip starts gaining steam. Not the story itself though, which is a fairly by-the-numbers look back at Time Lord mythology, but it's the ending that worth talking about. An ending which would go on to be one of the greatest pieces of trolling in comic book history.

A little context. With no sign of Doctor Who returning to the airwaves many fans had taken it upon themselves to produce their own future Who stories. One such example were the Audio Visual fan dramas, where Nicolas Briggs (who would go on to voice the Daleks in the TV series proper) was becoming quite popular playing a future incarnation. He'd actually appeared a few times as “the Nth Doctor” in some of the earlier comics.

At the end of The Final Chapter, Paul McGanns's Doctor seemingly sacrifices his life, triggering a regeneration and announcing Briggs as the new, official Ninth Doctor.

Readers fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Angry letters were sent in condemning DWM for writing off McGann's Doctor so early, while others said they had no right outside the TV series to make that call.

It was all a ruse of course. The Doctor was revealed to have faked his regeneration in the cracking space western, Wormwood. Teaming up with Time Lord bioweapon Shayde, the gang battle an 19^th Century industrialist and even more deadly bioweapon, The Pariah. The gang succeed, but not without Shayde being mortally wounded, forcing him to merge with Fay and essentially turning her into the Doctor Who equivalent of the Silver Surfer.

Wormwood creates the template that Gray would improve on over the subsequent years. It combined character drama with converging plot-lines and high concept stories with great action and visuals. It was all polished to a mirror shine, and the climax is great.

The next story arc, is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. The Glorious Dead saw the return of Kroton, a Cyberman with a soul reinvented as a sort of Luke Cage character (who he even drops a reference to), he's also joined by Katsura, a samurai robbed of a noble death by The Doctor, and The Master, back as a schemer more vicious than he ever had been before (or since).

The Glorious Dead really embraces it's wide spectrum of comic book influences. Katsura's origin story sees references to classic and contemporary manga, and the main plot involves the two Time Lords battling it out for the throne of the multiverse. There's literal homages to Peanuts, Doctor Strange, X-Force and Dick Tracy. It's a comic aficionado's dream.

Right here, DWM was really leaving it's TV roots behind and embracing it's legacy as a comic first and foremost. With no TV series in sight, Doctor Who was dead, long live Doctor Who.

Soon later the comic would hit full colour for the very first time, and the quality and intensity of the stories would only increase from there. Ophidious would see Izzy swap brains with the amoral fish alien Destrii, only for Destrii to end up getting vaporised, leaving Izzy struggling to cope living in an unfamiliar body. 

The Way of All Flesh would see The Doctor and Izzy, no joke, team up with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera to fight an alien art diva during Dia de los Muertos and it's a real doozey of a story. Then there's Children of the Revolution, voted one of the greatest DWM comics ever, that follows the legacy of a group of moralistic Daleks as they struggle to find a place in a universe that hates and fears them.

Things finally come to ahead in Oblivion as threads going all the way back to Endgame converge. Izzy, mistaken for Destrii, is summoned to her homeworld to take on the mantle of Primatrix. Meanwhile, The Doctor discovers that Destrii, in Izzy's body, isn't dead after all, and seeks to set right what once went wrong.

The story has action, adventure and political rivalries, but it is primarily concerned with Izzy coming to terms with who she is, as an outsider, an orphan and a lesbian.

In Scott Grey's commentary, at the back of Volume 3, he notes “I think we only got one angry letter (from an American reader) about Izzy and Fey's kiss. He cancelled his subscription in protest. I would have been deeply disappointed if we hadn't outraged somebody, so thank you, Mr Republican, wherever you are!” I think about that reader a lot, and the person I might have grown up to be.

For the young homophobic man that I was, the finale made me angry and confused. Going back in 2013, the story nearly moved me to tears. I didn't know it at the time, but Oblivion had played an important role in making me the person I am today.

The story ends with a big damn kiss with Fey, and a return to the day that Izzy first left in the Tardis. It's a neat and tidy ending, and would be the perfect place to finish, but Doctor Who wouldn't return to television for another three years, and there were still more stories to be told. It would have been easy, after Oblivion, for the strip to slip into a funk. It didn't, instead what they gave us was more of a victory lap.

The next run of stories are self contained but are some of the best homages in the entire run. The Nightmare Game is a cheeky, Roy of the Rovers inspired football adventure, The Curious Tail of Spring-heeled Jack is pretty self explanatory, and The Land of Happy Endings is told in the style of the old TV Comic Doctor Who stories from back in the 60's and re-contextualises them as The Doctor fantasising about a simpler, more childish world. 

We return to the long form epic arcs eventually with Bad Blood. Sitting Bull vs General Custer, the return of Destrii and Space Windigo. Jeeze oh man, is this story ever fucking awesome. Doctor Who, even now, has never had the budget to tackle western revisionism. But with comics? No problem. The TV stories have dealt with metaphorical stories of colonialism before, but here, it's front and centre.

As the kind of story Doctor Who was created to tell, it's probably be my favourite story of the whole bunch, even compared to The Glorious Dead.

Destrii joins the crew of the Tardis, finally, and so we reach the strip's grand finale, The Flood. The Flood isn't a particular complicated concept, reinvent a Cyberman story more suited for the modern age. It's interesting to compare The Flood with the TV's modern reinvention of the Cybermen, because they're like night and day in approach. 

When the TV series brought them back, the Cybermen were envisioned as hulking, boot stomping war machines. In The Flood the Cybermen look more fluid, more fragile. They don't stride towards their victims with menace, instead they glide and float. These Cybermen are eerie, truly alien.

The Flood finishes on another homage, one to Doctor Who itself. The last televised story before it's proper revival, Survival, ended with The Doctor and his companion Ace walking off into the distance, reminiscing of adventures gone by, and speculating on the ones to come.

The Flood's ending hits all those same beats. With Doctor Who returning to television this really was the Eighth Doctor's swan song and it decides to end in the same humble way the show did, reminiscing on the past, and looking forwards to the future.

I've never really felt the same way about a Doctor Who comic since the end of the Eighth Doctor's era. While there has been some exceptionally good work done by IDW and Titan and DWM itself, it's not quite got the same feeling now that the show is back on TV. The comics can't be quite as daring, or as experimental, as DWM was during it's wilderness years.

The Eighth Doctor Comics strips are some of my favourite comics. They're probably my favourite Doctor Who related stories period, and this is coming from a guy who's been a fan of the show since I was seven years old. They're ambitious and progressive, grand in scope yet warm and human. Paul McGann, despite only ever really having one proper TV appearance, is my Doctor, and that's in no small part due to what these comics mean to me.

Any Doctor Who fan, old and new, owes it to themselves to read the entire run, and even if you don't give a shit about Doctor Who the craft on display here is so finely tuned that there's a lot to love for a fan of comics in general. The Eighth Doctor strips show what Doctor Who as a concept is capable of when it's unburdened by budget and franchise limitations.

I grew up watching Doctor Who, but I never really loved Doctor Who until 1995. I'm still a fan, but I've never really loved it the way I did when Scott Gray was writing for DWM. You can probably figure out why.

                                              

Jack Harvey 2016. Doctor Who (c) BBC, published by Panini Comics for Doctor Who Magazine. Images used under free use.

Tales of the Modern Realms FAQ AKA BUY MY BOOK!

Hey people, I now have a book for sale! It's Tales of the Modern Realms, an illustrated anthology of six stories set in a pulp-inspired world of mystery and adventure.

The stories were originally published here on my blog and have since been remastered and expanded. There's also bonus material included on the history and background of the world itself.

If you're curious, want to support my work or just want something a little different to try, you can buy a copy here.

Amazon

Amazon UK

Createspace (Note: I'd prefer it if you ordered from here, but It's entirely up to you what method you choose)

If you want to know more, read the FAQ below.

What's the hook?

The Modern Realms are a fantasy world of dragons, wizards and elves. However, unlike most fantasy stories, it doesn’t take place in a psudo-medieval time period. Instead it takes place in a 40's – 60's inspired cold war landscape, with jet planes, microfilm and silenced pistols.

Here's the blurb:

Once the realms were home to great kings and noble knights, evil wizards and beautiful princesses. But those days are long gone. Lost in a war of bullets and smoke. Now the realms are home to billionaire playboys and femme fatales, cool spies and private eyes.

From the towering forests of Wendiga to the rainy skies of Hightower, from the cold mountains of Romahold to the neon lit streets of Gulf City, deals are made, money changes hands and nobody can be trusted.

This omnibus contains seven illustrated stories of mystery and suspense, as well as a detailed guide to the world of the Modern Realms.

Wait, all of this can be read for free?

Yes and no. All of the short stories were originally published on my blog, and can still be read here (and I encourage you to do so.) However, the versions contained in this book are extended and remastered.

Most of the stories have additional and altered scenes, some of which change the course of events a little. Likewise, I've also remastered and redone some of the artwork. The versions included are what I consider the definitive story.

Also it includes extra content on the background of the Modern Realms setting, details on the history, races and nations that you won't find anywhere else.

Is there an ebook version available?

Coming soon I hope. You'll know as soon as I have a concrete idea on that.

Is this the novel you've spoken about in the past?

No, there's still plenty of work that I've done that I want to publish through traditional means. Also there's a bunch of other Modern Realms stories that I haven't yet published, and would like to do as a collaborative job with other artists.

Is this related to that short story you were talking about getting published?

No, the story from Less Than Three Press is unconnected in both story and setting. That's its own thing.

It's not connected to the upcoming webcomic either.

Where can I buy it?

I already put the links above, but just because you asked, here it is again:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Createspace

Obscure Comic of the Month - The Gatecrashers: A Night of Gatecrashing

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                                  

The Gatecrashers: A Night of Gatecrashing by Zachary Mortensen and Sutu – Ghost Robot 2014

When a bomb explodes in the center of a densely packed protest rally, Gatecrasher Hex Spencer is the first on the scene and what begins as a routine call shifts into a life-threatening chase through choked streets of Palomar City. Hex's only concern is saving her patient and collecting her fee but with each turn she is drawn further into a complex web of power that will destroy anything – or anyone – that gets in their way.

Welcome to Palomar City, a tightly packed, overpopulated American mega-city. Over the last sixty years, a series of traffic control devices known as Gates have transformed this thriving metropolis into a pressure cooker of political and socio-ethnic tension that is on the verge of exploding. One of the only groups with unrestricted passage through the gates are the emergency medical teams, nicknamed “The Gatecrashers,” who find themselves in the middle of a building conflict that threatens to tear Palomar City apart once and for all.

Spoiler Free

I picked up Book One of The Gatecrashers while I was at New York Comic Con in 2014. I was on the lookout for independent comics that seemed interesting. I had walked past Zachary Mortensen plugging his work a couple of times over the weekend, and his comic kept catching my eye. I'm glad I checked it out, because The Gatecrashers has a lot going for it in it's own unique way.

It's not uncommon to see fiction celebrate the actions of law enforcers and soldiers but we don't often see many of the real everyday heroes get the focus in our space operas or dystopian cyberpunk worlds quite as much. The Gatecrashers is different because it focuses on characters who are basically Ambulance Drivers. Hex Spencer isn't a gun slinging maverick in a dirty world, she's just an employee trying to do a respectable job in the face of bureaucracy and bullshit.

The Gatecrashers feels very timely. While it doesn't target any specific political issues it does focus on a lot of areas that affect the working class in the current western world. Healthcare, civic unrest, questions of police jurisdiction and corporate corruption are all touched upon in the world of The Gatecrashers.

In a week where the UK saw a Junior Doctors strike, reading The Gatecrashers feels that little bit more personal.

Sutu's artwork really brings the world of Palomar city to life too. The use of colour really helps to set the scene of a dirty and run down city, with warm oranges and neon blues used to particular effect. His style takes a little getting used to and has a certain warped quality to it, but it really suits the setting of a corrupt and tired world. It reminded me a lot of Peter Chung's work on Aeon Flux.

The book's plot gets going thick and fast, essentially serving as a day in the life of a Gatecrasher, with reporter Archie McAlester serving as the audience surrogate. It's a great framing device, and sets up the conflict to be genuinely intriguing. The characters are all warm and relatable, if being a little one-note this early in the plot. Hex is an engaging protagonist and is given enough time to suggest there may be a few different sides to her personality.

Where the comic does stumble is in its sense of world building. There's a lot going on in the first volume of The Gatecrashers and what back-story we're given is told in passing just a little bit too casually. There's a big conspiracy surrounding one district in the city being annexed by another but a lot of the fine details are easy to miss, and you might find yourself struggling to understand character motivations when the action gets going.

Not helping is a lot of world building being left to bonus portions at the back of the book. It's obvious that Zachary Mortensen has taken a lot of time and put a great deal of thought into the fictional world of Palomar City, but far too much time is spent telling it in the margins, rather than showing it during the story. 

The whole thing could have done with just a little bit more time spent introducing us to the fictional world. Just a short sequence or a page or two would have done.

It's also worth mentioning that The Gatecrashers release schedule has been slow going, only issue five has been released since Book One in 2014, but issue six is due to be out this month. Here's hoping the series continues from it's strong opening.

Beyond that though, A Night of Gatecrashing is otherwise a great introduction to the series. It's hook is different, it's art is striking and the story ends with a lot of interesting places to go. If you like your cyberpunk, but would like to see the genre from a different perspective, then I highly recommend you check the series out.

                                        

Jack Harvey 2016. The Gatecrashers (c) 2014 Zachary Mortensen and Sutu. Images used under Fair Use.