Lisa Cummings and a Case of Bad Cheese

The Lisa Cummings stories are a short series of comedic mysteries. The first of which was The Case of the Exploding Meat (Part One, Part Two,) the second was The Five Minue Murder (Here,). I'm currently working on a full legnth Cummings novel. In the mean time, here's another short.

                                                                                          

Lisa Cummings and a Case of Bad Cheese

By Jack Harvey

“Well,” Andy nodded, as the huddle of officers escorted three guilty men into the back of the luminous police van. It was stationed by the canal lock gate.

“Well what?” Lisa said, flipping through a note book.

“You're acting fucking coy again.” Andy's voice hardened. “You know I don't like it when you do that.”

Lisa put the note book away and smiled.

“I was going to praise you for tracking down the smugglers so quickly, even by your standards. But praise always goes straight to your head.”

Lisa's smile softened for a moment. “Thank you.”

Andy face dropped, suggesting he felt guilty for underestimating Lisa's gratitude. Putting it out of his mind, he quickly turned around.

“Alright boys,” he shouted to the officers near by. “Let's open it up!”

Quickly and efficiently three officers moved to the garage door. One of them held their bolt cutters up to the chained lock and cut the metal through. Then, another quickly made for the door's own, separate lock and held up some sort of device. Lisa assumed it must have been some form of automatic lock pick.

“I thought you said all the fancy kit got sent back to London?” she asked him.

Andy shrugged. “They've got to let us northerners keep something, to prove they haven't forgotten about us. It looks good on the quarterly reports.”

The men raised the shutters and the afternoon light illuminated the garage's interior. Whatever actual motor-vehicle related equipment it once held was now long gone. The building appeared to be packed wall-to-wall with various crates and containers. Stickers and stamps from all over the world were plastered on them.

Lisa and Andy entered the room.

“So,” Lisa said, slapping her hands together. “What do you think we've got ourselves here? Drugs? Guns? Stolen electronics?” Lisa thought for a moment, then gasped. “Sex workers?”

“God I hope not,” Andy wearily answered. “The paperwork would be astronomical.”

“Maybe.” Lisa continued excitedly. “Maybe they'd be so grateful for being liberated from servitude that they'd, you know, give a round for free?”

“What?”

“Sank you dear lady,” Lisa said in some kind of bad attempt at an eastern European accent. “Ohh, how magh I ever repay you? I voud do anysigng.”

“Wow.” Andy was almost lost for words. “Not only did you manage to make that sexist, and racist, but somehow super creepy as well. And you missed a prime opportunity for a 'Cummings' pun.”

Lisa made a face back at him. “Stop trying to make Cummings puns happen Andy. Cummings puns are never going to happen.”

“Never tell me about your fantasises again.”

“What about my script for a porno version of Blade Runner?”

Andy turned and looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Maybe later.”

They approached the closest crate. It was about waist hight, and had been hammered down with nails.

Andy took a crowbar from the officer standing to his left. “Alright then, lets crack one of these babies open.”

Quickly he shoved the crowbar into the side of the lid and pushed down, grunting a little in frustration as he did.

“Why didn't you get one of the big boys to do it?” Lisa asked, mockingly.

Andy refused to grace her with a response and pushed down harder. Soon the lid started to come loose, and he dropped the crowbar, pulling the rest away with his bare hands.

“Watch for splinters,” Lisa said in a mocking, motherly voice.

“Shut up!”

The crate appeared to have been lined with some kind of plastic insulation. There was a strange heat emanating from it's contents.

It was followed by a very distinct smell, curious at first, but soon the putrid odour became overpowering.

“Jesus!” Lisa shouted, putting her hand over her mouth and nose. “What is that smell?”

“Cheesus would be more accurate,” said Andy, lifting the paper lid of one of the boxes. “It's Casu Marzu. This must be a fresh batch, some of these crates look like they're here for refrigeration.”

“What in the fuck?” Lisa was exasperated. “They went to all these lengths for a box of Gorgonzola or something?”

Andy turned to Lisa. There was a look on his face she couldn't quite place. It was like a mix of pity and regret. I were as though he had some bad news to deliver.

“You don't know what this stuff is do you? Why they'd be smuggling it?” He said.

Lisa shrugged nervously.

“I saw my great uncle eat some once when I was in Italy as a kid. It's cheese that goes through a secondary fermentation process.”

“Kay...”

“Using insect larvae.”

Lisa paused for a moment. She swallowed. “Well that's kind of fucked up, but alright.”

“And it's considered bad form to eat the cheese without the larvae.”

Lisa could feel something in her stomach now. Her lunch was having second thoughts about staying where it was. Suddenly evacuating the stomach and going back the way it came was becoming an appealing idea. Lisa had to suppress the thought of her stomach contents sitting there, undecided.

Andy continued. “It's also considered bad form to eat the cheese if the larvae aren’t still alive.”

And there was that old familiar feeling that everybody knows. Lisa's throat swelled and she could feel her lunch fast returning.

She looked at the contents of the crate. It was probably her imagination, but she could swear the cheese was squirming, pulsating.

She put her hand over her mouth and tried to hold fast. She could feel the liquid working it's way upward, outward. She knew that swallowing would be a bad idea, that it would only tighten the throat pushing the stomach contents further along. She did it anyway, struggling to breathe, and with that, all resistance had been lost.

With nowhere else to go, Lisa ran toward the nearest corner and vomited violently onto the floor.

“Fuck,” Andy said, running over, before hovering a couple of steps back, outside the splash radius.

The first was mostly half digested food and liquid, easy going stuff all things considered. But as Lisa began to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief she could feel the second on it's way.

“I'm fine,” she lied. “I'm fine I just need a moment.”

Then she breathed in, and could smell the putrid cheese. More vomit ejected itself from Lisa's mouth. Denser this time, with a hearty dose of stomach acid that started to burn her throat. A great big lump of half digested food struggled up and out of her mouth. It landed on the floor with a plop.

The vomit splashed back from the wall and stained a portion of her white trainers.

Andy looked around helplessly. The other officers shrugged. He was unsure what to do at this point, so thought it best he replace the plastic insulation on the open crate and shut the lid. At the very least it wouldn't hurt.

Lisa was breathing heavily now and didn't bother to clean anything because she knew the third was inevitable. As a contrast to earlier she was feeling a little better, but the gears were in motion, and her stomach hadn't finished releasing it's bounty.

The third time she vomited was shorter than the others. It was out, quickly and painlessly, as Lisa was resigned to decorating the smuggler's garage with phlegm and stomach lining. She gathered the rest of the foul tasting residue with her tongue and spat it out onto the flour.

Lisa leaned against the wall, all signs of the outside world lost to her. Little made sense beyond spittle and vomit and maggot infested cheese.

Andy approached, handing her his own handkerchief. “Here,” he said softly.

As Lisa turned she keeled over the fourth and final time. All that remained was acidy water. Easy to come up, but uncomfortable. The luminous yellow vomit left Lisa's mouth and landed on Andy's clean black shoes.

“Awww, man, no, come on!” he shouted, hopping out of the way.

“Alright,” Lisa said, holding out a hand. “I'm done. I think I'm done.”

Andy called over to one of the officers. “Can I get a towel over here or something?”

****

Lisa and Andy sat by the canal as they watched the biological waste boys remove the crates in their hazard suits.

Andy was chuckling slightly.

“You know that's a story I'm going to have in my back pocket for a while you know?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Lisa said, dismissively.

“I'll be savouring that one for years to come.”

“I'm just glad I'm single at the moment.” Lisa said. “Girls are not fond of sickers.”

“Yeah, well, all things considered I can't blame you.” Andy said, folding his arms. “I was a little sick too when I first saw the stuff. Though I was just a kid back then.”

Lisa shook her head and spat into the handkerchief. “What I want to know is why they were smuggling it in the first place. What's the big deal?”

Andy looked over at her. “It's against European food regulations to serve something that involves a living organism. The stuff has had a disputed status for years. It's still under considerable debate back in Sardinia.”

“Fucking hell!” moaned Lisa, her stomach rolling at the thought again. “Well that might not be much of an issue over here for much longer. Who knows, Casu Marsu might be showing up on cheese boards around England in no time.”

“Yep,” sighed Andy, noticing he'd missed a few spots on his shoes. “That's why I voted remain.”

Obscure Comic of the Month - Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars

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.

                                                           

Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars by Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth – Grand Centeral Publishing 2016

The year is 1872, the place is the Apache nation, a region torn apart by decades of war. Goyahkla, a young brave, has lost his family and everything he loves. After having a vision, he approaches the Apache leader Cochise to lead an attack against the Mexican village of Azripe. It is this wild display of courage that transforms the young brave Goyahkla into the Native American hero Geronimo. But the Apache Wars rage on. As they battle their enemies, lose loved ones, and desperately cling to their land and culture, they utter “Indeh,” or “ the dead.” When it appears that lasting peace has been reached, it seems like the war is over. Or is it?

Contains Mild Spoilers about actual historical events

It a strange world we live in where a comic written by The Actor Ethen Hawke qualifies as obscure, but I'd honestly never heard about the project until I spotted it on sale in a book shop at Newark airport. None of the major comic book news sites that I frequent seem to have followed it, and even mainstream media appear to have given it little more than lip service.

In his afterword, Hawke reveals that the project started life as a film proposal he offered to multiple studios, but none were interested in a story that didn't have a significantly white point of view. Eventually the project was re-worked as a comic with Greg Ruth handling the art, and here we are.

Indeh really is an impressive piece of work. Ruth's artwork is just so evocative that you really get a feel for the place and a sense of who these people were. As far as the writing goes, Hawke doesn’t pull any punches on either side of the fence. The story details every horrible thing that the Apaches went through during the eighteen hundreds, but doesn't shy away from the brutality committed on their side either. 

Normally I roll my eyes at such 'both sides' kind of rhetoric, but Hawke does make it pretty clear that the Apaches were considerably justified in their actions. You can only push a people so far until they eventually break.

For a comic of this length it's interesting that I have to say there could have been more in it. Hawke really steam-rolls through a lot of events over the course of the book, and at many points it benefits from having experience with the subject matter. Having already read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Which I highly recommend you also do) I felt I had better foreknowledge than somebody that would be going into the book cold.

At such a roller-coaster pace, Hawke doesn't really give us much time to slow down and get a handle on the characters. We have plenty of sequences where Cochise and Geronimo and Oliver Howard talk about their goals, their desires and the stakes involved, but very few human moments. I was excited to see Native American icon Lozen show up, but she's given very little time in the plot.

It's a good job Ruth's aforementioned artwork picks up a lot of the slack in this regard, silently communicating a real humanity behind the events to the reader. I can't really say enough about how the book really is a joint effort on both Hawke and Ruth's part, which makes sense, since Ruth originally rejected the project on the grounds that he didn't want to just story board a film Hawke had written. It wasn't until Hawke went away and re-wrote the story for the page that Ruth agreed to come on board.

Ultimately the story is less about people and more about A People. For anyone with even partial knowledge on Native American history you already know where this story is going. But to Hawke's credit, for a story essentially titled 'the dead' it ends on a more hopeful note. Though defeated, the Apache survive, they do endure and their stories exist to be re-told to this day.

It's debatable as to how qualified Hawke is to tell such a story like this, though Douglas Miles, in his foreword, does give credit to the research Hawke undertook for the project. Either way the overall package is a wonderful piece of work. Hawke's writing and Ruth's art are a great fit for such a story, and for somebody like me who already has an interest in Native American history and folklore, the comic was a real treat.

All in all, if Indeh is the kind of thing you'd dig then it's well worth spending your money on, and in a world where movie executives will pass on a project because there wasn't enough white dudes in it then I'll happily accept this as the next best thing.

(Seriously though, fuck you Hollywood)

                                                        

Jack Harvey 2016. Indeh (c) Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth, published by Grand Central Publishing. Images used under fair use.

Obscure Comic of the Month - Eve: True Stories

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.

                                                    

Eve: True Stories by Daniel Way, Tomm Coker, Alejandro Aragon, Federico Dallocchoi and Daniel Warren Johnson – Dark Horse Comics 2014.

Contains Spoilers

In the early hours of February 5, 2009, one man single-handedly destroyed the powerful Band of Brothers alliance and brought an end to the largest war the sci-fi universe of Eve Online had ever seen. Writer Daniel Way and artists Tomm Coker, Alejandro Aragon, Federico Dallocchoi and Daniel Warren Johnson tell a stranger-than-fiction tale inspired by actual player-driven events from the first decade of Eve Online!

Eve: True Stories is probably the worst comic I've ever read.

Maybe that's why I never see anyone talk about it.

In case you've been living under a rock for the last ten years, I'll quickly introduce the appeal of Eve Online. Most MMO games like World of Warcraft take place in what is essentially a glorified theme park. A place where you and your friends can go and experience pre-made, pre-generated stories in an unchanging world. The world of Eve, however, is almost entirely user-run. This means that all your jobs, quests, events and adventures are motivated by real people with actual in-game stakes involved.

This has led to some fascinating events over the last few years, with greed and clashing egos leading to re-drawing of borderlines and ripples through the in-game economy. For a good report of this kind of thing, I highly recommend Rock Paper Shotgun's report on the recent bloodbath.

Naturally, there's a lot about the Eve world that appeals to me, but alas, I've never had the time to invest. So I was thrilled to hear that Dark Horse was planning on adapting some of these events to the format of my chosen medium. Comics! What a great idea!

What a great idea indeed.

Right from the get go, this comic has problems. Though we cut straight to the action, no time is taken to introduce the setting. No clarification is given to the political climate or what exactly it is these factions are fighting over. Terminology and lore gets thrown about with little to no clarification. We hear talk of 'stargates' and 'modules' but never told the scope or importance of these things.

And the visuals fare no better. The space battles are cluttered, chaotic affairs. It's difficult to really tell what's going on, and while I'm sure the ships are accurate representations of how they appear in the game, there's no clear design style to clue us in to who is who. Ships clash without any real idea which side is which or what their goal is.

A Band of Brothers board meeting sequence attempts to serve as the set up for the story, but fails to really clarify anything. Is the Band a governmental body? A coalition? Are Goonswarm a rival kingdom or merely pirates? All this information is readily available online, true, but the flow of the story is ruined by how much the writers assume we already know.

Both the design and personality of the cast lacks clarity. Again, it's difficult keeping track of who is who, especially as this tale involves secret identities. After this brief set-up we're back to the space battles again, and the plot is quickly lost amongst the chaos.

This comic has such lofty ambitions. It wants to be Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, and all based on REAL EVENTS! Yet it crams in all these twists and turns and double-crosses so fast that you can't take it in, that's even if you find time to care at all.

I'm never given a reason to care or question what happens to the Band of Brothers. I get no joy at watching The Mittani manipulate the players because I have no sense of what drives him. There's no satisfaction in watching Kasimar be outsmarted because I'm never given a reason to want it.

 

Haargoth lacks motivation as a protagonist. Kasimir's personality is all over the place. The reveal that The Mittani was watching the whole time falls flat because no time is spent investing in him. The plot trundles along weightlessly.

On top of that, each issue changes artist. While this isn't an uncommon practice for big publishers, this is the worst example of it I've seen. Keeping track of characters and factions is made all the more difficult due to several art-shifts over the course of the plot.

The writing too seems to be unclear on what tone it wants to take. One scene in particular really stuck with me when I first read it. Near the end, as Haargoth pulls off his double-cross, Kasimar, in a rage, grabs a female comms-officer by the throat and proceeds to throttle her. Her face swells, and tears run down her cheeks. In the next panel he slams her head violently onto a computer screen. 

The whole scene is uncomfortable, and I have to question it's purpose. Is it to make us hate Kasimar? It it to give the reader a reason to root for Goonswarm? If it is, it's too little too late, but the decision to do that through violence against women is... troubling. I don't know if Way's work normally has any subconscious misogynist undertones, but the fact that the only other significant women in the comic are a waitress in a form fitting dress and a background sidekick leads me to wonder.

Likewise, the sexy spy-catsuit lady on the cover of the book is nowhere to be seen.

The story ends abruptly, with no epilogue or clarity on the scale of the outcome. It's a stale, sterile comic. It's grim, but with little grit behind it. It's 'real' without any sense of reality. It's probably the worst comic I've ever read.

So what happened? Dark Horse is usually competent when it comes to video game spin-offs. The whole thing smells of a rush job to me. Condensing such complex source material to three issues was the biggest mistake. Re-framing the whole thing as a rollicking space adventure rather defeats the point.

Shoving a bunch of separate artists on the job says to me that Dark Horse had no confidence in the project. Daniel Way didn't seem to have his heart in it either. It's a shame, because these Eve Online tales deserve better. Just have another read of that RPS article as your proof that these tales can be re-told in a clear and understandable way. Dark Horse should have given it the time and focus it needed.

Instead we're left with this mess. A forgotten and half remembered comic that nobody seems to have a good thing to say about, least of all me.

                                                             

Jack Harvey 2016. Eve True Stories (c) 2014 Dark Horse Comics. Eve Online (c) CCP. Images used under Fair Use.

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!