Doom Patrol (version 5) Book One: We Who Are About To Die (#1-6)

"What you've got here goes way past self pity.  They've stopped caring." - Father Leslie.

Teambook month continues with a look at a team I have a massive soft spot for as when I first started reading DC comics in the late 80's, Doom Patrol was one of my favourites even though the team line-up was quite different from the one depicted here. The very fact I've had to include a version number in my title for this first of two volumes collecting part of the Keith Giffen run on Doom Patrol probably should tell you how much they've been rebooted and retconned and relaunched over the years.   This is the last run so far that debuted in 2007 and went on for twenty-two issues before being cancelled in the run up to the reboot of the whole DCU as the New 52. The team first debuted in the 60's, a team of misfits whose powers are often more than a blessing than a curse, led by a brilliant wheelchair bound genius.  Sounds a bit like the X-Men doesn't it?  But the Doom Patrol actually debuted three months before the first X-Men comic came out, both too close together to have influenced each other.  However the most well know incarnation of Doom Patrol is Grant Morrison's seminal run when he took over the failing late 80's reboot that only I seemed to be reading.  Post Morrison, people seemed to struggle with what to do with the Patrol and what tone to take with them. The run prior to this one, by John Byrne had controversially seen him pull one of his "only I know how to write these characters" moves and had wiped out the entire history of the Patrol prior to him taking over and substituted his own history.  This went down so phenomenonally badly (Morrison's run really is very well loved, mess with it at your peril) that it was cancelled after eighteen issues and the events of DC's 2005 crossover event Infinite Crisis was used to bring the Patrol's full history back into continuity.

Grunt, Nudge, Rita, Larry and Cliff.

Anyway, let's introduce The Doom Patrol.  Here we have the core sixties team back together, it includes Rita Farr or Elasti-Woman who can change her size.  Larry Trainor the Negative Man who shares his body and soul with the "Negative Spirit" who he can release to disrupt electro-magnetic systems.  The price he pays is having to wear treated bandages all the time to prevent the radioactivity he gives off harming people. Finally there is Robotman, or Cliff Steel as he more commonly known.  The brain of a man locked in a body of metal.  There is also Niles Caulder back at their base directing them and two additions from the Byrne run that immediately preceeds this one, a young woman called Nudge and her pet gorilla, Grunt.  I don't know anything about them and it doesn't really matter as Nudge is graphically killed not long into the first issue and Grunt flees with what's left of her body (hah! Take THAT John Byrne).

For a run that basically restarted from a new issue number one, it's a surprisingly newbie unfriendly beginning.  The story begins in media res with the Patrol out on a mission, but their backgrounds and recent history are rather inelegantly supplied via small info dumps of computerised text scattered about the first volume.  Anyone new coming to the series lured in by the prospect of a fresh start would be somewhat baffled, especially as writer Keith Giffen has decided to make all of the Patrol's continuity count, especially the run by Grant Morrison which goes on to have greater significance in volume 2.  Interestingly this is fully scripted by Giffen, in the past he's tended to write the plots and have others script the dialogue such as the two Lobo miniseries I looked at a while back.  As a writer known for his comedic writing he injects a bantering aspect to the Patrol's relationships with each other that hasn't really been there in the past.  But it works for me and stamps this run with his own distinct brand of story telling. 

Nudge and Grunt, two fascinating characters we'll all enjoy getting to know...

The story starts with the Patrol on a mission to the rogue nation of Buena Suerte. They discover some nasty looking humanoid creatures in some kind of electronic nursery., apparently a bioengineered human/botfly creation made by villianous scientist Amanda Beckett.  She confronts the Patrol and turns into a more advanced version of the creatures and order them to attack.  During the battle between the botfly people and the Patrol, Larry releases the Negative Spirit and in a big difference from the way the Spirit and Larry were related in the past versions it seems Larry now IS the Negative Spirit and when it leaves his body it becomes an empty shell, whereas before he (or she, we'll be getting to that later) stayed inside his body and controlled the mindless spirit to attack.

Anyway during the fight he shorts out the electronic nursery and the Patrol decide to make their escape before reinforcements come.  Before the reach the helicopter, Nudge is annihilated in a volley of gunfire and Grunt takes of with her remains.  Rita grows to giant size and destroys the attacking helicopters then they leave, their general attitude to Nudge's death being "Oh dear.  What a shame.  Nevermind."  Back at their base on Oolong Island, Father Leslie greets them.

Leslie: "I heard"

Cliff:  "Doom Patrol, right?  It's in the name."

Leslie: "How old was she?  Eighteen? Nineteen?"

Cliff: "Old enough to know better."

... Or not.

Leslie tries talking to them about it in turn.  Rita angrily says she was jealous of Nudge's death.  Larry wisecracks and avoids the issue.  Cliff dismisses it brusquely.  Larry reports back to Niles Caulder about the poor mental shape the Patrol seem to be in.  Caulder says he doesn't care either.  The Patrol are a means to an end and as long as they keep getting results that's all that matters.  Later he is contacted by a scientist called Dr. Ackerman who somewhat hysterically says the "Collider generated a singularity" and the only reason it hasn't destroyed the planet is that "it... it wants to negociate terms."  Sounds like a job for the Doom Patrol.

Back in Germany, Ackerman is being quizzed by a man with no face but a black smear with a light in the middle.  As Ackerman talks to it, his own face distorts until it too looks the same and he becomes part of the "Black Hole's" hive mind. The Patrol arrive at the site of the Super-Collider in Germany.  They are greeted by a team of Black Hole soldiers they meet the Ackerman one and are surrounded by more soldiers who open fire on them with rubber bullets. The Patrol defend themselves but Larry is absorbed by one of the creatures, when Rita and Cliff realise he hasn't returned to his body they panic.  He can't be out of it for very long without falling into danger, the Black Hole person that holds him lets him go and he reinhabits his body safely.

Black Hole Ackerman: "A mechanical contruct.  A mass morph and an organic housing for a sentient energy form. Check. Check. Check."

Larry: "Hey! That's mister organic housing to you."

I'm still calling it Mr. Black Hole, "the Sentience" sounds daft.

This was a test of the Doom Patrols capabilities to satisfy it's curiosity.  He then takes them to the super-collider, but turns it on and they are sucked into.. somewhere.  There the Black Hole talks to them directly.  It considers itself "the first scientist".  Once it became sentient it became curious.

Black Hole: "Having no discernable purpose past existing, I took it upon myself to categorise my enviroment, life-forms, celestial events, cosmic anomalies...knowledge for the sake of knowledge."

It then says it is going to continue examaining people, and a few million should not be missed. Unfortunately the taking over process destroys the host when it is no longer of use.  Watching and listening through cameras in Cliff's eyes, Caulder ponders his next move.  He calls Steve Dayton to his office and tells him to "bring the helmet".

The Patrol are released from where they were and walk outside to find the place empty.  But there is also organic residue on the ground from where the Black Hole hosts were disintegrated after being discarded.  Using his WiFi connection and GPS Cliff determines the nearest population centre is a village called Cottbus, not far from Berlin.  Rita grows large and scoops the men up and they set off in that direction.

Steve "Pervert" Dayton.

Back with Caulder we are introduced to Steve "Mento" Dayton, a powerful psychic and Rita's dysfunctional ex-husband, who still likes to psychically stalk her without her knowing.  Caulder tells him to find Rita mentally now.  Meanwhile the Patrol arrive in Cottbus to find a takeover in progress, the Black Hole has also uncovered one who was a latent meta human who seems to have a forcefield projection ability. Caulder tells Steve he'll have to "override" Rita:

Steve: "Override!?!"

Caulder: "Nothing you haven't done before of course. This time she'll be awake."

Steve: "I..."

Caulder: "Come on Steve. How often do one's obssessions give one the opportunity to save the world?"

After the Black Hole tells the Patrol politely he won't stop his examinations of humans, they start to fight them.  Unfortunately the it uses it's newfound superpower to cut off three of Cliff's limbs. Steve links up with Rita and takes control, she grows to a huge size and this magnify's the psychic blast he sends through her which kills all the Black Hole beings bar the super one who was protected by a forcefield.  It agrees to return to Oolong Island with them and is interested in meeting the person who outwitted him.  Rita is back to normal but extremely distressed.  Before she can do anything about it though it's Crisis Crossover time!

Sucks, but still saves the day.

Blackest Night/Brightest Day was an event that saw a whole lot of killed off heroes from the history of the DCU coming back to life via "Black Lantern Rings" and one I didn't bother to read due to it's mean spirited retcons of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing and the continuity his successors kept to.  So ignoring the wider story, what happens in the next two chapters is several dead members of the Doom Patrol come back as Black Lanterns to make life difficult for our reluctant heroes.  What's interesting from my perspective is three of them are members from when I first started reading the comic in the 80's one of whom - Arani Desai - was killed off in another crossover (Invasion!) to make way for Grant Morrison's reboot line-up.

So on Oolong Island we meet Arani "Celsius" Desai, Joshua "Tempest" Clay and Val "Negative Woman" Vostok, all zombified and back to vex the current line Patrol because reasons. The next two chapters are pretty much one long fight scene. Firstly though Rita goes looking for Caulder to ream him out over not telling him about Steve's violations of her, and she is attacked by Joshua who she doesn't recognise because it was her turn to be dead when he was part of the line-up (ah, comics).

DC Zombies.

Meanwhile Caulder is being attacked by Arani, who always claimed to be his wife when I was reading the series, which he couldn't deny because he was off being dead at the time (ah, comics). Cliff now in a new body and Larry are attacked by Val who even has her own version of the Negative Spirit in her.  Although during her time in the Patrol, Larry wasn't dead (ah, co.. wait), just still radioactive, bandaged and weak and miserable. And then he got better, and then the Val died and the Negative Spirit came back and melded Larry with a woman and called the resultant lady-man "Rebis" and it was Grant Morrison's era so you know, it all made sense to him I guess.  Wait, sidetracked.  Back to the punchening.

It's a double negative! Ahahahaha, haha, ha. Sorry.

Joshua drops a cliff on Rita, Arani melts off Caulder's legs and you know what, just who these people are in relation to the history of the Patrol isn't really spelt out for newbs.  Considering said characters are from an incarnation of the Patrol that predates the 90's and this crossover happened in 2009-10 maybe who they were needed a little more detailing.  Just a thought. Anyway, poor Cliff doesn't have anyone to fight, so why not bring back his organic body to fight him?  Yes, his entirely without superpowers human body.  THAT makes so much sense.

Anyway, Cliff smashes it to pieces quickly, and although it can regenerate, it's really just a nuisiance.  Larry then briefly manifests "Rebis" and obliterates Val and the Black Lantern Ring keeping her unalive.  The Black Hole man saves Caulder by putting Arani in a forcefield.  Rita gets majorly pissed and knocks all the rubble off her and goes for Joshua.  So he drops a tidal wave on her, which sweeps across the island.  Caulder tells the Patrol to lead the Black Lanterns to the entrance to a "boom tube" which is a teleporter linked to a JLA distress beacon.  So they do so, and they all get zapped away from Earth. 

It's a magic door!

How do they fare?  You'll have to wait until the next volume because the next issue, is Giffen officially bringing all of the Doom Patrol's history officially back into continuity.  It would take an post about as long as this one is to cover it, so I direct you to the wikipedia page if you happen to be interested.  It's told via the history of the Negative Spirit, and how the relationship between it and Larry went from a "we" to an "I" and that "Larry" is somewhat in denial about aspects of his history and identity crisises.

I think in summary there are several problems at work in this first volume, yet a lot to like as well.  It's unfortunate that it was involved in a DCU-wide crossover event so soon into the run, with important events taking place outside the series leaving the issues involved almost incomprehensible once the crossover was done with especially if you had no interest in that crossover.  And while the continuity nerd in me appreciates the re-establishment of the Doom Patrol past history, front-loading so much of it into the first few issues might not have been the best idea for kicking his run off vis a vis attracting new or lapsed readers.

Nice arse Larry!  Hmm, and I do find it sad that it was a cold war Russian, an African-American and an Anglo-Indian who got killed off and came back as villians....

 I know quite a bit about various characters featured and even I had to resort to wikipedia a couple of times.  That said,  Giffen manages to include the kind of weirdness that characterised Morrison's run while keeping the characters more grounded and relatable through snark and world weary companionship that makes it enjoyable to read even with the narrative handicaps. Volume two will see the return of the team after helping in the fight against the Black Lantern menace and some familiar faces will also turn up as well, one of whom makes for a surprising yet amusing addition to the cast....

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Intelligence Gathering (#1-5)

"I thought we needed a bigger stick" - Worf

Teambook month continues with the ultimate TV science fiction team, the crew of the Enterprise NCC 1701-D. My previous experiences with IDW's Next Generation miniseries have not been positive ones, and I'll tell you right from the outset this is deeply crappy as well.  The one thing it has going for it is that it's shorter than the other two. Let's take a look at the back cover blurb to see what it's about. "What seems to be a series of unrelated missions is soon revealed to be part of a larger conspiracy involving a threat unlike any Picard has ever faced."  Hey wait a minute, that's the same plot as "The Space Between" and that pile of arse came before this.  How creatively bankrupt do you have to be to foist the exact same plot on readers a short while after you first did so?  Writers Scott and David Tipton and IDW,  I aim a "Feh" in your general direction.  Before we move on, a word about the art.  One the one hand David Messina's work has a pleasing, heavy black-lined chunkiness that appeals to me greatly, Picard and Riker are well drawn, Data looks good in some panels and off-model in others. On the other,  you can only tell who the female characters are by their uniforms and hairdo's.  The setting of this storyline is late season five, because that is the only time Ensign Ro and Chief O'Brian were serving on board at the same time and reference is made to the season five episode "Powerplay" as having happened recently.  Being the massive fucking nerd that I am, placing these comicbook adventures into the ST:TNG timeline is important to me.  Now let's look at the story itself.

It kicks off with Riker roleplaying a pilot in World War 2 on the holodeck.  Data appears and summons him to Picard's ready room and Picard tells them they are going to Daystrom One who are having problems with the artificial intelligence that runs their system.  As it is based on Data's positronic brain they want him to come along and help, especially as they think the A.I. has gained sentience.

At Daystrom One they tell Riker and Data that all the Federation's information is contained in a Tesseract, a four dimensional hypercube in which every planets information is represented by a seperate node. They want Data and Riker to travel inside it and either shut it down or repair it.

Data: "If the A.I. has indeed achieved sentience. I am unsure I would be simply willing to 'turn it off'"

The Commander of the project says that's why Riker is coming along, to ensure the orders are upheld. Using a pod, Riker and Data travel inside the Tesseract.  They are to follow the access corridor to a central AI. Things get a bit tense as Riker and Data debate shutting down the A.I. then suddenly a diamond shaped object appears in front of them.  When they probe it, it explodes.  When they try to go on their way, more objects appear in front of them.

Inside the technobabble, I mean tesseract.

Back on the Enterprise, Lieutenant Barclay shows LaForge a hidden subspace signal he's uncovered.  When Picard is told about it he wonders if this explains the problems with Daystrom One's computers.  Back in the Tesseract, the pod is being dragged along by a tractor beam to another ship like object in there. Riker has an idea, the send an electrical chare into the ships tractor beam generator when they get close enough and overload it and escape. Piloting their pod back to the Gateway to Daystrom One.

LaForge on the Enterprise has decoded the subspace transmissions, it's Romulans and they were after Data. They fire a volley of warning shots near where they have traced the emissions as coming from and reveal a Romulan ship.  Back in the Tesseract, the pod is being fired upon.

Riker: "This is ridiculous. How can we be under attack in a secure federation facility?"

They use their pod to smash into their attacker and disable them then they escape out of the Gateway and back to Daystrom One.  The Romulans close to the Enterprise scarper, while an armed Federation security team find Romulans inside the Tesseract.  The fleeing Romulans hail the Enterprise and confirm it was Data they were after.  Picard cuts him off and they go on their way.  Riker and Data have a converstaion later where Riker says he hopes Data doesn't blame him for being ready to shut down the A.I. no matter what the cost. Data says he has no feelings on the matter and that he knew Riker would follow orders. The chapter ends with Riker dubiously agreeing with him.

Those shifty Romulan buggers.

As a first chapter it's not a great slam, bam start to kick things off.  It has an insane amount of technobabble and the battles in the Tesseract are not particularly depicted all that clearly.  The debates between Riker and Data are pallid rehashes of those in the episode "The Measure Of A Man" where Riker was charged with disproving Data's sentience (he lost thankfully) although they do anticipate Data's actions in the sixth season episode "The Quality Of Life" where he was prepared to sacrifice his life to prove the sentience of some little robots.

The next chapter begins on an alien planet, some tatooed, sword wielding humanoids instigate a takeover of a dam being run by some bureaucratic aliens.  We then cut to the Enterprise where Data explains that the planet is Voltar VII.  A Federation colony under construction as a cooperative venture between the Rigelien's and Kaylar.  The Rigelien's are bureaucrats and the Kaylar are the workers.  If the conflict is not sorted out soon, the colony will not be completed on time and the Cardassians will intervene.  Which seems like an odd reason, but whatever.

Picard puts Worf in charge of the negociations, and he recuits Ensign Ro as a member of his Away Team. They beam to the headquarters of the Rigelien faction, their leader says the Kaylar want control of the facility because they built it.  He says the Kaylar were fairly compensated for their work and their actions are "unheard of".  The Kaylar have threatened to blow up the dam facility they have control of, so Worf's team decide to sneak in via the sewers to retake the dam by force as the Kaylar refuse to talk with Worf.

ACTION!

Their primary mission on reaching the inside of the dam is to disable the explosive devices that could destroy it.  They enter a control room but the Kaylar are ready for them and a phaser fight ensues.  One of the Away Team is wounded and Worf gets into a fist fight with one of the Kaylar.

Worf: "I will not let you destroy this damn!"

Kaylar: "What are you talking about?! We'd never destroy our own work!"

Then the Away Team returns to the Enterprise so the wounded member can be treated.  Worf is frustrated that the Rigeliens maybe lying to them and the Kaylar refuse to talk to him. Picard tells him to "follow his own sensibilities".  So Worf goes to talk to the head Rigelien and bluntly tells him that he feel he's been misled about the conflict and that the Federation doesn't like being made a fool of and they'll be going now and the Rigeliens can deal with the dispute themselves.  The Rigelien leader tells him that "surely an accord can be reached."

Worf say that they should go and meet the Kaylar ambassador now and enter into talks.  It turns out the problem was a contract renegociation.  Once aboard the Enterprise the two representatives begin talks overseen by Troi, while Worf leaves them too it.  He tells Riker his methods were not textbook but seem to suffice.  And so ends chapter two, a somewhat boring story that has nothing to do as far as I can see with the elements that link the rest of the chapters together and pay off in the final chapter of the book. Squabbling aliens, building a Federation colony, the whole thing hinging on a workers contract, it's like a dull season one episode and is the least interesting part of the collection by far.

Chapter three begins with the Enterprise arrving at Starbase 217 to drop off the Romulan sabateurs from Daystrom One and effect some repairs. The Romulans have given no clue as to how they managed to infiltrate Daystrom One.  A repair crew from the Starbase beams up and after repairs are carried out the Enterprise leaves.

They get a priority one distress call from the USS Jackson so they set course to rendezvous with the ship.  But when the arrive and hail it, the Captain has no clue the distress call was sent.  The Captain then says they are having a problem with their Chief Engineer who most likely sent it, so Picard, LaForge and O'Brien beam over to help deal with the matter.

Carll explains himself.

Picard goes to talk with Captain Travis, while LaForge and O'Brien go to talk with Chief Engineer Carll. Travis tells Picard that Carll is both difficult to work with and recently had begun reporting problems that aren't there. Carll tells LaForge and O'Brien that the systems on board the Jackson are badly out of date and while bringing things up to scratch he discovered a Mantleau Wave.  He sent the distress call because no one on the Jackson believed him about it.

A Mantleau Wave in the anti-matter stream only needs the right harmonic frequency to create a dissonance in the matter/anti-matter chamber and the warp core will explode. LaForge says that current engines were built specifically to avoid this problem, but Carll insists he saw one.  Picard, allows LaForge and O'Brien to stay and investigate.  After fiddling around with the engines, Carll manages to show the Mantleau Wave exists, but this time it starts to build and in seventeen minutes will cause the warp core to explode.

The crew of the Jackson begin to evacuate to the Enterprise while Carll, LaForge and O'Brien work to contain things.  They manage to track the wave to it's source and discover its actually being generated by a small device in a Jeffries tube.  Removing the device stops the Mantleau Wave, it seems the device was designed to fake the engine trouble when the ship got a certain distance from Starbase 215. 

The plot thickens.

Geordi and LaForge also report to Picard that they found the same type of device on the Enterprise, only it was designed to go off when they got close to Starbase 217.  The chapter ends with Picard pondering if they are being led somewhere.  This isn't a bad chapter, it's probably the best of a bad lot.  It's got insane amounts of technobabble in it but the mystery is set up and paid off satisfactorally within the confines of a single issue so I give it the thumbs up.

Chapter four begins with Data and Picard in Stellar Cartography pondering the sector they are seeming to be led to.  Then three ships appear, they are the goofy aliens called Pakleds from season two's "Samaritan Snare". Their weapons systems are somewhat advanced compared to the primitive state of the rest of their ship.  The Pakled's hail them and say they will destroy the Enterprise and sell it's remains to fund the glorious Pakled Empire. Which doesn't actually exist.

The Pakleds

They then attack and Troi makes one of her stunningly profound pronouncements that "something isn't right." She goes onto say the Pakleds are being mind-controlled.  The Pakleds then ram the Enterprise and blow up their ships in the process.  Data checks the plasma trail from their ship and finds the planet they were last on.  Picard tells Troi to assemble an Away Team and she takes Doctor Crusher and Ensign Ro along with her.  Wow, a female dominated team, including Beverly who is one of the most overlooked characters in these comics.  This should be awesome!

Down on the planet Ro kicks in a door and everything goes dark.  Then Troi, Crusher and Ro beam back to the Enterprise and Ro punches out O'Brien. Then the three of them walk emotionlessly through the ship punching everyone who tries to stop them.  Oh fucking amazing.  It would be the female led team that gets itself mind controlled.  Please do excuse me, I feel the need to go into the yard and do some primal screaming.  In the meantime do enjoy this image.

OK, back now. So hardy har, how funny to see slender Crusher and petite Troi beating up big blokes.  And if you have somehow forgotton this happened to Troi in "Powerplay" never fear, a crew member reminds us of those events. Sigh.  Anyway, the silly, weak minded women are bought under control by the manly MEN and down on the planet an Away Team of MEN discover it was a Ferenghi "Thought Maker" as seen in season one's "The Battle" causing all the havok.

Picard, Riker and Data discuss the coordinates Crusher entered when trying to fly the Enterprise from the battle bridge and they decide to go check it out, with Picard saying it's not a trap if they are expecting it.  And this sexist pile of garbage can go to hell.  It could have worked with any configuration of Away Team, but having it made up of just the females just because it'll look funny to see them smacking the blokes around is diabolically poor stuff.  Eh, one more chapter to go anyway.

Nice sweep there Troi.

They go to the coordinates and get a distress signal from the local leader of the planet.  Picard has an away team beam down and Data is abducted by two Romulans.  Picard says they expected this and planted a transponder in him to follow where he has been taken. They find where he is being held and beam down to discover he was taken by Tomalak, the Romulan they faced off against in the second season episde "Contagion".  Picking up where that episode left off, they have been looking for more Iconian gateways, which the comic doesn't bother to explain properly, but the Iconians were an ancient interstellar race that travelled by gateways between planets.

Turns out when the messed about with this gateway they found, hostile aliens came through when they caused a "rift".  They didn't have the knowhow to close the rift hence the ridiculous lengths they went to do abduct Data.  A huge alien breaks through and attacks and when hand phasers don't work, Worf uses the ones on board the shuttle they came down on. An alien then broadcasts to them that they intend to keep coming and eat and enslave everyone.

A somewhat unfriendly alien.

Picard: "Tomalak! This is your bloody mess.  How are we going to get out of it?"

Data figures out the rift can be closed from the other side and Tomalak volunteers one of his men for the task. He manages it although dies in the process and the rift and gateway are safely sealed.  Picard then voices what we've all been thinkin:

Picard: "Perhaps next time you might simply ask for assisstance?"

Riker: "What is it they say? 'Romulans fear disgrace more than dishonour'"

Tomalak: "At least one of you understands us."

And the comic abruptly ends, with all our questions answered.  Wait no it doesn't.  What the hell kind of plan was that, all simply to abuct Data?  They went through massive shennanigans with Daystrom One and the Thought Maker, when they could have aducted him at anytime (for example when they were planting the Mantleau Wave device on the Enterprise), which is eventually what they did!  Tomalak strikes me as the person who if you asked them to change a lightbulb would start off by designing and building a lightbulb factory first.  I literally have no more words left in me to descibe how monumentally convoluted this story turned out to be.  So lets finish up.

You're angry Picard, how do you think I feel?!

Putting aside the apocalyptically stupid framing plot, what do we have overall?  A collections of stories that don't have space to develop any kind of plot, and that rely on meta knowledge of the shows characters to understand their motivations.  It's packed with fanwanky references to many episodes that would be lost on a more casual reader, you could argue they aren't made for the casual reader, but what fans would like in a ST:TNG comic book is an extension of what was going on in the TV series not warmed over stereotypical leftovers.  And yes it's nice to see characters like Ensign Ro and Chief O'Brien getting some page time, but not at the expense once again of the perenianally underused Crusher and Troi.  I keep buying these Next Generation IDW comicbooks and I'm not sure why as everytime I end up depressed and wanting my money back.  Yet as a combination of two things I love - Star Trek and comics - I can't resist giving them just one more chance each time.  Surely the odds of finding a decent one must start to improve now?  Maybe? We'll see...

Alan Moore Obscurities: Spawn/WildC.A.T.s - Devilday (#1-4)

"Ah yes, I remember this part 'innocence' versus 'corruption' that's how you see this isn't it?" - The Ipsissmus.

Time for another theme month.  This month the theme shall be... teambooks.  I've always enjoyed the dynamics involved in bringing together a gang of disparate characters and having them spark off each other in different ways especially when the characters in question aren't popular enough to have a comic of their own but when combined, stand more of a chance in a crowded marketplace.  However this then proved something of a quandry when picking what Alan Moore series to kick the month off with.  The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be his ultimate teambook, but I've ruled that out on the basis that I won't be able to find much new to say about it, same with Watchmen.  And I've already covered Top Ten.  After that, you're pretty much left with his run on the Image studio Wildstorm's property WildC.A.Ts which is one I will be covering, but which will need splitting into two parts to do justice to and I'm not in the mood to tackle it in depth just yet. However, Moore also penned a fourpart crossover miniseries where McFarlane Studio's Spawn and the Wildstorm universes WildC.A.T's teamed up, and so that's the one I have picked.  Unfortunately it's really not very good, but thems the breaks. Even Moore's "not very good" can be interesting when looked at critically.  This mini can be found in the collection - The Worst Of Alan Moore, I mean Alan Moore: Wild Worlds.  The mini, first published in the year 1996 it is set mostly in the hellish, dystopian future of... 2015.  Happy New Year by the way.

So, I have covered Spawn before, in my look at the issue of him guest starring Cerebus.  Quick reminder, he was a black CIA operative who was killed and reincarnated as the demonlike Spawn by a Lord of Hell called Malebolgia.  He lurks around streets and alleys in the dark, dealing out terminal justice to the dregs of society.  The WildC.A.T.s (C.A.T.s - Covert Action Teams) are a team of heroes made up of Zealot, Grifter, Voodoo (yes THAT Voodoo), Spartan, Warblade, Maul, Void, Dasher, Prancer, Flopsy, Mopsy, Avarice, Lust, Pestilance, Sleepy, Dopey, Beaky, Mick and Titch. And Lord Emp, but he's hardly in it.  This adventure, though published during Moore's run on the WildC.A.T.s' series, seems to be set before it as his time on the main series saw the team seperated for most of it's duration then rejigged towards the end.  Readers of DC comics might recognise some of those names, because for the launch of the New52, the Wildstorm universe was folded into the DCU and Grifter and Voodoo briefly had titles of their own, while other characters like Zealot, popped up here and there.

Warblade, Void, Maul, Voodoo, Grifter, Zealot, Spartan and Lord Emp.  Just standing around all natural like.

Before I start on the story proper I just want to note that wow... by the sacred pencil of Jack Kirby, boy the art sucks.  It's truly sub-Liefeld (something I would have thought impossible) in quality, every woman is an Escher Girl nightmare and the men, including the wirey Spawn are stupidly beefy and over muscled.  Layouts are utterly confusing and there are too many double page spreads where you have to turn the book sideways, and which my scanner refuses to scan properly. Every page is haphazardly assembled with no sense of sequential flow and an absolute terror of negative space.

Lacking that art-flow the pace is dictated entirely by Moore's words and for some reason Moore has chosen to do something he tried to get rid of in comicbook story telling (and the reason why I find so much older comic book writing so hard to deal with), which is having everyone narrate what they are doing and thinking non-stop. Comics are a visual medium so this shouldn't really need to happen (if I want to see people standing around endlessly telling each other what they plan to do, I'll put on some shonen anime), but here I'll reluctantly accept it because the artists Scott Clark and Sal Regla are simply not up to the task of telling a coherent story with their art.

The story begins with some mystical folderol.  Some bored Godlike beings drop a talisman through a dimensional hole and sit back to see what happens.  We then join the WildC.A.T.s, Voodoo has a vision of the talisman though she brushes it off on her being unstable.

Voodoo: "You don't understand.  It was the feeling that came with the image.  I-it felt as if everything was coming apart.  As if we were all in some kind of terrible danger."

Look at Spawn, look at him!  He's like the beefiest beef to ever have a beef.  And the page feels strangely undynamic despite it's content due to the cluttered nature of the layout

Suddenly Spawn comes crashing into their head quarters demanding to see Grifter and Zealot. He claims they attacked him and a confusing (and confusingly drawn) fight ensues. Spawn gets his hands on Zealot, but before he can hurt her he stops attacking and asks is she used to be black.  When Grifter queries this, Spawn asks him if his hair used to be grey.  Spawn then begins to apologise for making a mistake, and Lord Emp asks him to tell them what happened to him.

Spawn says he was attacked by two people calling themselves Grifter and Zealot, and that black Zealot fought exactly like white Zealot.  Zealot says that it's impossible, no one could have mastered her "Coda" techniques without her knowing. Nevertheless says Spawn, black Zealot did fight like her, and Grifter was the same but older and slower.  His attackers appeared in a silvery light and black Zealot actually got the upper hand against him, but before she could kill him, she stopped herself and the two of them ran off.  Lord Emp wonders why the two of them did such a lousy job of impersonating Grifter and Zealot.  Suddenly old Grifter and black Zealot appear:

Old Grifter: "We're no lousy imitation, Marlowe.  We just come from a lousy place is all."

Escher Girl Bingo: Snake woman, collar boobs, wtf clothing, battle bikini, rubber spine, runaway breasts, errant buttocks, atomic wedgie, damn we're just one traditional boob and butt pose away from a full house. (also that "youth speak"... LOL)

He introduces himself as still being Grifter, but Zealot is new. Black Zealot also has some hilariously bad slang based around computer terminology that just has you longing for the more alien yet more real slang of Halo Jones's world.  Spawn gets ready to fight them again, but they say their plans have changed.  They are from the future and something very bad is due to happen to the present soon.  A demon finds a talisman that allows him to end his slavery.  He renames himself  George Osbourne the Ipsissimus and unleashes hell on earth.  The human race is quickly subjugated and the superheroes put in camps.  The WildC.A.T.s escaped and decided to jump back in time to take out the demon threat before he gained the talisman.  That demon being Spawn.

Future!Zealot says she couldn't bring herself to kill Spawn as at this moment he is not guilty of the crimes of his future self.  So they had another idea, bring the present WildC.A.T.s into the future to help take down the Ipsissimus together.  Spawn also decides to tag along, which is a sensible idea that I am sure will in no way backfire on them, and Void beams all of them bar Lord Emp into the future.  After a very turbulant ride through the time stream they arrive in the future of 2015 which I guess is supposed to look post-apocalyptic but the art doesn't really sell it very well at all.

Narrator: "New York 2015:  The flag lunges and snaps like a starved mean dog.  On the wind there is bad meat:  Petrol, something like wet copper.  The great crow banquet at fifth avenue, and the cremation fields of central park.  Huge drifts of blow-fly husks on broadway.  This is the torture marathon.  These are the boulavards of smoke and mourning".

Is this the most half-arsed apocalypse ever?  "Oh noes, there's a huge eye on a building and one is on fire and the sky is a lovely blue, the horror, the horror!". (apologies for the even crapier than usual scans.  My scanner hates scanning from trade paperbacks normally, two page spreads make it very unhappy)

It's fortunate that Moore has given us such an evocative description because literally nothing like that is rendered by the artist, we get one two page spread showing a wider city scene that doesn't look very apocalpytic at all.  Oh there are plenty more two page splashes, but they are all of the men flexing their muscles and gritting their teeth or the women shoving their boobs and arses out.  Because those pictures can be sold on at a later date by the artist for extra profit at conventions, boring things like detailed "backgrounds" and street scenes just don't fetch the same prices do they? Feh.

Before the gang can get to safety they run into two hugh demonic wise-cracking demons called Vindicator and Vandaliser who are related to Spawn's demon handler the Violator.  They try to arrest the WildC.A.T's but a fight ensues.  Maul grows to a large size (he gets less intellient the bigger he gets) and disables one, the rest disable the other.  Unable to kill them, they nail their heads to the floor in the one grimly amusing bit of the story.

Vindicator: "It just ain't done! What about Columbo? What about Starsky and Hutch?  No one ever nailed their brains to the floor!"

Alan Moore also wrote a much better than this Violator miniseries which also starred this wise-cracking pair.  Expect a look at that in the next couple of months.

They then bump into a gang lead by a blind man called Santini.  They seem to know him so I assume he's a Wildstorm Universe character.   Together they go down to the future WildC.A.T.s new headquarters and meet Tapestry who is actually aged, future Zealot, now crippled but still with massive hooters I notice.  Apparently the old Tapestry (whoever she/he/it was) went mad, so when future Zealot lost the use of her legs she took over as team psychic because apparently it's just that easy to gain massive mental powers.  Future Spartan is there too, now reduced to a hovering head.

I see Zealot/Tapestry's boobs are about twenty years younger than her face.

Tapestry says they have organised several other gangs to help them out in an assault on the Ipsissimus's headquarters.  There is Santini and his Black Razor's, there are some sisters of the Coda and a group of Vampire triads ready to help out. Then suddenly a monster attacks in another confusing double page spread.  Apparently this monster was once three monsters called the Troika, when the Ipsissimus made him head of his police force, he merged the three together into one being.  Void transports the WildC.A.T.s to safety, which confuses Troika as future Void has been stripped of her power and placed in the palace seraglio.  Oh goody.  Rape. You just can't resist it can you Alan?

The WildC.A.T.s arrive in a safehouse underground, wandering around Warblade and Voodoo stumble across the "memorial gallery" where two huge stone statues of them have been erected to commemorate them after their deaths.  I have to wonder how they mananged to get a hold of someone who could create these massive statues when the world is a hell blasted landscape of dead humans, but whatever.  Spawn is saddened.

Spawn: "God, this lonely mausoleum. I understand places like this.  How could my future self cause such misery?"

At least in a hell future, sculptors won't be out of a job.

Future Grifter says the devil made him do it. Then the WildC.A.T's past and future along with Spawn make their way to what used to be the Chrysler building, but is now the Ipsissimus's palace, a place where they "slaughtered love and dismembered kindness".

They decide to split their forces up, because splitting up always works and attack the Palace from three different points.  Their allies tool up ready to attack as well. Warblade and Spartan take out two superhumans who sided with the Ipsissimus.  While this happens Maul, Voodoo, Void and Future Spartan find themselves in the Seraglio.  There the future Void stripped of her power recognises them.  When the Troika attacks a mad Present day Void uses her powers to transport him outside the building, and as they are several hundred metres up he plummets to his death.

My mind is trying to figure out just how Sex Toy Void and Voodoo are managing to relate to each other physically but I keep mentally shutting down.  The perspective just doesn't work.  I know they are Escher Girls but now we get Escher perspectives to?  Just awful.

We're then told that Future Void doesn't have to have unwanted sex, because she makes herself unattractive to men by crying.  Yeah like that would stop anyone, nice try Alan.  Anyway the women decide this is a good time to pack up and bugger off.  Void wishes her future self well and they part.

Tapestry, Zealot, Future Zealot and Spawn find themselves in the place where Lord Emp is imprisoned.  As he is immortal he couldn't be executed by the Ipsissimus to he's chained up and mechanical birds feast on his innards.  Tapestry helpful and bluntly tells up that it's just like Prometheus, and tells us the myth related to him because perish the thought the Image audience might get the reference without being told in detail. Sigh.  Then they get him down, in another sequential art fail he was unharmed in the two-page spread but is suddenly caked in blood a couple of panels later.  Anyway he is catatonic and no use to them.

Do you get it readers, do you?  Do you understand the reference now?  DO YOU?!  YOU IDIOTS!

The Violator arrives to stop them rescuing Lord Emp.  The two Zealots and Spawn fight him, when he is badly damaged, Tapestry sends out a psychic shockwave that almost vaporises him.  His bits of body still show signs of life, but for now the danger is past.  Tapestry decides to stay and look after Lord Emp while she recharges her powers. Two of the teams meet up and find a badly wounded Santini.  It seems the Ipsissimus anticipated their attack and killed the Black Razors, Triads and Coda warriors.  Then a huge Future Maul opens a door and points the way through.  Because he is so huge his brain functions must be tiny, which explains how he's so tame.  They walk through and are confront by the image of a huge future Spawn sat on a throne.

The Ipsissimus takes out present day Maul with a flick of his finger, he then mocks them and their plans.  He shrinks down to their size after provoction from present day Spawn saying his size doesn't matter.  The huge Maul then attacks the WildC.A.T.s and Grifter decides to end his suffering with a bullet to the brainpan.  This makes the Ipsissimus mad and he blasts Grifter but in a very confusing panel, I think the future Spartan absorbed the blast. Sacrificing himself for Grifter.  That's what the dialogue says, you'd never figure that out from the panels alone.

Just to prove I'm not a total negative Nancy, of the 80 or so pages this crossover is made up of, I actually like this one page quite a bit.  It gets over the awe-inspiring nature of the Spawn/Ipsissimus really well.  So hat's off to the artists for creating one decent image (!)

Spawn then attacks the Ipsissmus, taking his talisman away saying that'll get rid of his powers.  But the Ipsissmus has grown past need of the talisman, and gladly lets Spawn take it, then blasts him unconcious. Future Zealot figures out that the Ipsissimus knows their moves in adavance because he is remembering it from when he was Spawn.  Well done geniuses.  So Future Zealot takes the prone Spawn back to where Tapestry is.  Once back with her, Tapestry sends Spawn and future Zealot back to the 1996 "present".

Back with the Ipsissimus things aren't going to well.  He says he won't kill them now because he wants to torment them later on, so he plans to send them back with their memories wiped.  Back in the present, Future Zealot asks Spawn to hand the talisman over, and Spawn is all, "well, NO." And he punches her.  The Impsissimus tells the WildC.A.T.s exactly what is happening in the present, that this was when he began his reign of terror.  Tapestry, boosted by Voodoo and Voids powers look for a thread of fate in the past/present that could change things.  They find one and cut it.

Spawn exercises his pimp slapping hand.

When Spawn punched future Zealot he knocked her metal gimp mask off.  Suddenly he seems to recognise her and calls her Cyan.  That was the name of the child his wife bore, although wikipedia tells me it's not Spawn's kid. Wow this is a fascinating turn of events!  I am suddenly gripped by the consequences of this reveal.  Oh no wait, what's the exact opposite of that?

Because really, Spawn is such a tedious, one-note "emo" character and his "daughter" so indifferently written, that any drama caused by this revelation is completely flat. Anyway, when Spawn finds out she's his "daughter" and that his wife committed suicide not long after he started his reign of terror, he hands her the talisman to take care off. 

Spawn: "Here take this.. maybe it'll you know all those birthdays I missed.  Maybe somehow it'll make it up".

In the future the Ipsissimus roars that this should not be as he begins to disappear.  So to do the rest of the future WildC.A.T.s as well as Cyan in the present taking the talisman with her.  The present WildC.A.T's warp back in time leaving Future Grifter and Tapestry sharing a kiss as they finally wink out of existence.

Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld. So I can sigh eternally.

The present day WildC.A.T.s leave a mourning Spawn alone and ponder where the talisman could have come from, if it was part of a time loop, how did it get into Spawn's hands in the first place?  Back with the bored Gods from the start, one of them retrieves the talisman to the faint applause of his fellow mystical beings.

And that brings the miniseries to the end.  A simple pre-destination paradox set in motion by bored Godlike beings.  I think what really disappoints me about this story is how boring it is, how clumsy the dialogue is and how uninspired and by-the-numbers the plotting is.  If you gave this to me to read without telling me who wrote it I never, ever would have guessed it was by Alan Moore.  I realise he was doing work like this to fund stuff that was much closer to his heart like From Hell and Lost Girls, but he managed to create comics in the past that were aimed at a mass audience like his Superman and Green Lantern stories for DC without grossly underestimating the intelligence of his target audience.  If I was an Image aligned reader at the time this came out I'd feel pretty annoyed and insulted by how little Moore seemed to think of me.

And so the talisman is reclaimed.  And nothing of value was learned.  The end.

So that was Spawn/WildC.A.T's, a comic that would have been a whole lot better if only it had been good, and I think it's got the year off to a great start.  I intend to spend even more time working on this blog in the coming year and while trying to break the habit of posting passive-aggressive lolcats on my ex's facebook pages.  See yah!!

Cradlegrave (2000AD #1633-1644)

"Welcome back to the real world" - Narration

Let me start this review thing with a short digression, which will become relevant I promise.  Well, a bit relevant. Slightly relevant anyway.  Between 1998 and 2004 I lived in what could be charitably described as a "right shithole".  But I lived happily in that shithole because it was the only way I could afford the rent to live in the area of Manchester I wanted to, which was Rusholme.  I may not have had hot running water for six years but I lived between two parks at the top end of the curry mile, and I was made up.  And the reason I felt good about that was because I could see what life was like in the area next-door to Rusholme.  Oh, I know some of you are nodding now and saying "ah yes, I have heard of Moss Side, it sounds bad."  Fuck no.  Moss Side is postively gentrified now compared to where I actually mean, that forsaken place being Longsight.  And I am happy to name it, because no one in Longsight will be reading this.  No one in Longsight can afford a computer.  The best way to sum up Longsight was one day when me and a friend were driving back to my place.  He took a short-cut through Longsight even though I advised against it.  At one set of traffic lights he suddenly said to me, very quietly - "roll your window up, lock your door and brace yourself, because when the lights change I am flooring this motherfucker."  A gang of youths bearing down on you with hoods up and armed with baseball bats will scare even an ex-army bloke into running away.

One panel sets the scene well.

The reason for that digression is to let you know that when I discuss the setting of John Smith's 2000AD series Cradlegrave, I'm know what he's talking about.  Now Longsight isn't quite the same as the estate in the series in that Longsight is more inner city than sink estate on the outskirts.  But I know the feeling of hopelessness that hangs over places like that, where the poorest in society are trapped literally from cradle to grave.  I never spent time in Longsight unless I absolutely had to (I had a course of therapy on my back at a medical centre there, where the windows where heavily barred, you were buzzed in through a metal detector and the receptionists sat behind bullet proof glass), and everytime I left the place it was like a pall lifted from me.  Cradlegrave activated a sort of Proustian sense memory in me, the stale smell of poverty and misery immediately came back to me after a decade of last experiencing it.  A definite achievement of the book, if not an altogether pleasant one.

Shane returns to the estate

When I reviewed John Smith's first comicbook work The New Statesmen for CRISIS in 1988 I was reminded of the quote by William Faulkner - “In writing, you must kill your darlings.”  The New Statemen simply had too many ideas and things Smith obviously wanted to say crammed into too small a page count to do them justice.  I still found much to praise it for, mainly it being unafraid to be highly political, something which can also be seen in the depiction of life as a member of the underclass on the Ravenglade estate somewhere in Lancashire.  The art by Edmund Bagwell is also praise worthy in this respect too.  It's heavily photo-referenced, but unlike say Greg "I trace from porn" Land's emotionless manniken people, here it helps add to the documentary style realism that makes it all the more shocking when horror intrudes upon the carefully depicted life of the main character Shane, a young offender back from eight months in a youth remand centre for arson.

The estate he returns to is suffering in the middle of a long, hot summer from a refuse collectors strike. He has dinner with his Mum who wonders where his brother has got to. She asks Shane if the place he was in did him any good.  He says it feels weird being out like he doesn't belong here now. His Mum says this is where he's staying and sends him out for some celebratory booze.

Shane's mate Callum

Outside the off-licence an old man called Ted is upbrading some younger teens for smoking.  They call him a perv, then Shane appears and greets him warmly.  Ted says he would invite Shane round to his house, but his wife Mary took a tumble and won't go to hospital.  He then leaves and Shane's supposed "bezzy mate" Callum appears.  He hands some booze he bought for the kids over to them then he chats with Shane. He asks him if he wants to "get monged out your case" round at Tozzer's.  But Shane says he just wants to go home and get his head down.

Back home, later that night Shane sits in his room and contemplates things:

Narration: "His room was the same. It was him who had changed. That's what being inside did to you. It shrank your horizons but opened you eyes to a different world."

Shane's sleep is troubled...

He tries to sleep but is interrupted by his brother Craig climbing in through his window, very drunk.  Shane hustles him out and goes back to sleep, having a nightmare about being burned alive in a coffin.

The next day he goes out, a young girl is selling stuff buy the roadside.  He buys some war comics off her.  He goes to Ted's house, smelling a horrible smell as he gets closer - "stale piss and something as sickly sweet as pear drops."  He finds Ted in the garden round the back and they chat for a bit then Shane leaves.  We get out first inkling of the horror to come when Mary says through the window:

Mary: "W-Will you hurry up Ted? Only it's foraging again... It's f-foraging for food."

Shane and Ted chat.

Back at Shane's house his pregnant dog, Lucky, is on the verge of giving birth.  His Mum and brother both upbrade him for not getting her fixed. Then Callum appears.  Chatting and sharing a spliff in Shane's room he invites him to a party round at his place that night as his dad with be away.  So Shane attends and takes a couple of E's while there is much drinking and spliff smoking going on there.  Then Callum's dad appears earlier than he should have, very drunk and says:

Callum's Dad: "S'look at the bloody lodya. All Cradlegrave's scallies unner one roof. One bomb an' we could wipe out crime in one go."

Callum tells his sister Donna to deal with him.  Then he grabs some car keys he found and he and Shane steal a car to go get more booze.  On the way though they hit the young girl who had been selling stuff by the road. In a panic, Shane and Callum go to Ted's house saying a rival gang is after them.  Ted goes to tend to Mary while Shane and Callum discuss how they wiped their prints off the car and disposed of it.  Shane gets a call that Lucky is giving birth so he leaves Callum at Ted's for now.

The accident that injures Kiera

The sickly sweet smell is becoming overpowering and Callum takes a peek into Mary's room.  Off panel she says to him:

Mary: "Shut the door behind you.  There's a good lad. It's time for your feed."

The next day, Craig heavily implies that he knows Shane as party to the theft of Tozzer's car and the accident with the girl.  Then the police come round to interview Shane.  Callum wakes vomiting, still at Ted's house.  He doesn't remember what happened that night but feels like crap:

Ted: "Mary, my Mary.  She's taken a liking to you son.  She'll have you eating out of her hand if you're not careful."

He returns home and his Dad says the police have been looking for him in connection with the hit and run.  They pull up at the house before Callum can go get his head down.  No one on the estate will tell the police anything - "Cradlegrave code" - but Callum says they need an alibi and brings Shane and Craig to Ted and Mary's house.

Meet  Mary.

We finally see what Mary looks like, a horrific, lumpen, mess of a mutant. Ted says it's just cancer, but Shane says no way cancer does that.  But the smell is making it hard to think.  Callum pushes him closer to her and she takes a hold of him.  But then Shane panics and tries to escape.  The door is locked so he puts his hand through the window, slicing him arm up badly.  The amubulance arrive and take him away, while he is still freaking out.  Craig tells Callum that "you ran over Skully's kid.  You're in shit already."  Then he asks Callum to show him what he does round Ted and Mary's place.

Shane is in hospital for three days and Skully gets out and finds out who ran down his daughter using torture invloving superglue on Tozzer. Meanwhile Callum is suffering from withdrawals from something... he helps Ted home with his groceries and goes inside.  Then six more hooded figures appear outside Ted's house.  The next day sees Cal in his boxers, covered in sores, coming down from some unspeakable high.

Shane returns home, but his dog Lucky snarls and snaps at him and the pups are gone.  Thinking Craig might have something to do with their disappearance, he goes round to Ted and Mary's place to look for him.  He finds Ted's dead body, a bag over his head and pills in his hands.  He goes into Mary's room and is greeted by the grotesque sight of several youths suckling from her.  They are drinking her "black milk".

There's something about Mary..... *retch*

Craig: "You don't know the buzz bruv. It's better than drugs.  It's like shagging on 'E' only your whole bloody body's rushing with it."

Finally Shane gives in and drinks as well. The next day at breakfast his Mum tried gently, then bluntly to tell him his dog Lucky probably ate her pups after having so many litters. Shane is suffering withdrawals so goes round to Tozzer's to get some weed and finds Skully there, the drug supplier for the estate and man whose daughter they ran down.  He and Cal try to say they had nothing to do with it, but Skully threatens to torture them.  He say's it was fortunate it was only Keira they hit, as he isn't sure she's his and she's weird. But he still wants them to deal for him to make things up to him.

Poor Ted, fed to his own wife.

Later Callum and Shane wonder what to do with Ted's body, while Mary remembers her childhood, "her memories are like leaves in fast water she cannot quite catch."  Craig arrives at Mary's house with some food for her.  Then later recounts to some friends that he thinks he did a terrible thing that he can't remember.  We see him do it though, he cuts up Ted and feeds part of him to Mary.  All he knows is his hands are covered in blood he can't wash off.

In the evening Callum and Shane go out with the heroin Skully wants them to deal. The estate is going crazy. Cars on fire, fights, wheelie bins being thrown around.  Shane says he wishes he'd never come back to the estate and that he's not being Skully's bitch either.

Back with Mary, she rips apart at the "stomach" and starts giving birth to something.  Craig and two friends arrive to see her and find lots of little tumour like baby things on the floor round her. Meanwhile Callum and Shane are buying kebabs, there is a mob outside the takeaway.  Donna arrives and tells them the electicity has gone off in their street.

Chaos on the streets and an angry Skully bagging drugs

Skully is trying to track Cal and Shane down because they haven't done the job for him yet.  He is in the same room as Keira who wasn't killed in the hit and run, and she freaks him out with her staring.  Shane returns home and is attacked by his dog, he has to use a weight to bash in her brains in self defence.

Shane decides it's time to end all the bullshit.  We are shown more chaos on the estate, a murder, a possible gang rape, a cat being put in a microwave, a skewer of kebab meat bleeding and a gang of hooded youths taking away the tumour babies from Mary's house under their jackets.  Shane walks through the chaos of the estate armed with a molotov cocktail. He lights it and hurls it into Mary's house.

Shane deals with Mary the only way he can.

Narration: "He couldn't give a shit who was inside. They were part of the problem too. Part of the rot.  It's time to finish this."

Mary bursts out of the flaming house and when the estate denizens see her, they immediately attack and kill her, as she dies she remembers her childhood in Belfast.  Then for Mary it's all over.  But at Skully's place he opens the door to a gang of youths holding the toothy, tumour babies.  They set them upon him saying there's "a new gang in town" and Skully is eaten in front of Keira.

Skully is about to get horribly killed...

The story ends with Shane saying goodbye to his Mum and leaving the estate.

Narration: "She feels a swell of pride as he leaves.  Her boy heading out into the big, wide world. It's all she ever wanted for him.  Shane didn't have the words, in the end. He'd never been good with either. But that was alright.  He was out. He was going to stay that way."

Cradlegrave is an immensely powerful piece of work.  It doesn't demonise the underclass, it has a quiet, controlled fury about the people society has failed running through it though it doesn't overwhelm the narrative and become overly polemical.  The horror aspects are handled extremely well, it's perverse and sickening and as a metaphor for heavy addiction works extremely well. I'm a horror fiend, I love films, books and comics about horror and this made even a hardened horror nut like myself feel queasy, so good job! The lives of the people on the estate are shown with compassion and in a non-exploitative fashion with Edmund Bagwell's art giving it the verisimillitude I spoke of in the introduction.

Shane departs for a better life. Hopefully.

A place like the Ravenglade estate traps young and old in it's cycle of poverty and yet that becomes such a way of life that it's hard to take the step Shane does at the end and leave for good and it's fascinating that it was time spent in an institution that helped him make the decision.  Rarely are prisons seen as the forces for rehabilitation they aim to be both in real life and in fiction.  But there is no triumph in his departure, he's left an estate even worse off than when he arrived at the start, with the weird community that has sprung up around Mary's "babies" set to cause more hardship and horror.  The former top dog Skully may be dead, but what's going to replace him looks so much worse.... This was the first "recent" (published in 2011) 2000AD story I had read since I quit the comic in 1994 and I was amazed at how edgy it was, in content, storyline and dialogue.  It's made me want to start checking out more recent 2000AD collections to see what I have been missing.  And that's got to be an achievement of sorts too.