Page 45 Review by Stephen
Collecting the original trilogy...
Of volume 1 our Stephen wrote...
Includes diary entries, a guide to countryside walks, a newspaper reported seized and censored by the military and newspaper pages in which the locals are alarmed at a proposed speed increase on the roads from 10 miles per hour to a positively reckless 15 mph!
Surely there must be someone out there as dim as me who didn't cotton onto the titular pun in Abnett and Culbard's THE NEW DEADWARDIANS ("The Nude Edwardians")?
Culbard had to tell me himself.
Which was embarrassing.
Abnett & Culbard seem to have a thing for alien invasion at the moment. In DARK AGES, now collected into a tpb, a cadre of 14th Century mercenaries wish for war and get what they want. Whoops.
Its alien invasion aside, this couldn't be more different. The leafy, tranquil and idyllic English country village of Lower Crowchurch is planning its annual fête over a few pints down the King's Arms. Judging by the open-topped motor cars parked up outside, we're looking at the early or mid-1930s. The wobbly-necked solicitor Gilbert Arrant is a shoe-in for the committee chair again. A natural leader, he's confident, encouraging, forward-thinking and assertive without being overbearing. His good friend Peter Minks, a journalist for the local paper with his hat permanently set at a jaunty old angle, will be in charge of the tombola.
"That's right, so bring along all your donations to me. Nice prizes, please. Not a lucky horseshoe again, Frank."
"It were a lucky horseshoe!"
"Not for the winner it wasn't."
Monacled Squire Umbleton will be demonstrating his revolutionary new agricultural engine which runs on diesel combustion, and of course there will be all the traditional competitions for cakes, jams, vegetables, flower arrangements, arts and crafts and possibly farm animals.
Joining them this year is retired old seadog Mr Clive Slipaway who has just moved in to Journey's End thatched country cottage and is giving its door and windows a fresh lick of nautical blue paint. He appears reserved, even wary, reluctant to engage - and certainly tight-lipped about the action he saw overseas in the navy - but reluctantly agrees to provide target practice with straw bales, tin targets and pellet guns. Nothing too dangerous, anyway…
Unfortunately for everyone danger is heading their way, regardless. I suspect you'll have taken note of the cover. War Of The 'Wolds?
The night before notorious poacher Fawkes and his chum Bodie saw a falling star crash to earth on the other side of Hightop. He gate-crashes the committee meeting to warn his fellow villages, claiming it killed Bodie, burned up in a fierce flash of light. Unfortunately Fawkes is a fox who's cried wolf way too often whilst under the influence of alcohol, and only Clive gives credence to his cry for help.
"I've -- I've seen enough young men gripped in terror to know what genuine fear looks like."
As Gilbert, Peter and Clive set off to investigate, something on six legs stirs at Shortmile End and scuttles towards Mrs. Swagger's cottage where she works in the kitchen, all alone...
It's all very Doctor Who. I'm thinking specifically of Spearhead From Space, John Pertwee's first story, with an element of Christopher Eccleston's second. Except, of course, this is anthropomorphics - I haven't mentioned that yet, have I?
It is, however, quite different from any anthropomorphic comic I've seen before. Compared to the likes of GRANDVILLE and BLACKSAD this looks far more like a children's story book with bright colours, bold, clean lines and shapes, and maps throughout which have aged at their edges. It has that magical, fairy-tale aspect of Alice In Wonderland, the protagonists looking like actors who've donned oversized animal heads as they might for a pantomime. Whereas most anthropomorphic characters come with bright, shiny eyes, here - Fawkesie aside, wide-eyed in terror - the old 'uns eyes are almost closed under the glare of the summer sunshine, giving them a terrific sense of age. When Gilbert's do open a little indoors they have a fantastical sense of otherness.
Gilbert's body language is exquisite, delicate, his hands afloat, fingers crossed or gently caressing his chin. Peter's more of a cheeky chappy while Clive is doleful, heavy and tired with saggy jowls. The one time in the first chapter that he becomes animated enough to exert his undoubted physical strength and authority, you can just about see his lower teeth bared to intimidate. It's masterfully drawn.
Abnett, meanwhile, relishes the formality and propriety of the strangers' interactions, especially once they're joined by contemporary fiction writer Susan Peardew whose eyes too widen at what she encounters: living, concrete proof that her ex-husband's successful "scientific romances" - which she edited and essentially rewrote - weren't such fantastical imaginings as they both assumed.
Unfortunately the smaller, spidery scouts which proved lethal enough on their own are soon joined by far more formidable, lantern-topped enemies and our heroes find themselves in a desperate quandary: outgunned, they are being hunted and their only hope lies in greater numbers; but if they run for a village they'll only lead their pursuers there and so doom its inhabitants.
Of volume 2 he wrote...
"Sorry about that. Punching your ex-husband."
"You only jumped the queue."
Welcome back to War Of The Wolds and the centre-piece of its trilogy. It's perfectly structured.
In WILD'S END VOL 1: FIRST LIGHT the dozy inhabitants of the sleepy hamlet of Lower Crowchurch (not necessarily in the Cotswolds, but equally green and pleasant) find skittering, metallic, spider-like creatures infesting its woodlands and click-clicking their way through its cornfields. The one thing scarier than an enemy you can't see coming is one which you can hear all around you. Lethal enough in their own right, they were as nothing to the far more formidable, lantern-topped alien which towered above them atop mechanical, octopoid tentacles. They barely survived its incinerating death-rays - some of them didn't - and that was but a single specimen.
Now Abnett does what any self-respecting science fiction writer would do and ups the ante. Considerably.
The survivors of the first encounter - ex-seadog Slipaway, local journalist Peter Minks,feline Susan Peardew and Alphie the piglet whose Auntie's now so much crackling - sought to raise the alarm, and the Ministry Of Defence is now both suitably alarmed and thoroughly paranoid. Lower Crowchurch has been quarantined by the British army, our valiant if fearful foursome have been arrested, and with no prior experience of aliens, the Ministry has lured in the only experts they can think of: science fiction writers.
The first is a self-satisfied, supercilious fat cat called Herbert Runciman who holds his more successful colleague Lewis Confelt in contempt for peddling "fanciful juvenilia" which "tarnishes the credibility of proper science fiction". But that's as nothing compared to the contempt Susan Peardew has for Lewis Confelt, for he's the ex-husband in question who's been hogging all the credit for the "scientific romance" novels which Susan effectively ghost-wrote herself.
In addition to the friction within the detainees - they're all detainees now - cracks begin to appear between the military and the Ministry who've sent a squirrel of a man called Mr Laidlaw who believes the aliens may have been around much longer than anyone thinks, and suspects they may even walk amongst them, disguised. The problem is that this paranoia extends to the heroic survivors - the only real experts he has at this disposal - whose experience he obstinately refuses to utilise.
Nothing is being done and while the clock is ticking, the fields begin clicking once more.
In some ways Culbard's storytelling here is similar to Jeff Smith's in BONE: uncomplicated character designs made centre-stage through uncluttered backgrounds and crystal-clear page compositions. Same goes for the colouring. But things really heat up which the flames start flying with all the searing intensity of a white-hot furnace.
In addition there are some spectacular full-page flourishes where you're either crooking your neck almost painfully up at the relentless, implacable invaders or looming over the relatively tin-pot army, with its tin-can tanks, from the aliens' P.O.V. which dwarfs them. Truly they don't stand a chance, but if you imagine their situation is dire, then there's a subtle piece of foreshadowing by both Abnett and Culbard which leads later on to a full-blown discovery on the final four pages so neatly reflected in the panel immediately preceding it.
Coming back both to the implacability, and the notion that an enemy you can hear on approach is even scarier than one that you don't see coming, it's noted by Herbert Runciman (who is as good as his word when it comes to extrapolation) that our invaders either don't have, need or at least use a written language. Here they show no evidence of language as we know it at all. They don't communicate. You can't reason with someone or something you cannot communicate with. That's even more frightening, and will prove Lewis Confelt's most bitter and specific disappointment.
And of the concluding part...
""Fire doesn't burn that way." Your words.
"You said in the incident report several times. And I've heard you say it since."
You may yourselves recall Clive Slipaway telling us more than once about the wartime incident in which his ship was dramatically set aflame and promptly sunk with substantial loss of life, though he himself manage to survive only to be captured by the enemy. Well, it seems there may have been more to the incident than meets the eye... at least according to intelligence officer Major Upton, who you would think might be in the know about that sort of stuff.
Now... where else have we seen strange flaming weapons that instantly incinerate things recently...? Ah yes...
Our anthropomorphic chums return, well, except for poor old Fawkes, who was last seen getting roasted alive to a degree that a Gruffalo would heartily approve of after finally going against a lifetime of conniving and chicanery and generally surviving just fine and dandy thank you to play the hero! Thanks to a lovely little amusing conceit though, you'll almost be convinced he managed to survive. It's like Messrs. Abnett & Culbard weren't quite ready to let go of the foxy blighter! But local journalist Peter Minks, feline Susan Peardew and Alphie the piglet are all back safe and sound. Well, they're back.
So, is there any hope at all of turning the proverbial tide against the global alien invasion of fire-breathing, flexible-limbed, giant streetlights? Indeed is there even anyone else left with the gumption to fight aside from our ragtag bunch of survivors? And even if there were, what on Earth could they possibly do? Or does the answer perhaps... [CENSORED]. Well... again, any chance they do have might be down to information that Major Upton is in possession of... Just how is it that she seems to know so much about this mysterious alien menace and what possibly represents the Earth's last, incredibly slim hope for survival...?
Yes, the concluding third of this amusing take on the classic retro-alien invasion theme is finally here! Straight out in graphic novel form this time, no messing about with the penny dreadful periodicals! As before, much interesting between-papers such as diary entries, government announcements, maps flesh out the fun. At least until it's seared off...
