Brian Bolland shows early signs that he’s cut out to be a cover artist (well, he started off with 2000AD as a cover artist, but this is a good one). Certainly better use of his talents than putting him on Walter…
Speaking of which – in the Nerve Centre, Tharg tells us that Walter has returned, on pages 15 and 32 of this prog… Better news is that Ant Wars is going to start next prog – can’t beat a good giant ant story! Paul Butler writes in to complain that the phrase “No Way” was used four times in prog 53, and that this phrase is obsolete. I’m sure that will never be used after the 1970s.
Dan Dare visits the Garden of Eden. In a start very much like the beginning of Star Slayer, the Space Fortress impinges on an alien race’s territory, who respond by shooting first, then giving Dare a chance to turn back. Dare, not respecting boundaries, carries on regardless. Making planetfall they land on a pastroal planet and are greeted by someone dressed like a puritan who emigrated to the Americas. By the way – an unnecessary in media res opening followed by a flashback. The flashback consisted of two small panels and didn’t add a whole lot.
Next page is an advert for Star Wars Palitoy figures – the classic Star Wars figures.
MACH Zero Part 3: The Prison. Zero gets captured and tranquilised, chained up, escapes, gets tricked by CG into believing that Cousin George has Zero’s son hostage. Meanwhile Gimpy gets chucked into the Thames, manages to retrieve his crutch (thrown in with him) and makes a request of The Three – no explanation given, but apparently mysterious leaders of The Brotherhood of tramps and vagrants.
The first of Joe Collins and Brian Bolland’s Walter the Wobot, Fwiend of Dwedd episodes is centred around Doc Fwankenheim convincing his servant Ygor to participate in a mind-transferrence experiment. I won’t begrudge it too much, as it’s only a one page story – unfortunately it’s just not funny.
Judge Dredd – Night of the Vampire, chapter seven of The Cursed Earth, opens with a robotic vampire draining the blood from a young victim. Meanwhile Dredd and Spikes are being fed at a nearby farmhouse when the father of the victim arrives, rustling up a posse to follow the vampire to their lair. The penultimate frame of this episode shows us our first glimpse of the last President of the United States and we’ll get some world-building on how the USA turned in to the world of the Cursed Earth, Mega-City One and Mega-City Two (Texas City hasn’t been expicitly mentioned so far).
Death Planet part six: Fire & Ice! Commander Lorna Varn may have taken centre stage in the first episode (including her appearance on the cover) but she’s not played much of an active role since – either making bad decisions or just failing in what she tries to do. In this episode she tries to save Melinda, the daughter of one of the colonists, but is dragged from the burning building before she can do so (and would probably have died if Cory hadn’t dragged her back – so even her attempt to be a rescuer results in her being a rescuee). Meanwhile we find out that the arsonists were on a scouting mission. When their as-yet-unnamed leader finds out that they far exceeded their scouting mission they pay the ultimate price, as the (female) leader wanted to deal with Varn herself. Despite Varn being fairly useless, there’s hope that this story might even pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test if Varn and as-yet-unnamed meet.
Meanwhile Cindy Lamont is still gunning for Gruber/Dimples. During a time-out, Louis hides his hand behind his back so that he can give a Future-Shock-like reveal of his adapted wrist circuits, which have been modified into an aerial to pick up closed-circuit computer messages. Grube/Dimples manages to put Cindy in a life-threatning state before she can take revenge for Eegle’s death. Clay sympathises with Cindy and comments that it didn’t look like an accident and, informed by Louis that Dimples actually is Gruber vows that no one else is going to be killed or maimed because of John ‘Giant’ Clay. Which is a bit rich, as he only selected Cindy for the squad to goad Gruber into making a mistake – nice way to deflect blame for Cindy’s current state in hospital, Clay!
Almost time for the grailpage, but we’ve got a second helping of Walter first. That’s probably the last time the words ‘grailpage’ and ‘Walter’ will be appearing in the same sentence… The mind transferrence between Walter and Ygor had mixed results. Walter’s mind remained in his own body, while Ygor’s transferred to a teddy bear, a hitherto completely inanimate object. The last panels sort-of rescues this episode, about which more later…
Grailpage: it’s that Bolland cover – Cousin George in the background, firing tranquiliser darts at Zero.
Grailquote: Just to prove that uninspiring stories can still have moment of brightness, this week’s Walter ends with the following dialogue – the destraught Ygor sobbing “What’ll I do, mashter?” Frankenheim: “You can stop crying for a start – or else you’ll get soggy!” Walter: “Perhaps a cup of fwesh synth-caf will bwighten your day!”
Back Prog Hack 