Tornado No 15: Look at all this boloney they’re printing about giant rats!! I won’t have any of this rubbish in MY paper!

The cover series has been branded – we had the Supercover Saga in 2000AD, now It’s Your Turn in Tornado. This one is a Belardinelli effort with a newspaper editor uttering the words in the title of this post, even as a giant rat crashes crawls through the window behind him. To be honest I think this whole image works as well as it’s going to as it is – Belardinelli’s linework, that caption – what more need be said?

The Big Editorial is very focused on next week’s issue – this seems strange to me – shouldn’t the trailers for next week be after this week’s issue?

The Lawless Touch starts off with news reports in the background from the state of Qarain. After the appearance of Volgans recently, I had to check whether Qarain had appeared elsewhere – apparently not, though I suspect it’s somewhere in the vicinity of Turkostan and Irania (M.A.C.H.1). Lawless is called to meet with Mother at a closed stretch of M25 (I’m guessing it was still under construction when this comic was published). He encounters a reckless sports car driver on the way. You know that the mission will involve the two having to work together, and it does. The pair end up parachuted into a middle eastern country and trying to recover a Tornado jet (nice tie-in with that cutaway centrespread). Making this seem even more M.A.C.H.1-ish is the artwork by John Cooper, though Lawless’ friction with his colleague is very Invasion. Words and fake country names provided by Tufnell.

Storm Innocent proclaims the newspaper headlines from Goodall and Kennedy. But Storm is still missing at least until Kane realises he’s going to want to collect Skarr the Wildcat. Managing to trap him long enough to explain that he won’t get any more trouble from the police, Kane enters Storm into a low key race which won’t attract so much publicity, with Storm learning tactics, waiting until the other runners are tired before heading to the front, and winning the race. For some reason this story is taking a break next week – I wonder if that was planned?

Victor Drago’s Black Museum of Villains: The Hanging Judge. As with last week, this isn’t credited, and the art style isn’t one I’m familiar with. It told me more than I knew about Jeffreys – he lived about a century earlier than I’d thought, and it’s good to see he ended his life in prison. I could do without the jingoistic ending of the feature though (about how contemporary British justice was fair for all, rich or poor).

The Angry Planet from Hebden and Belardinelli. Mars Inc tries to salvage its reputation by playing the hero and rescuing the Marshie colonists whether they want rescuing or not. Meanwhile beneath the ground Ralph the mathematically gifted manages to temporarily open the door to where Markham is, solve the equation and save the planet. The two are still trapped though, so can only go forward to discover next week: “the secret of the long dead”.

Blackhawk from Day and Azpiri present street battles between Blackhawk’s men and the natives, though ends much as it began, except now Blackhawk has a plan (involving his hawk herding waterfowl, by the looks of it).

Wagner’s Walk from Wright and White continues with the three good Wehrmacht Germans and the unrepentant Nazi still on the run. The promised Soviet planes don’t appear to hunt the escapees, but we do get a few pages of conflict between the Nazi doctor and the others, when the former steals the ambulance and leaves the others for dead. This doesn’t last long though, as the brakes on the ambulance are dodgy and he promptly drives off of a cliff. Foolishly the survivors don’t take advantage of this to hide and let their Russian pursuers think that they all died.

Victor Drago and the China-Town Terror! continues from Pepper and Dorey. The ‘clue’ was that there were now seven people in the Chinese dragon instead of six, as there was previously. Except the art wasn’t clear enough to show us this. If anybody reading this feels the urge to produce a detective-based comic strip, please make sure that clues like that are actually visible! Unfortunately for Drago and Spencer the dragon has a gun and after a chase the two end up in a box and chucked into the Thames. Is this the end says the next week tag – what do you think?

The Mind of Wolfie Smith by Tully and Vañó doesn’t reveal which of my options from last week they’re going for, but it looks like a down-on-their-luck trick magician is going to use Wolfie to revive their flagging career (in the meantime Wolfie is using his ESP to take orders in a greasy spoon cafe). As well as sometimes having cutlery-bending side-effects of using his powers, Wolfie also seems to attract trouble – after a successful first day working in the cafe, the cafe is about to get robbed…

Percy’s Inforation Centre is a new feature which answers reader’s queries and is essentially a World Record holder round-up. The most interesting answer to me involved how the British tackled the VI flying bomb – by actually making physical contact mid-flight to cause the bombs to crash-off target.

Captain Klep is credited this week, to Angus and Henson – I’m going to guess this was the same creative team as last week. It’s a tale of mistaken identity, involving trains and Klep. Better than an advert, but predictable with it.

Grailpage: Azpiri’s Blackhawk centrespread wins it for the panel of Blackhawk and his aides atop a thatched roof looking down at the deserted streets of Londinium as the city is invaded.

Grailquote: Judge George Jeffries: “The enemies of the king must perish… I am the law of the land!” (not quite Judge Dredd’s catchphrase, as the emboldening is in all the wrong places!)

Advertisement