If you listen to comics podcasts, like the or Mega City Book Club one thing is almost a given. Listen for long enough and you will hear one name and, typically one title mentioned.

Alan Moore, and Watchmen.

There is little doubt that Watchmen is a classic, often cited as the greatest graphic novel of all time. Although some fans will remember collecting the individual issues episodically, back in the day. Most of us first experienced the story in the collected edition.

I’m not a comics historian so some of what I say here, from memory, might be inaccurate—I’m sure you nerds will be happy to correct me in the comments—I believe it was from around 1985 when The Dark Knight Returns, Swamp Thing, Watchmen and, a little later, Sandman were released. These titles, amongst a few others—many of which followed on from the so-called British Invasion—created the ‘comics for grown ups’ market. Of course, there had been comics aimed at adults around for years, but they weren’t snobbishly rebranded as graphic novels. Which is probably why they didn’t get reviewed in The Guardian newspaper—the vanguard of middle-class post-grad faux activism and cultural fartiness.

This era is widely regarded as the death of comics as we knew them. Alan Moore himself hated the term ‘graphic novel,’ and Pat Mills has cited the collector market as the cause for the decline of western comics in the late twentieth century.

But this isn’t an article about that. Go and Read Comic Book Punks, by Karl Stock if you want to learn more about that era, which burned so bright but faded so quickly. This is my random thoughts about one of the most respected writers to ever create a comic.

My Intro to Moore

I first saw Moore’s name in the credit box of a Tharg’s Future Shocks story in prog 303—the first 2000ad I bought with my own money. It was obvious to ten-year-old me that whomever this writer was, he was very clever. 43 years later Tharg’s Future Shocks still appear in the prog from time to time. They mostly suck. That’s not a criticism of the writers, I just think it’s a now defunct format. How can anyone possibly write a 4-page thriller with a shocking twist that hasn’t already been done better by Alan Moore, Alan Grant, or Grant Morrison, etc?

Back in those days, British weekly anthology comics would run strips that were, usually, 4-6 pages long. An ongoing story might have run for as many as 25 episodes (progs). But Moore had mastered the short, sharp shock format. You can buy a whole collection of his Future Shocks, Time Twisters, and more: here.

I grew to recognise his name. I think the first ongoing story of his that I read in 2000ad was Skizz. A very British, working-class take on the film, E.T. This was common in those days. Many for the strips running in British comics were inspired by films and TV. It was like a way of giving kids more palatable versions of the stuff their parents were enjoying. Jaws, Dirty Harry and The Dirty Dozen had all inspired popular comic strips in the 70s and 80s. 2000ad itself was created explicitly to cash-in on the popularity of some random, kids’ sci-fi movie that no-one has heard of since… Star Wars, I think it was called…

Anyway. I wasn’t a fan of Skizz at the time. It was quite talky, too grounded in reality, and, being set in modern day, working-class Birmingham (Moore’s home city) it felt out of place in a Sci-Fi comic featuring the likes of Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper. But when I revisited it a few years later, I could see the brilliance of it. A great, character driven story about a teenage girl who felt out of place in her hometown, forming an unbreakable bond with an Alien who was very much out of place on Earth. It’s not Moore’s best work by any stretch, but you can see all the Moore elements forming here. Well worth a read if you haven’t heard of it and can get your hands on a copy.

DR & Quinch is, in my opinion, among Moore’s best work, featuring outstanding artwork from a young Alan Davis. It’s an example of just how funny Moore could be. The Bo-Jeffries Saga from the pages of Warrior being another example of Moore’s early comedy work. Sadly, Moore himself has since distanced himself from DR & Quinch, claiming that the violence for comic effect has no lasting value.

I’ll get to Watchmen in a bit, and I’m going to skip the full bibliography and career retrospective, that’s not what this piece is. He also wrote some incredible one-off shorts for various 2000AD annuals, including the exceptional ABC Warriors: Red Planet Blues with Steve Dillon. But it was while he still wrote for 2000AD that he produced his first (and in my opinion best) masterpiece work.

The Ballad of Halo Jones was a uniquely, Moore-esque story of life in a far-future housing estate called The Hoop. It was, again, heavy on dialogue, low on action. It was a damning analogous critique of Thatcher’s Britain, the decaying inner cities, the jobless plight of the working classes and the repetitive mundanity of life, told through the eyes of a depressed teenage girl, who was desperate to escape.

So, she went out.

Never to go back.

Wonderfully illustrated by the late great Ian Gibson—sadly, the reprints have all been recoloured, which does an injustice to the original art, in my opinion. Unfortunately, the saga never saw its planned conclusion, ending at book three, after Moore fell out with the publishers of 2000AD over creator rights. Britain’s loss was America’s gain.

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Verbose Genius, or Pretentious Over-Writer

I think it’s fair to say that Moore is one of the most recognisable names in comics, not quite a household name outside of comics circles but probably a familiar name to many. If you had asked me in the mid eighties who my favourite comics writer was, I would have said Alan Moore. I loved Halo Jones and his initial run on DC’s Swamp Thing and The Killing Joke. 13-year-old me thought this, alongside Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was peak comics storytelling. As the years have gone by, my opinion has changed a little.

That’s not to say I no longer rate Moore, I really do. But if I was forced to list my favourite, or most personally inspirational comics writers I would list John Wagner, Alan Grant, Garth Ennis, Pat Mills and probably Frank Miller, too. There are others, but I feel like these guys, Wagner, and Grant especially, who have inspired me the most as a writer.

Alan Moore, it seems, was always trying to re-define comics writing, to push the medium, to find new ways of doing visual storytelling. At-least, that’s what he would say. But, in my opinion, he was a novelist posing as a comic writer. You only need to take one look at his scripts to realise how artist unfriendly he was. Although, in his defence, when I met Brian Bolland a few years ago, I asked him whose scripts he preferred to draw, Wagner’s or Moore’s. He said Moore’s because Moore’s scripts were so detailed they left nothing open to interpretation. I suppose there really is no right or wrong way.

There’s a lesson there for aspiring comics writers. Speak to your collaborators, where possible, and write a script to suit their preferences.

Anyone who has ever read a Moore script will know what I mean when I say ‘density.’ Most comic writers will write a paragraph of description per panel—in the case of John Wagner, not even that much! But not Moore, no, he wrote a page of description per panel. This is a method that was employed by some other writers, too. Moore mentored that Sandman bloke, and his scripts are similarly dense. I’ve not read much of Grant Morrison, but I have seen some pages of script from Arkham Asylum which were pretty close in density to Moore’s. You’ve probably heard how Moore’s co-creator of Watchmen, Dave Gibbons, famously used a highlighter pen to pull out the line or two of description he needed to know for drawing the scene. What makes those scripts even more interesting to read is how they are all hand typed and full of typos and corrections. They’re a bit of a mess to be honest. I sympathise with the artists. But let’s be fair, Moore must have been doing something right because so many of his books are cold classics.

I suppose it’s a little like that weird nodding head thing that Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe used to do. You certainly wouldn’t coach that to a young athlete but coaching it out of Paula might have made her slower!

Enough about the scripts, they are what they are. Let’s talk about his writing in general.

I think there’s little doubt that Moore is a master storyteller. Many writers have tried to emulate his style and failed miserably. When you aren’t, yourself, a genius and you try to write in the style of a genius you will end up looking like a twat.

Moore’s stories are almost always intricate, tangential and make heavy use of misdirection to subvert your expectations. That, I am certain, was a skill he honed while writing those early 4-page shockers for 2000AD.

But his writing, like his scripts, is dense. There is one chapter in From Hell that features two characters on a carriage journey around various London landmarks, as one character reveals all the hidden secrets in London’s high society. It’s massive speech balloon after massive speech balloon. It breaks all the rules. Typically, we are told that a panel should have no more than three balloons or text boxes and no more than about 25 words per balloon/caption. There are panels in this sequence that have a balloon which takes up half the page. Yes, it’s over written, it’s verbose, but, somehow, it works… just!

Where I have a slight issue with Watchmen—as great as it is—isn’t so much the density and verbosity of the storytelling. It’s the pages of text at the end of each chapter. 3-4 pages of a wall of text that is written with Moore’s trademark loquaciousness. More of a projectile vomited word-salad than necessary context or nuance, which takes you out of the comic experience. This, in my opinion, isn’t reinventing comics, it’s shitting all over the medium and feels somewhat disrespectful, not least of all to the artist.

I don’t know if he was the first to do this, I’m sure comics historians can educate me in the comments. But he most certainly wasn’t the last and, to this day, certain comics writers do this, thinking it makes them look clever, but it almost always feels pretentious to me. If you want to write a prose story, write a prose story, but keep comics as a visual medium.

That’s my opinion, other opinions exist.

This density of storytelling in Moore’s books is one of the reasons that I very rarely re-read any of his American comics. Every time I pick up Watchmen to re-read it, I am reminded of the task ahead of me and put it back on the shelf. I don’t feel that way about his 2000AD works, and it is for this reason that I still consider The Ballad of Halo Jones to be his best work.

In many ways, Moore’s comics are like David Lynch’s films. A multi-sensory experience that often breaks convention. Now, whenever we recognise elements of the Lynch formula in offerings from other filmmakers, we call it Lynchian. Lynch himself, had become the genre. Perhaps it’s the same with Moore.

The fact that Moore now considers himself to be a wizard who casts magic spells with words perhaps indicates that his eccentricity has evolved to the point that he has disappeared up his own sphincter. I’m sure he wouldn’t care what I think.

Final Words

Wrapping this up, I want to make it clear that I am not saying there is a right or wrong opinion here. These are my thoughts and feelings. I absolutely respect Alan Moore and his body of work. Some of his later stuff is mind-blowing but, the density of his writing makes everything a challenge. I do like talky comics, I love beautifully written dialogue, and I don’t mind when comics are ‘over-written’ if they are written well. But the writer needs to let the art breathe. The writer, I feel, has a duty to leave room for the artist to tell as much of the story as their own words. I feel that the special relationship between the dialogue heavy story and the subtlety of the artwork can combine to tell a compelling story—Dan Abnett is known for this, occasionally Ennis, too—done right, it feels less ‘over written’. Get it wrong and it becomes a chore to read. I also love when a writer sets their ego aside and trusts the artist to do the heavy lifting, especially in action sequences. That’s a lesson I have learned from working with talented artists, that fewer words sometimes works better for the purpose of the comic reading experience.

Moore, at times swamps the reader. Other, lesser writers, bore the reader and their comic would benefit from 50% less words. Which is exactly what Alan Grant told Moore when he was working as a sub editor on 2000AD and read one of Moore’s submissions found in the ‘slush pile’. Sadly, Alan Grant is no longer with us. But, even if comic fans are unaware of his contribution to comics as a writer, they all should be aware that he is the man who gave Moore his big break.

It’s fair to say that Moore changed the way many people look at or think about comics creation, and he inspired a generation of writers. I just sometimes wish he had applied that first piece of advice.

What is your favourite Alan Moore comic? Let me know in the comments.

By the way, there’s no Alan Moore related content there, but I’d appreciate it if you checked out our online merch store at SN-Media.redbubble.com

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Needle drops in films are when (usually) contemporary music is used for effect in a film or TV scene. It lands at a precise moment in a film and should feel, literally, like the deejay has dropped the needle on the record at the perfect moment. There are hundreds of needle drop moments from TV shows now. But when it comes to films, although we are seeing (hearing?) them more frequently now, it’s only really since the mid seventies that they have been used. Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are filmmakers who have created some iconic needle drop moments. Although, I am a fan of Tarantino’s films, I haven’t included any of his needle drops here. My criterion for this list is the song must be a pre-existing piece of music—not made for the film’s score. It must occur as mood music or in the background of the scene and not be a cast performance (otherwise I would just list every musical number from The Blues Brothers). Ideally, the music selected not only sounds cool but elevates the scene emotionally or acts as a juxtaposition to the action on the screen.

It should be obvious but there are major spoilers in some of these clips so consider yourself warned.

1. CREAM: SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE (Goodfellas)

Martin Scorsese is, undoubtedly, the master of the needle drop. You can watch any of his films and pick a dozen moments. Mean Streets has a couple of great ones, Casino and The Departed have a few. But, Goodfellas has too many to count. I have picked this one because, although brief, it’s a moment that changes everything. Robert De Niro’s ‘death stare’ tells the viewer that he’s going to kill Chuck Low’s Morris, and Jack Bruce’s iconic bass riff creates a sense of impending doom that heightens the tension perfectly.

2. BOBBY VINTON: BLUE MOON (American Werewolf in London)

It’s hard to find suitable needle drops in good horror films because they mostly have a unique score. This film breaks that mould with David’s transformation scene. The song is a tonal contrast to what’s happening on screen, and deliberately brings a little levity to what is otherwise a quite horrific moment.

3. DURAN DURAN: BEAUTIFUL WORLD (Layer Cake)

Watch from 0:59 to get the needle drop. I’m certain that every film that features a scene like this where the ultra-violence is juxtaposed against a piece of beautiful, mellow music exists solely because of the torture scene from Leone’s the Good the Bad and the Ugly. I love how this scene escalates. The way that Craig reacts to Harris’s Morty, just in his body language and with his eyes, instantly puts you on guard and signals that something bad is about to happen—you experience this whole scene through him. It’s a shocking moment that shakes the viewer to the core, and signifies a shift to higher stakes.

4. ELTON JOHN: TINY DANCER (Almost Famous)

This might seem like an obvious choice and, you might argue that it’s a cast performance, but I allow it. It’s a memorable and beautiful moment in Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece about a found family of musicians and groupies. But it is, actually, a coming-of-age story about a group of lost souls who find meaning in each other, and this scene is an emotional highlight.

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5. IRON MAIDEN: THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST (28Years Later: The Bone Temple)

The most recent clip on the list. Another horror film and, a moment that set the internet ablaze. It might seem weird or campy, but it makes perfect sense in the context of the story. Shame that cinema audiences were so underwhelmed by the previous film, they chose not to experience this scene in glorious surround sound. Great performances, a great choice of song and a moment that will be talked about for years to come.

6. HOUSE OF PAIN: JUMP AROUND (Kiss of Death)

I’m sure that few of you have seen or remember this film. But it’s a rare gem in Nicolas Cage’s catalogue of crazy, OTT performances. The film is decent, if not great. It’s a pulp crime thriller that came out riding on the coattails of Tarantino-mania in the mid-nineties. Choosing House of Pain’s party banger as the soundtrack to a brutal beating is brilliant and adds to the unhinged nature of Cage’s character.

7. QUEEN: DON’T STOP ME NOW (Shaun of the Dead)

Many of you might have chosen Wayne’s World for your Queen needle drop. That’s a great moment. But, for me, this classic scene works so well, with the song turning a somewhat mundane fight sequence into pure comedy gold.

8. IRON BUTTERFLY: IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA (Manhunter)

Major spoilers in this clip. Michael Mann made his name as producer of the iconic cop show Miami Vice that was famed for using contemporary music in its soundtracks. This scene, from his lesser known serial killer classic, uses the perfect song to elevate the sequence to legendary status. The way the song swells as the action ramps up amplifies the intensity of the moment and becomes the pay-off you feel like you earned.

9. RICHARD WAGNER: RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES (Apocalypse Now)

Another film with several needle drops. I didn’t include ‘The End’ by The Doors, because that’s the opening sequence and, although, this moment might seem like the obvious choice, it’s obvious because it is a classic. Unforgettable once you have seen it. I especially love how the music highlights the unhinged nature of Robert Duvall’s character and, indeed, the whole unhinged and ruthless nature of the US army’s ‘scorched earth’ policy.

10. KRS-ONE/ÉDITH PIAF: SOUND OF DA POLICE/NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN (La Haine)

Okay, I’m kind of breaking my own rules here, because this is technically a cast performance. But I think this brief moment is an exceptional use of music, because it perfectly illustrates the cultural boiling pot of the Paris ghetto where the film is set. The traditional French voice of Édith Piaf cut with US Hip Hop legend KRS-One, captures the film’s vibe perfectly. Also, the cinematography in this scene is simply gorgeous.

Final Word.

Opinions are like arseholes; everyone has one and no-one wants to see yours, but I never let that stop me from writing stuff like this. I have listed ten needle-drops here; I could probably list ten more. I’m sure you could name at least one, and some of you already did that when I posted a note teasing this article a couple of weeks ago. Please leave a comment and tell me what your favourite needle drop in a film is. I’d love to know.

If you want some horror-themed merch—either a t-shirt, hoodie or tote bag, check out the SN-Media merch store on Redbubble.

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I have written, a few times about various horror characters, their history and representations in popular culture. For example, Zombies, The Japanese Yūrei and Vampires. With the impending release of Robert Eggers’ forthcoming horror reinvention Werewulf—which, if his previous films are anything to go by, will be dark, gothic, beautiful looking, but not actually scary. Eggers, like Ari Aster, is one of a generation of filmmakers who specialise in so-called elevated horror. Which, if you ask me, basically means “I’m too pretentious to make scary horror films.”

There have been a number of werewolf films over the years but, in my opinion, most of them aren’t especially good. They usually manage to just miss the bull. A lot of filmmakers are often looking to subvert the genre or bring a new take on Lycanthrope lore, and that doesn’t always work for me. Maybe you disagree.

But here, I will present to you my 5 favourite werewolf films and a few honourable mentions. But let’s start with a little history.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

According to folklore, a werewolf is an individual who can shapeshift into a wolf or therianthropic hybrid wolf–humanlike creature either voluntarily or involuntarily due to a curse or other affliction. In modern fiction, especially film, transformations are often depicted as triggered by the full moon and transmitted by a bite or scratch from another werewolf. This has been expanded in some fictitious tales to include other ‘weres’ or ‘Wares’—people who transform into different animals, perhaps most commonly werebears, but also werecats, birds and serpents.

European werewolf folklore evolved alongside the witch trials but seems to have originated in pre-Christian Proto-Indo-European cultures, where Lycanthropy was used as a rite of passage for the kóryos warriors.

The modern term Lycanthropy derives from the ancient Greek lukanthrōpía which was used in relation to ‘Clinical Lycanthropy’, a condition where patients thought themselves to be wolves.

Okay, that’s the (very) brief history of the lore and terminology. Let’s dive into the films.

THE WEREWOLF

The 1913 short film The Werewolf is, I believe, the earliest screen representation of Lycanthropy. Written by Ruth Ann Baldwin and directed by Henry MacRae, it is based on an old American Indian legend of people who can transform into wolves, at will, to exact vengeance. Unfortunately, I have been unable to track down a version of this and, from what I understand the original was destroyed in a fire in 1924, which means I have not seen it. But it sounds like a very different take on the more traditional European werewolf that transforms against their will under the full moon. In this, a young Navajo woman transforms to take revenge against white settlers for killing her family. I don’t know about you, but that sounds frickin’ awesome!

The film that truly established the genre was 1941’s The Wolf Man, directed by George Waggner and starring the great Lon Chaney Jnr. It established most of the genre’s tropes. As was typical for the time, the monster is presented in a sympathetic light. I haven’t seen this since I was a kid but it is a classic. As you would expect, it is very much of its time, with some very hammy performances and effects that, although ground-breaking 85 years ago, look like bad Halloween costumes today. However, it’s still better than the 2010 remake, starring Benicio Del Toro, or the awful CGI effects in the forgettable 2004 film, Van Helsing.

In 1961 Hammer produced The Curse of the Werewolf, directed by Terence Fisher and starring the charismatic Oliver Reed. In this, the Lupine curse is bestowed on any child born on Xmas day as punishment for competing with the birth of Christ. The film features better effects but suffers from pacing issues and delays the werewolf reveal far too long. But it’s worth watching for Reed’s performance and Fisher’s gorgeous Gothic vision.

I’m not going to list every werewolf film ever made, but here are my personal favourites. I have picked these for strength of story, visual effects—great transformation scenes and for having genuinely scary or gory moments.

1. American Werewolf in London

I know this is the obvious choice, but it’s not just a great werewolf film, it’s a great film, full stop. Released in 1981 and directed by John Landis, it’s mostly remembered for the ground-breaking visual effects and stop-motion used in the mind-blowing transformation scene. A scene that still looks great today, in my opinion. I’m not entirely against CGI, it can help polish up practical effects, but when most film CG effects just look like pixels floating on a screen, it takes you out of the moment and destroys your attempts to suspend disbelief. There’s none of that here. The way David’s body twists and stretches is impressive and shocking. Seeing his hand and face grow and distort is genuinely eye watering. The film contains some classic lines, one of the best jump scares in film history, and… Jenny Agutter! What’s not to like? It’s also very funny in places, as this article by Alec Worley outlines:

Agent of Weird: Exploring the Write Fantastic

The Best Scene in 'An American Werewolf in London' (1981) Isn't the One You Think

Please be advised, this post contains detailed references to fictional suicide…

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9 months ago · 40 likes · 33 comments · Alec Worley

2. The Howling

Coming in the same year as AWIL, The Howling—directed by Joe Dante—takes itself a little more seriously and there’s none of the sympathetic, misunderstood monster tropes in this. After a traumatic encounter with a serial killer, reporter Karen White (Dee Wallace) visits a remote getaway only to discover a sinister truth about the inhabitants. In confronting her own inner demons, she is confronted by people with their own internal monsters. Another film that has some early pacing issues and some questionable performances, it is otherwise a very good, horror with some dark humour to lighten the load. But the real star is effects man Rob Bottin. The werewolves are believable, scary and, just like American Werewolf, this features a superb transformation scene. Only, here, it’s terrifying! These werewolves are bipedal and monstrous. The ending is good, but I feel let down by the fact that the final werewolf transformation looks more like a Yorkshire Terrier, than a Lycanthrope. Not as good a film as AWIL but it is certainly rewatchable.

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3. The Company of Wolves

Neil Jordan’s 1984 transgressive, grimdark fairy-tale divides audiences. It’s a twisted, dreamlike fever dream. A surrealist retelling of Red Riding Hood in which Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a young lady living with her Granny (Angela Lansbury). Granny warns Rosaleen “Never stray from the path in the woods, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet.” It takes a Freudian approach to the werewolves who are mostly, it seems, aggressive male sexual predators, preying on innocent young women. The film features some gorgeous set design, costumes and horrific monster make-up. It’s not to everyone’s taste, and feels a little disjointed at times, but it’s an otherwise mesmerising watch.

4. Dog Soldiers

Neil Marshall’s 2002 low budget horror-comedy combines Night of the Living Dead with The Howling to produce an exceptional, if slightly silly, low-key classic. The set-up is similar to Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort. A group of British squaddies are on manoeuvres in the Scottish wilderness when they encounter something very unexpected. The special Ops group they are training with are found slaughtered. Hearing the haunting howling sounds of wild animals at night the survivors encounter Zoologist Megan (Emma Cleasby) who confirms their worst fears. The film is well paced, has some frantic handy cam work and genuinely frightening looking werewolves. Aside from the horror, it also has some very quotable dialogue and a memorable performance from Sean Pertwee. Given the budgetary constraints the visual effects could be better but are well shot and still manage to add to the atmosphere. The cottage siege at the end is a frantic, adrenal experience.

5. Ginger Snaps

Coming just two years before Dog Soldiers, this is a Canadian film, written by Karen Walton and John Fawcett, and directed by Fawcett. Ginger Snaps follows two teenage sisters, Ginger, a tough, edgy Goth chick and her younger sister Brigitte—played by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. The girls have made a pact about dying together. They stage death scenes and film them, which makes them outsiders amongst their high school peers. When Ginger is attacked by a wild animal on the full moon, she starts to undergo changes, both physically and emotionally. The analogues of female puberty and sexual awakening are not subtle here, but it’s interesting to see a female-centric take on Lycanthropy 87 years after The Werewolf. Its budgetary constraints are clear to see when the creature is revealed. The practical effects aren’t great, but the model making is nice, given the relative cheapness, though the creature design could have been better, in my opinion. Nevertheless, Ginger Snaps has strong repeat viewing credentials and has become a cult favourite.

Honourable Mentions

That’s my top five. I think that most would agree that American Werewolf in London is, by far, the best werewolf film ever made. It may not be your personal favourite, but it’s a great film that stands tall over a sub-genre that, I don’t feel has been honoured as effectively as other horror creatures, like vampires or zombies. The obvious analogues for personal, physical, emotional or sexual transformation are all here in most of these films, but very few, in my opinion, succeed in making the monsters believable or scary. It’s mostly relegated to niche low-budget interpretations, while more mainstream attempts rarely take the sub-genre seriously enough. Maybe I did Eggers a disservice and Werewulf will be the film we’ve been waiting for after all, who knows?

With my favourites listed above, here are a few honourable mentions of other werewolf films that I have seen:

Teen Wolf: The Michael J. Fox teen comedy certainly has its moments.

The Monster Squad: a 1987 parody of the Universal Monsters films. Better than you might expect.

Trick ‘r Treat: A 2007 anthology with an all-star cast, features a werewolf in one of the linked stories, rather than being about werewolves.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow: Technically not a werewolf film (spoilers) but a watchable whodunnit, with a twist that lands.

While researching this I discovered there’s a Japanese film from 1975 called Wolf Guy, starring Sonny Chiba, which I now must see! Finally, it must be said that I haven’t seen every film with or about werewolves, so I leave it to you to fill those gaps in the comment section.

Incidentally, if you like the image at the top, that’s available to buy from out merch store at: SN.Media.redbubble.com.

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This weekend (as of the time I am typing this) will be Free Comic Book Day. I don’t have a local comics shop. In fact, I have never had a local comics shop. Forbidden Planet, which has always been the closest thing I have had to an LCS, has always been at least one train ride and several stops on the Tube away from me. But this weekend, I intend to make the trip into town to peruse the shelves, hopefully pick something up and acquire some free comics that will, no doubt, get passed on to a friend’s kid. I will be visiting Gosh! As well, which is a much better comic shop than the Forbidden Planet superstore on Shaftesbury Avenue. FB, these days is more of a toy shop and Manga specialist, which is fine, but not really my scene. It is, however, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the Covent Garden Craft Beer Co. So, I will have somewhere to sit and flick through my comics over a tasty, hazy beverage.

Anyway, I don’t have anything specific to write about this week, and I had to make myself write this. But self-discipline is important so here I am. Rather than the ‘Sweet Nightmares Recommends’ list that I usually do on weeks like this—which also includes film and TV recommendations, I thought, in honour of FCBD I would discuss some comics I have enjoyed recently. So here goes.

Troy’s Current Reading List

Yes, I call it a reading list, not a ‘pull list’ because I don’t have a pull list and never have (see the above sentence about not having a local comics shop). Most of the comics I read are on digital anyway, but there are some exceptions, like my first recommendation.

1. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns—compact edition

The DC Compacts range is pretty cool. Smaller, cheaper paper and certainly more affordable than most graphic novels. I believe this is a very smart attempt to cash-in on the popularity of Manga by producing comics that fit on the shelf alongside the likes of Chainsaw Man or Attack on Titan (look at me pretending to know my Manga). The print is a little small for tired old eyes, but the book is otherwise decent quality. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is celebrating its 40^th anniversary, so I thought I would treat myself to a physical copy of the second American comic I ever bought with my own pocket money—the first being Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. Honestly, these DC Compacts are great, who cares that they’re not printed on the wings of angels and prestige bound with gold leaf lettering, or whatever the f*ck you weirdos are into! They’re comics. You can see the pictures and read the words. What more do you need?

2. Lizzie Parsec #6

I have recommended this series before, I had been reading it on Globalcomix but creator, Hugh Newell has made the wise decision to continue the series by selling the digital copies on Itch (HERE). The first five issues are still available on Global and can be downloaded for free from Itch, but you can still choose to offer a donation to Hugh and support an indie creator. This is such a fun comic. It follows the misadventures of Lizzie, a Machiavellian space rogue who makes Han Solo look like a bigger goody two-shoes than Prince Adam from Masters of the Universe. It’s cleverly written, well drawn and very funny. If you enjoy good Sci-Fi comics, good satire and foul language, this one is for you.

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3. Action Special

With this being the 50^th anniversary year of Britain’s most controversial comic, Rebellion decided to publish a modern special featuring new takes on some of the key characters from the comic. Creators include Garth Ennis, Rob Williams, Mike Dorey, Staz Johnson, amongst others. All your favourite characters are here, Hookjaw, Dredger, Hellman of Hammer Force and Look Out for Lefty. These are more mature takes on classic characters, with a modern sensibility, but if you think that means tame you clearly aren’t familiar with these writers. It has horror, violence, satire, and dark humour. The comic itself is the same size as your standard British newsstand comics from back in the day, but with a stiffer cover and better paper throughout. Buy it, it’s great!

4. Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre #3

This is another one I have recommended before. Published by the apparently ailing Mad Cave Studios, the third issue of this mini-series doesn’t let up. Great, dynamic artwork that feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in a French bandes dessinées. The writing is over the top and excessive, but deliberately so. It’s a bonkers, in your face, satire of the US “war on drugs” told in the style of a straight to video eighties action movie. Think Tango and Cash meets Family Guy meets Spitting Image. There’s even an analogue Nancy Reagan narrating the story. It’s mad, it’s hilarious and it pulls no punches.

5. Pretty Hate Machine #1

Another one from Mad Cave. Not to be confused with the Nine Inch Nails album, this comic is co-written by Tim Seeley. If you have read any of his stuff before, you already know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s a darkly comedic horror thriller that contains themes of dealing with grief. In true Seeley fashion it has some cool and clever dialogue and some truly shocking horror moments. The artwork is by Hanka La Marca—nope, I’ve never heard of them either, but this comic looks great, so that’s definitely a name to watch out for. It’s only issue one, so who knows how this one will pan out but, given that Seeley’s career is more hit than miss, I am optimistic.

6. 2000ad: Brink

I subscribe to 2000ad digitally and read it every week. It’s an anthology, which means it can be hit and miss, at times. Recently, I’ve felt like there have been more misses, than hits. But you have to roll with the punches. However, we are often treated to the presence of Dan Abnett’s masterful storytelling, and the current run of stories includes an Abnett classic. Brink—with Ian Culbard on art duties. Brink could be described as True Detective in space. It’s a slow burn, supernatural police procedural thriller that is, basically page after page of talking heads. Yeah, that’s not great if you are reading it in weekly 6-page instalments and want more guns and more explosions every week. But the stories are deep, dark, and absorbing—read the collected editions in single sittings and be blown away. Like I said, it’s a lot of talking heads but every word, every facial expression, and every minor plot point matters and, eventually, comes back to bite you on the arse if you’re not paying attention. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I have read every series of this so far and love it.

That’s All Folks

Only a brief one this week. Who knows what next week will bring. Have you read any of the above comics? Are you reading anything at the moment that you want to recommend to me? Let me know in the comments. Oh, and if you happen to be in the capital for FCBD, meet me around lunchtime at the Craft Beer Co opposite Shaftesbury Theatre and buy me a pint of hazy pale ale.

Troy

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Vigilantes are a big thing in fiction. Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to give to the poor. The Scarlet Pimpernel, who rescued the rich and privileged from facing working-class justice. Zorro, the aristocrat who fought for the weak and marginalised against the parasite-class. The Punisher, the gun-loving libertarian wet dream who—you guessed it—punishes bad guys, even if they wear a uniform. That’s just to name a few.

The British Sci-Fi comic, 2000ad wasn’t shy of inserting anti-authoritarian, anti-racist or subversive narratives or mocking the establishment into its comic strips. After the public outcry over the short-lived and controversial Action comic. Lessons were learned. The conservative mainstream in Britain was not ready for comics aimed at kids that openly advocated violence against the establishment. So, 2000ad creator, Pat Mills—riding the waves of post-Star Wars resurgence in Science Fiction decided that, creating a boys comic packed full of Sci-Fi stories where the violence was perpetrated by or against robots, aliens or analogue Russians (we were still knee deep in the Cold War at this point) might just work.

Work it did. But, despite the presence of Judge Dredd and an edgier version of Dan Dare Pilot of the Future, it wasn’t until the early 80s that 2000ad really found its feet. The Pat Mills and Kev O’Neill creation of Nemesis the Warlock encapsulated that anti-establishment ethos, perhaps, more than any other story in the comics history.

So, let’s talk about it.

Enter the Terror Tube.

Nemesis first appeared (sort of) in prog 167, an issue with a musical theme. It was 1980 and Paul Weller’s The Jam were rocking the charts with their watered down, but very catchy, post-punk pop-rock. Mills was inspired by the song Going Underground. So, along with artist Kev O’Neill, they created a mind-blowing short story about a massive underground traffic tunnel system—actually a man-made white and black hole—where a marauding alien spacecraft called a ‘Blitzspear’ rampaged at speed, destroying ‘Terminator’ vehicles. The Terminators, were the armoured, authoritarian human police force commanded by a future iteration of the evilest man to ever live, Tomas de Torquemada.

We never actually saw Nemesis, only his mysterious ship.

It was an incredible debut of one of the greatest and most memorable comic characters of all time.

If you have never read Nemesis the Warlock, I’ll try and minimize the spoilers, but there will, inevitably be some ahead so read with caution.

Termite, we discover, is the name for Earth in the far future. The ruler of Termite is the Grand Master, Torquemada. A pointy helmet-wearing authoritarian bigot who has declared war on deviance. To be clear, deviants, to him, are anyone or anything that looks different, but especially aliens—he hates aliens! A clear analogue for the Spanish Inquisition and KKK but later demonstrated to be far more broadly about humanity’s unique capacity for prejudice, violence and cruelty against its own kind. Although human, Torquemada develops an amusing ability for resurrection, spending much of the earlier books as a body-hopping spectre, before being killed again, only for a version of him from an earlier time to be brought back through the time tunnels. One memorable scene from book I sees Torque’s ghost inhabiting the dead bodies of Termite soldiers, to fight Nemesis as a series of zombies. Mills also uses an interesting narrative device where, in the later books, Torque’s body is visibly decaying, as though he is so evil his body cannot contain it. Pat Mills’ comics always have very strong anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment narratives—just look at Charley’s War (the best anti-war comic ever). Mills had an abusive upbringing in a Catholic boarding school and clearly despises the abuse of children and women by the church and other institutes of authority. So, when Torquemada repeats his personal mantra “be pure, be vigilant, behave!” you know exactly where Mills is coming from.

It is in these later books that Mills reveals Torquemada shares an ancestral lineage with every evil man that has lived. Not only the original Grand Inquisitor himself, but also genocidal US Cavalry General John M. Chivington, to Hitler himself. Mills would often insert actual historical accounts or direct quotes from the evilest men in world history, just to show that no matter how extreme and over the top Torquemada seemed, pure evil has always been amongst us and always will.

If Torquemada is the evilest, most memorable villain in all of comics, Nemesis is something else entirely.

A cloven hooved, horned, demon who breathes fire, wields the ‘Sword Sinister’ and rides in his Blitzspear which, we later find out, is a living creature that was tamed and embalmed by Nemesis as a rite of passage to manhood… Warlock-hood?

Nemesis is a self-appointed champion and leader of an anti-Termite resistance whose catchphrase ‘Credo’ is an obvious nod to Mills’ disdain for the organised religions. Nemesis follows the philosophy of ‘Khaos’, something that becomes increasingly apparent as we learn more about his motivations and, often, erratic behaviour.

Nemesis is quickly established as a cool anti-hero and vigilante very much in the Robin Hood/Zorro mould. He fights against the xenophobic, authoritarian murder-cult created by Torquemada, claiming to be fighting for freedom and righteousness. But we later learn that this is all just a cover for his true motivation—to spread Khaos. By the later books it is very clear that Nemesis cares only about himself and is very much the mirror of Torquemada, there is little to choose between them; it’s just that Torquemada’s cruelty is not hidden. Sure, he weaponizes ethnic purity and echoes all the common narratives of racist far-right media outlets and populist politicians, but there is no doubting who or what he is. Nemesis, on the other hand, is far more deceptive.

Initially, thanks largely to O’Neill’s gloriously grotesque artwork and warped imagination, Nemesis the Warlock portrays an aesthetic that one might call neo-Medieval and is more sword and sorcery than it is Sci-Fi. The Terminators wear plate armour and elaborate ghastly looking helmets, combat is mostly hand-to-hand and there is plenty of gore. It’s probably a good thing that these comics were printed in black and white, otherwise they would have been heavily censored.

As the story evolves, so too does the aesthetic. The middle books, illustrated by Bryan Talbot were, pretty much, steampunk, before steampunk was even a thing. But, before we get into that, let’s look at the supporting cast.

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Supporting Characters

There are a number of fascinating supporting characters in the Nemesis the Warlock books. The most frequently appearing and important of which is Nemesis’ sidekick, Purity Brown. A human alien ally who hates the Terminators and Torquemada especially, because he killed her father for having a ‘deviant dream’. Yes, in Termite, they have a thought police, who monitor your dreams and punish you for having impure thoughts. Purity is recruited by Nemesis as a freedom fighter, and she is often seen fighting by his side. In later books, although never shown, it is heavily implied that she and Nemesis are intimately involved. Torquemada refers to Purity as “she who trucks with deviants”. Mills often writes strong independent females and clear matriarchal narratives. Despite writing boys comics he was, perhaps, the most feminist writer in comics at the time. So, in later books when we discover that Nemesis has been using hypnosis and mind control on Purity and, even manipulated her into having a sexual relationship with the man she hates more than anyone—Torquemada—but then wipes her memory, it is a shocking reveal of Nemesis’ true character. I won’t give any more spoilers, but Purity does get redemption.

Other recurring female characters include Torquemada’s long suffering wife Candida (naming the wife of the evilest man ever after a yeast infection is sick and hilarious). She is clearly trapped in a narcissistic relationship and is repulsed by her ghastly spectral husband in the earlier books but remains loyal to him out of a strong sense of fear and learned helplessness. She is eventually driven to madness.

Other female characters who are absolutely fascinating are the female Warlocks. When we are introduced to Nemesis’ wife, the white Warlock Chira—a quadruped, centaur-like version of Nemesis, she is in combat with Magana, the black Warlock—who has challenged Chira to win Nemesis as hers. In Mills’ world, the female is more deadly than the male and Chira is stronger and more powerful than her husband. Together, Nemesis and Chira have a child, Thoth.

Thoth is a baby Warlock and the son of Nemesis. When Chira is attacked by Terminators, she transfers all her powers to the baby, instantly making Thoth the most powerful Warlock in the universe. Something that comes back to have massive repercussions throughout the middle books, with Thoth being responsible for the death of Torquemada and Candida’s children and wreaking havoc through the time tunnels along with his pet T-Rex, Satanus.

The Gothic Empire series also saw the return of the ABC Warriors, the unit of battle hardened mechs led by Hammerstein. The ABC warriors are a 2000ad legend in their own right but this made for an interesting cross-over.

Books and Artists

As great as the stories, world building and characters were, for many, the main appeal was the artwork. The artist who designed Nemesis and Torquemada and so many memorable moments from the early books was Kevin O’Neill, the sadly missed legend of early 2000ad. His grotesque artwork and sick imagination were perfect for this strip and set a standard that no other artist could match.

After O’Neill left 2000ad for higher page rates in the states, British Indie comics legend Bryan Talbot was brought in. Although his style is vastly different to Kevin’s and the change was jarring, he quickly established himself on the strip. At no point did he attempt to copy Kev O’Neill (as if that would be possible) he took the aesthetic in a different direction. The Gothic Empire had already been defined by O’Neill, but it’s Talbot’s darker, noir-like inks that gave these books a unique appearance that helped to establish the steam-punk aesthetic and took Nemesis the Warlock in a new direction.

Between O’Neill and Talbot, Jesus Redondo illustrated Book II. Already established in British comics, Redondo brought a subtler, more organic and emotive style to the strip that acted as a counterpoint to O’Neill’s crazy, punk-like grotesquery.

David Roach stepped in for Book VIII: Purity’s Story. I believe Roach was still in his teens at the time and this was his first comics job. This blows my mind! It was some of the nicest, most refined, fine-art drawing style I had seen in comics. Roach is renowned for drawing beautiful, realistic looking women and was the perfect choice for this particular book, which was subtler and more emotional in its storytelling than other books in the series.

In the last couple of books, we were also treated to Clint Langley and a young Henry Flint, both great artists, Flint would go on to become a Dredd legend and Langley would work frequently with Mills on the ABC Warriors. But one artist who divided opinion, and who I have come to absolutely adore is the enigmatic John Hicklenton.

Hicklenton is described by Pat Mills as the Jimi Hendrix of comic artists, and I can’t think of a better description. He was about 21 when he worked on Nemesis, his style was crazy, erratic, distorted, it literally fucked with your mind! Like, marmite, it seems you either love Hicklenton’s art or you hate it. Clearly a very talented draftsman, who could match the likes of Glenn Fabry or Howard Chaykin for character and anatomy, but who could also challenge Sienkiewicz for audacity and originality. Sometimes hard on the eye, often difficult to follow the flow of his layouts, but never dull!

Hicklenton had a progressive form of Multiple Sclerosis. I can’t help but believe that this condition, which would have caused painful and crippling muscle spasms, was the reason for the twisted, distorted, pain-wracked characters he rendered on the page, which were a sight to behold. Sadly, John’s condition worsened and he chose assisted dying in 2010. He was 42.

Final Word

Nemesis the Warlock sits alongside Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog on the Mt. Rushmore of 2000ad strips. An exciting, edgy, challenging read with some of the greatest comic art ever seen. Nemesis would have appalled American comic fans in the 80s. Too darkly satirical, too anti-establishment, too ambiguous in its morality and, too on-the-nose politically. Mills’ voice is strong in all his work but Nemesis, alongside Charley’s War remains some of his best and most important work. It definitely had an influence on my young mind. I often joke that Pat Mills radicalised me and it’s probably fair to say that the comics were a part of the reason I always hated mainstream pop music, preferring heavy metal, punk rock and hip hop, even when my school mates were obsessed with Wham or Bros. It’s probably why I always hated babyfaces like Hulk Hogan and rooted, instead, for the heels. 2000ad is the reason I love horror films and have never trusted politicians, regardless of their leanings.

80s 2000ad was a different beast. It was cooler and edgier than the slightly more vanilla, post-grad Guardianista version we have today. Don’t read Nemesis and expect a black-and-white good vs evil superhero story, where the libertarian strongman shows up and punches the baddie in the face to win the day. Expect the unexpected, expect radical subtexts, a lot of socio-political satire and amazing artwork. Expect Khaos.

CREDO!

Troy

Nemesis the Warlock is available from the 2000ad webshop: HERE

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You can make an argument that we are currently in a new golden era of cinema. I know that cinema attendance is down dramatically compared with previous generations. But that’s partly due to every film being available to stream online a few weeks after its release, to the inflated price of cinema tickets and also due to most mainstream film franchises being, frankly, a bit shite.

Barbie and Oppenheimer got audiences back into cinemas and, I say with confidence, that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, because of the ground breaking distribution deal Coogler signed with Warner, will be seen as this generation’s Pulp Fiction for its cultural impact. When people look back to the last Hollywood golden age, in the 90s, Pulp Fiction is often held up as the flag ship of that era. It’s a great film, Tarantino’s true masterpiece. But, the year it came out—1994—wasn’t, in my opinion, the year that defined that era. 1992 was, so let’s dive into that.

The Blockbusters

The 90s was a very different cinematic landscape compared with today. Going to the cinema was cheaper, I, for example, had a membership to my local cinema that cost me about eighteen quid a month and allowed me to go as much as I wanted. I would often go two or three times a week and would regularly see films I liked multiple times at the cinema. These days, a cinema ticket, a bucket of popcorn and a cup of Sprite costs about 30 quid!

The early to mid-nineties saw a significant shift in the style of films and stories being shown on the big screen. After the glossy decadence of the 80s, filmmakers started leaning back into an aesthetic and style of storytelling that had more in common with the previous golden era in the early 70s. More realism, stronger scripts, less glam. Like in the 70s, when the pioneers were young maverick auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. The 90s saw the rise of Tarantino, David Fincher and Peter Jackson, among others. But it was, in my opinion, 1992 that laid the groundwork and set the new standard.

Like any other year, 1992 had more than its share of successful mainstream films and about a dozen or so blockbusters. Films like romantic drama The Last of the Mohicans, Batman Returns (the best Batman film, in my opinion), A Few Good Men and the classic Unforgiven being some of the highest profile hits that year.

There was also the usual slew of straight to video, mostly crappy action films—the kind of poorly written films that are marketed solely at teenage boys who are turned on by men with muscles. Easily the best of that lot was Steven Segal’s Under Siege, which is actually pretty good.

But none of these films changed anything, and would have been produced regardless of creative trends.

The Gamechangers

There were so many influential films that came out in 1992 it’s almost beyond comprehension. Aside from the mainstream cash-cows there were films that either introduced or established filmmakers who would go on to have a profound impact on modern cinema. Films that changed the way people thought about screenwriting, cinematography or action choreography. The kinds of films that made young people sit up and want to become screenwriters or directors themselves.

Here’s my list of the most influential films of that year. If you think I have missed anything then drop it in the comments.

Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)

Before Pulp Fiction, or True Romance, there was Reservoir Dogs. This film needs no introduction, it redefined the rules for dialogue in screenplays and was the film that made 17-year-old me want to be a writer. I came out of the cinema, turned to my mate and said, “that’s changed everything, I’m never watching another mainstream Hollywood film, again!” Of course I did, but a switch had been flipped in my head, I had seen Scorsese or Peckinpah films before, but they were relics found in the local VHS library, not shown on the big screen.

Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi)

It’s not the best film in the Evil Dead trilogy, but it is creative, edgy and immensely enjoyable. But it was the third in a series of films that propelled Sam Raimi on to direct the blockbuster Spiderman trilogy a decade later.

Braindead (Peter Jackson)

No doubt himself influenced by the Evil Dead films, New Zealand’s Jackson had already gained some attention for his very low budget cult classic Bad Taste. Braindead got more attention and showed the world what a visionary Jackson was—just imagine what he could do with a massive Hollywood budget, we wondered. Would the Lord of the Rings films have been made if not for Braindead?

Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley)

Another film that redefined the nature of film screenwriting. Written by David Mamet and adapted from his own stage play this film has some killer dialogue, a killer cast who all delivered powerful performances and deserves to be talked about far more than it is now.

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Hard Boiled (John Woo)

This was not the first film to establish John Woo and Chow Yun Fat’s so-called Gun-Fu style, but it was the film that made Woo a household name in the west. Light on plot or character but heavy on vibes, these films changed the way action movies are made forever. Hyper-stylised visuals, slow motion action sequences and incredible cinematography would become the standard for films of this type. Hard Boiled may well be the reason that the Bourne films, the Craig era Bond films and the John Wick films look the way they do. You could even argue that by turning western eyes to Hong Kong cinema, Woo helped prime audiences for what was to come with the Wachowskis’ Matrix films.

Man Bites Dog (Benoit Poelvoorde)

This Belgian mocumentary is dark, shocking and unsettlingly funny in parts. Filmed in black and white and presented in a documentary style with some excellent handheld camera work, this gritty dark comedy perfected a style that has been copied many times since.

The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)

A hit in the UK, a film set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles it featured a surprise turn by Forest Whitaker, who would go on to be a big star in his own right. But it’s the shocking twist that stunned audiences—a twist that might be considered insensitive by today’s standards—but also inspired a memorable parody in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But it did at least acknowledge that Trans people exist, almost 30 years before the far-right selected them as their latest bogeyman.

Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright)

Another antipodean film. Romper Stomper not only introduced the world to future superstar Russell Crowe. It was both shocking and sickening in its honest portrayal of a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads terrorizing the local Asian immigrant community. Grittier and more unapologetic than the comparatively glamorous American History X, it’s a hard watch, but an important one.

El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez)

Another low budget, foreign language action movie that redefined the genre and was significantly better than almost every American action movie from that year. It’s not perfect, and lacks the star quality of its celebrated sequel, Desperado, but it’s probably fair to say that El Mariachi and Hard Boiled collectively rewrote the formula for modern action films moving forwards.

Candyman (Bernard Rose)

It was only the year before that Hollywood finally accepted horror films as a legitimate genre, when they awarded everything to Silence of the Lambs. Candyman was well received, with moderate mainstream success and has since garnered a strong cult following, despite being a lean year for good horror. Its themes of urban decay and white guilt still resonate and the performances from Virginia Madsen (sister of Reservoir Dogs’ Michael) and Tony Todd are unforgettable.

Juice (Ernest Dickerson)

1991’s Boyz N the Hood made ‘hood movies’ mainstream, Juice took the concept of working-class black youths struggling in the ghettos and crafted a thrilling crime narrative that called back to the James Cagney era of American noir thrillers. It also introduced the world to Omar Epps and proved that Tupac Shakur was more than just a rapper. I guess you could say that all eyes were on him!

Thunderheart (Michael Apted)

A film that unfortunately flies under the radar. It fictionalised the true story of the 1973 Wounded Knee incident. 90s American filmmakers, like their maverick 70s counterparts took more narrative risks and were not afraid to confront uncomfortable truths about American society. It’s a strong neo-western conspiracy thriller with a star turn from a pre-Tombstone Val Kilmer. If you loved the Vertigo comic series Scalped, you need to see this.

Honourable Mentions

The above films feel relevant for reasons beyond how good, or not they are. But they were not the only films that would have an influence beyond their time. 1992 also saw the release of Jackie Chan’s Police Story 3: Supercop, the film that introduced the west to Michelle Yeoh, who just a few years later would be co-starring alongside Pierce Brosnan as the most kickass Bond girl ever.

We also got treated to not one, but two cult films starring Rutger Hauer. Split Second—a low budget sci-fi horror that is a lot more fun than it should be. The second, and more significant outing for Mr Hauer was Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Despite moderate box office and poor reviews, it spawned one of the most popular TV series of the late ’90s/early ’00s. Finally, Trespass, the Walter Hill directed crime thriller starring the two Bills (Paxton and Sadler) and the two Ice’s (T and Cube) each of which is an icon in their own right.

I feel confident in saying that based on the evidence presented here that 1992 was definitely a golden year for cinema and, whereas I’m not saying that the 2020s can compare with the 1990s for volume, quality or influence, I think future generations will look back upon this era fondly and cite filmmakers like Coogler as major influences. It’s especially been a strong time for horror, with Sinners, Weapons, The Bone Temple, and others all drawing strong reviews.

What do you think?

Troy

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I’ve seen a few articles on here lately that have listed great characters from horror films and, whereas I might eventually get around to doing my own version of that, I thought I would do a slightly twisted version of that. Why? Because I wanted to lighten the load a little bit. The world is burning, you can make a very strong legitimate argument for why the US government is technically following a fascist ideology. It appears that millions of people are so ill-educated that they genuinely believe that the Artemis II mission is completely fabricated and simulated with AI — typically the same kind of people who think it’s safe to drink raw milk, that vaccines turn children gay, and that “Looksmaxxing” is a perfectly normal behaviour that isn’t, at all, steeped in latent homosexuality.

Anyway, horror films are sexy. There’s always been themes of sex, sexuality and sexploitation in most horror films. Christopher Lee’s Dracula, for example, exuded pure masculine sexuality. The Exorcist is about a girl going through puberty. Halloween was about a psycho so repressed that he murdered anyone who dared to enjoy sex. Not to mention a film like Under The Skin, where Scarlett Johansson’s character uses sex to lure men into…whatever the fuck that was!

So, here’s my very heterosexual, possibly borderline misogynist list of some of the sexiest ‘chicks’ in horror. Yes, I said chick, sue me!

But I didn’t want to make this too obvious, so I have opted for some lesser known or less spoken about characters. So you won’t find Santánico Pandemonium on this list. Not because Salma Hayek isn’t one of the most beautiful and sexy actors in the world, but because it’s just too damn easy! Likewise, Kate Beckinsale’s Selene doesn’t appear here, either. Was Beckinsale hot in that skin-tight outfit? Absolutely, but it’s too obvious and those films just aren’t all that good. But if you want to include them in your list, go ahead and then stick that list in the comments — let me know who your horror crushes are.

1. Asami from Audition (Eihi Shiina)

If you haven’t seen Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999) go find a copy and strap yourself in. Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) and a TV executive friend of his set up a fake audition for young actresses to find him a new partner after being recently widowed. Right off the bat, if you are lying and manipulating young women into being in a relationship with you, you surely know that’s no basis for a solid relationship, right? Well, that certainly comes back to bite Ryo. Eihi, who plays Asami, is most certainly very beautiful and angelic looking — the perfect actor to play the part. The act of innocent naivety that she portrays tricks not just Ryo but the viewer, for half of the film, before we start seeing glimpses of the darker aspects of her personality. All leading up to that teeth-grindingly shocking finale. Her natural beauty aside, Asami proves to be deliciously psychotic and, maybe this is why I have always had relationship problems. There’s something very sexy about the way she dons those rubber gloves and chants “kiri kiri kiri” while torturing Ryo.

I should seek therapy, shouldn’t I…

2. Julie Walker from Return of the Living Dead 3 (Mindi Clarke)

The obvious choice would have been to pick Trash (Linnea Quigley) from the first film but, again, that’s too obvious. Besides, Trash was one of the visual inspirations for my character Roxie (soon to be appearing in her comics debut). But Julie Walker is a different gravy. A cute, teenage rock chick, just hanging out with her boyfriend Curt and being cool. When she is killed in a ludicrous biking accident, Curt takes her corpse back to the military base his father works at and has her injected with the toxin that turns corpses into zombies. Her transformation is eye-catching to say the least. She goes from cute rock chick to edgy, sexy, zombie goth chick — Suicide Girls have nothing on zombie Julie! Quite where all those piercings came from I’ll never know, but who cares? This film literally made me want a zombie girlfriend of my own… what was I saying about therapy?

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3. Star from The Lost Boys (Jami Gertz)

Just to prove that not all my sexy horror crushes are psychotic or undead… okay, she’s a vampire, but whatever. Star stole my heart the very first time I saw 1987’s The Lost Boys, and I’m not sure I ever got it back — just look at those eyes! Jami Gertz appeared in a few films between 1981 and the early 2000s but was mostly seen on TV shows like Square Pegs, ER and Ally McBeal. But she was never hotter than as the cool biker chick (wait, is that my thing?) clinging to the back of Kiefer Sutherland’s David. She seduces Jason Patric’s brooding Michael and turns him into a half vampire. I know The Lost Boys is a big deal, but I feel like Star just doesn’t get talked about all that much. I suppose she just gets buried beneath the weight of 80s hair metal chic that oozes from this film, especially from David’s gang and Patric himself. Also, we all know that despite her seductions, Michael is totally gay for David, but that’s probably another article in itself.

4. Carmilla from The Vampire Lovers (Ingrid Pitt)

Good old Ingrid was a staple of the Hammer films of the late 60s and early 70s. She also co-starred in the greatest Xmas movie ever: Where Eagles Dare. I suppose this is one of the most obvious choices on this list but I just couldn’t ignore this film. I wanted to include Caroline Munro for her turn in Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, but that will have to wait for another list. The Vampire Lovers is a cult classic from 1970. After the 60s, Hammer Studios started injecting more and more raw sexiness and eroticism into their films and, why would you not with a stable of such stunning beauties as hot as Pitt, Pippa Steel or Kate O’Mara? Based on the 1872 novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla is a seductress who enraptures Laura Spielsdorf (Steel). The book predates Dracula and is regarded as one of the most important texts in vampire lore. It also established the queer-coded themes that run rampant through most vampire stories today. The Hammer film is a bit campy but is a decent watch that you can find streaming online. Carmella is gorgeous, sexy and menacing all in equal measure — especially when she’s sinking her fangs into Laura’s heaving bosom. What a legend.

5. Stevie Wayne from The Fog (Adrienne Barbeau)

I just realised that I needed to break up the vampire love-fest here. You see, not all horror chicks (I really should stop using that descriptor) are monsters. Some of them are badasses who save the day — protectors, mothers… radio hosts? Also, I couldn’t create an article about horror films without mentioning something by John Carpenter. I’m sure you’ve seen The Fog, so I don’t need to give you the synopsis. Stevie Wayne is the late-night radio host for KAB, the radio station for the coastal town of Antonio Bay, and the mother of Andy. Her smoky voice narrates the third act of the film as the fog rolls in, bringing with it the ghostly lepers who exact their brutal revenge on the town. This might be a surprising pick, seeing as she is not sexualised at all. She wears a button-down plaid shirt or sweater, little make-up, and spends most of the film sat at her microphone in the lighthouse — if you want to see more of her assets then just watch The Cannonball Run instead. But we all know Adrienne was hot as hell back then, and that voice just does it for me! Besides, it’s one of my all-time favourite horror films.

6. Katrina from Vamp (Grace Jones)

Before Salma Hayek and Santánico Pandemonium there was Katrina! 1986’s Vamp is a camp comedy horror and full-on goofy 80s trope-fest, and I love it! Also notable for co-starring Gedde Watanabe as Duncan, in a rare example for the time of an Asian character being played by an Asian actor without any overt racist stereotypes — as was the trend for the time (see Sixteen Candles). When a couple of cocky college guys promise to get some girls for their frat house, they find themselves downtown in a seedy after-hours strip club. Now, if you have never seen this film, what I am about to describe might sound strangely familiar…

…ready?

The main event of the strip club happens when the club owner announces the mysterious Katrina (Jones), who performs a breath-taking, if weird, strip routine (although there are no pythons involved in this one), only for her and the other strippers to all turn out to be… you guessed it, vampires! Grace Jones is an 80s icon, a multitalented performer whose strikingly unusual aesthetic was, even in normal life, as unsettling as it was alluringly sexy. She was the perfect choice to play Katrina and that dance is burned into my brain forever.

Final Word

You may have noticed that non of these examples are mere ‘eye candy’. They are all characters with agency who are integral to the plot. I suppose, regardless of looks, having substance and style is the real sexiness. There’s little more to say here other than I would love to see some of your horror crushes, so leave a comment and let me know. As I mentioned, this is based on my very heteronormative world view — I fully accept that not everyone reading this is a 50-something cis straight bloke, so please don’t hesitate to comment regardless of your gender or sexual orientation. I fully accept that other life experiences and world views exist.

Troy.

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I was planning to do a review of Brian De Palma’s ‘American Giallo’ trilogy, but I couldn’t get a hold of a copy of Body Double to rewatch so I’m putting that one on hold for now. Which has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works because now I don’t really have anything to write about and I really want to post something to honour my commitment to posting weekly.

The self-imposed weekly schedule is as much about keeping my eye in as anything else. I run this stack for myself as much as I do for the reader—that’s not to say I don’t appreciate those of you who read my words and who bother to comment and interact with me. I really do appreciate you. But writing is like muscle memory—use it or lose it!

In fitness, there is a saying that was coined, I believe, by Russian kettlebell guru, Pavel Tsatsouline; Grease the Groove. That means to practice a movement pattern, Skill or exercise with enough frequency to maintain or even develop that motion. For example, if you do a couple of pull-ups every time you walk past the pull-up bar you will improve your pull-ups a lot more efficiently than if you hardly ever do pull-ups. If you spend long periods of a day sitting in a chair and never squat to depth you will lose that range of motion. It’s not so much that you are getting old, it’s that you are getting weak! Use it or lose it!

So, that is why I write these weekly articles, to grease the writing groove, to exercise my brain and maintain or develop my finger to eye coordination. I also find it quite therapeutic, writing about things that I am passionate about, that have little or nothing to do with my work and, just that writing is kind of a happy place for me. Maybe it’s a form of superficial escapism that delivers a false sense of achievement—or even procrastination—but it makes me feel good about myself, almost as much as smashing out a 30-minute kettlebell circuit every day feels fulfilling.

Anyway, now that my irrelevant preamble is out of the way, all this talk of motion got me thinking about the differences between action in films and action in comics. So, let’s talk about it.

Action in Space and Time

Last week I read the Garth Ennis penned James Bond: Your Cold, Cold Heart, from Dynamite Entertainment. It was a fun romp, read a little like a loving parody of the Bond films. It ramped up the violence a lot compared with the films, and this got me thinking about what works in comics and what works in films.

The obvious distinction, beyond the moving pictures in film is, of course, sound. Comics cannot use sound or music to create atmosphere or tension in the way that films can. But there’s something else to think about where action is concerned. In film action takes place in time where-as, in comics, action takes place in space—no, not outer space—the geometric kind of space, specifically two-dimensional space.

In film, the director controls everything about your experience, where your eye goes, how long for and at what rhythm. The hallway fight scene in the classic Korean film Oldboy is a great example of this—filmed in a single take, the scene feels almost first person, like you are there, in the moment. The truck chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is a series of takes and fast edits that build tension and excitement throughout. In those two, very different, examples the whole experience is influenced by a variety of factors that work together; sound design, score, cutting speed, and camera movement, all produce a psychological response from the viewer and draws you in to the action.

Comics have to do things a little differently and, this relies heavily on the skill of the artist to get it right. There’s no sound here, no movement or set duration yet, when done well, can feel extremely visceral and, in some cases, more relatable than in film. Perhaps because it requires a little more suspension of disbelief and a little work on your behalf to use your imagination to fill those gaps, making you an active participant rather than an observer.

Although I haven’t read any of those classic American comics, I can admit that Jack Kirby was possibly the architect of how to do action in comics correctly, certainly in western comics. There’s a kinetic energy and sense of motion on the page in his action sequences that has informed almost every comic artist since. Manga artists have since developed a style that is almost unparalleled in conveying movement and action that almost animate their pages.

Where films can use editing and framing to emphasise movement or create urgency, comics have to rely on panel layout with the big moments often being delivered on a splash page that is almost a freeze-frame of the action.

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Pros and Cons

When these moments are delivered well you feel them in your heart and in your gut. When they are not done well, they make you feel nothing and you quickly lose interest. I often feel this way when action scenes in films are almost entirely CG rendered. It’s just pixels floating on a screen, often defying the laws of physics in a way that I simply cannot abide. The Avengers films might be expensive and popular, but they fail miserably compared with the tangible thrill of those classic Jackie Chan movies, where every single moment was meticulously choreographed, every fist strike, every death-defying leap is felt by the viewer.

A mistake that many films make, that has always irked me, is when the protagonist takes an immeasurable amount of damage but keeps going. Where’s the elevation of risk, the sense of peril? At least John McClain in Die Hard bled and felt pain!

When action scenes are poorly filmed, they often overload your senses, too big, too fast, too loud, too fuzzy! Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are a classic example of this.

Length and rhythm really matter. I mentioned that hallway scene from Oldboy. It lasts about 3 minutes but is the single most memorable sequence in the entire film. Mad Max: Fury Road on the other hand—yes, I know this is a contentious take—is basically a two-hour car chase, with no story, where each action moment blurs into the next and leaves you feeling numb. The action scenes, although well shot, with great stunt work, just feel so unrelenting that instead of overwhelming you with emotion you become emotionally detached, numb!

Comics have their own issues. If an artist relies too heavily on character references, their panels can appear static and uninteresting. If they use this in action scenes, the main figure may appear too posed and too static, which sucks all the energy out of the image.

The panel layout matters a lot, if the reader’s eye doesn’t follow the flow of the action naturally it breaks the tempo entirely.

Splash pages are a great tool for dramatic effect, but overuse of them is irksome and can completely derail the action by stopping the motion entirely.

Something that is often used in American superhero comics is dialogue mid fight. If the characters are waffling on to each other, dumping a bunch of unnecessary exposition on the reader, it takes away from the movement and action on the page. Currently, the best artist at illustrating fight sequences in comics (in my opinion) is Daniel Warren Johnson, who also writes his own comics and he is very good at separating the emotional dialogue moments from the kinetic action moments. But, Stan Lee, for example, loved a verbose exposition dump mid-fight—which is probably one of the many reasons I never liked his comics.

Final Word

I think the takeaway here, is that comics are not film, and film is not comics. These days, too many comics are being created as a pitch deck for a film or TV show, or with TV adaptations in mind. Comics are comics and need to be created with that in mind. What works in comics, doesn’t necessarily work on film, and vice versa. This is why so many movie adaptations of comics look very different to the comics they were inspired by, which is fine. They’re different mediums and require a different approach.

Perhaps, the deepest similarity between the two mediums, where action is concerned, is emotion. For the action to work, it needs to elicit an emotional reaction in the reader/viewer, which requires a sense of participation to be drawn into the action but then for you to surrender to those feelings in order to emote. Get it wrong, and you leave the reader/viewer feeling empty and unfulfilled.

For example, if you were to render the hallway fight from Oldboy in a comic, it wouldn’t need any dialogue. The whole fight could take place on a single page, with a series of silent panels from different angles, zooming in and out to convey motion and progression. The shot afterwards, in the elevator, would be a splash page, delivered like a punchline.

Delivering great action is a fine balancing act. Get it right and you thrill your audience. Get it wrong and you risk losing your audience entirely.

What about you? Do you agree with me? Am I missing the point or have I left out important nuance? Let me know in the comments.

Troy

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The early 80s was somewhat of a boom time for fantasy—or sword and sorcery—and I was the perfect age for it; I think my introduction to the genre probably came in the form of Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy series of ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ books. Or it may have been that I was seduced by the sight of Citadel miniatures in my local hobby shop, or a childhood fascination with Greek Mythology. Whichever it was, by the age of 11 I was all in.

Roleplaying games, collecting and painting lead figures and reading White Dwarf monthly were a hobby. We didn’t have Warhammer 40k back then—not initially, anyway—we had Warhammer Fantasy. The Tolkien inspired Rolemaster was the RPG of choice. I don’t think it was until the advanced version of Dungeons & Dragons (possibly the second edition in 1989), that I played D&D. Although, by this time I had discovered The Call of Cthulhu, which lent itself to better storytelling and a genuine need for roleplay. You couldn’t just hack and slash your way through that.

However, a few years before my RPG phase our cinema screens were being set ablaze with swords, sorcery and, yes, dragons.

During this time there had been a bit of a resurgence in fantasy films. 1982’s Conan the Barbarian being the mainstream classic that gets all the attention (and rightly so) but that was merely one of dozens of films, at various levels of quality, which proliferated the cinema screens and VHS players of boys like me for several years.

So let’s take a look at a number of those examples alongside one, often overlooked, surprisingly dark, cult classic. The Disney/Paramount co-produced Dragonslayer.

A Grim-Dark Outlier

Dragonslayer is probably the least Disney film of the entire decade. I recall going to see this at the cinema, I would have been about 7 or 8. I was almost certainly too young! This, despite its PG rating, is not a kid’s film! The story unfolds slowly, the action is sparse, the tone is very dark, the dragon is genuinely menacing, and you barely see it until near the end. In the opening sequence when the sorcerer is stabbed in the heart you see blood on the blade. People not only get hurt here, but they die. The whole look of the film is extraordinarily grim, it feels very horror adjacent. We even get a little bit of body horror near the end when we are treated to the sight of the sacrificed Princess being eaten, limb by limb by the young spawn of the dragon. Imagine what this film could have been with a higher certification!

I really do need to mention the dragon here. In classic monster film tradition you only get glimpses of it leading up to the big reveal but, unlike many classic monster effects, you are not disappointed. This dragon is scary! It looks believably threatening and the visual effects are superbly well rendered for their time. Honestly, I would take this over modern CGI effects any day. These aren’t pixels floating on the screen, like a video game. This was a technique called go-motion, pioneered by ILM, and the results speak for themselves — Vermithrax remains one of the most convincing and genuinely terrifying screen dragons ever committed to film.

You could argue that the pacing is a little off at times and that it, perhaps, gets a little bogged down in the politics of its world during the second act, but those are minor gripes and this is a genuinely good film, worthy of more than its IMDB rating of 6.6.

The story starts with Galen (Peter MacNicol), a young apprentice to the sorcerer Ulrich (Ralph Richardson) who are approached by a group of villagers led by the young ‘lad’ Valerian (Caitlin Clarke). Valerian, is unsurprisingly revealed later on to be a cross-dresser, having been disguised as a boy by her father to avoid the king’s lottery—the ritual of sacrificing female virgins to the dragon. Ulrich offers his life to the King’s brute, Tyrian (John Hallam) which propels Galen and Valerian on an adventure to slay the dragon. This is where things start to unravel, because Galen is considerably less competent than his bravery suggests and he fails to slay the dragon on his first couple of attempts. Unlike many of today’s films, our hero is imperfect, makes mistakes and is forced to earn his rite-of-passage the hard way. This is obviously to the benefit of the story.

As I said, the film focuses quite heavily on the politics of this world, with King Cassiodorus Rex (Peter Eyre) revealing himself to be both corrupt and elitist—as is typically the case with any man in power, especially those of aristocratic inheritance. The lottery is fixed, to ensure that his daughter, the Princess Elspeth (Chloe Salaman) never hears her name read out. But that’s not all, it is revealed that the King has been taking bribes from noble families to similarly protect their daughters, leaving the burden firmly on the less fortunate in society. Isn’t that how it always is? Not only that, but at the film’s climax, after Galen has slayed the dragon, Cassiodorus shows up to declare himself the dragon slayer.

I found the character, Valerian to be the most interesting. Once her true identity is discovered by Galen, she dons a dress and comes out as female to her villagers, inspiring someone to remark; “the damnedest thing is, she was twice the man of anyone and now she’s twice the woman!” Later, when she opts to enter the dragon’s lair with Galen, she remarks “I’m not afraid. After all, I was a man. Remember?” Which is all very much in conflict with America’s mainstream Christian conservatism but barely raised an eyebrow in 1981. Imagine the outpouring of online gammon-faced rage-bait that would elicit today.

If you have never seen Dragonslayer and are remotely interested in fantasy, horror, or great creature effects I thoroughly recommend this film. I feel like it has been overlooked, sitting in the shadows of other, more popular offerings.

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1981, the Year of Magic.

As I said, Dragonslayer came out in 1981, but it wasn’t alone. There were a number of classic fantasy films that entered our reality in that year and in subsequent years after that. But, before we take a look at those, let’s take a step back a few months, to a low budget film that flew under the radar until it experienced a resurgence on VHS a few years later and gave birth to a generation of cult fans.

Hawk the Slayer was released in 1980 to little fanfare. A film that is genuinely hard to defend with a straight face, but which has a significant amount of goodwill behind it. It’s a real ‘boys own’ adventure tale of swords & sorcery. It’s cheap looking, the pacing is chaotic, and the fantasy elements are more Dungeons & Dragons module than coherent mythology. But there’s something honest and unpretentious about it that generates real cult affection. It’s tonally quite different to Dragonslayer, in that it’s more whimsical, takes itself less seriously and leans quite heavily into camp silliness. Whereas, Dragonslayer, a film that takes itself extremely seriously, is set in a grim world that feels real and tangible, Hawk is not. But it has all the elements of classic fantasy, a magic sword, a band of adventurers—each with their own unique skillset—and a villain so over the top that you simply never forget him, This is thanks entirely to Jack Palance chewing up the scenery with more vigour than a horny bull terrier on cocaine. I doubt that Hawk the Slayer was the catalyst for the 80s fantasy boom, but it certainly deserves a mention.

Another film that came out just months after Hawk, which had more box office success than Dragonslayer and is fondly remembered by fans of the genre, and of creature effects is Clash of the Titans. Less grim-dark than Dragonslayer and a lot less camp than Hawk, Clash was about traditional Greek mythology. It famously featured the classic stop-motion FX of Ray Harryhausen. FX that I feel, on reflection, were not quite as good as those created by ILM in Dragonslayer. But some of the models are iconic, and the Medusa scene is genuinely creepy.

This same year also saw the release of John Boorman’s Excalibur, the animated Heavy Metal and Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. Three fantasy films with quite different themes and tonal qualities. It was almost like movie studios were throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks.

Heavy Metal, based on the legendary US anthology comic of the same name, has its fans, but its main appeal is the animated artwork and the musical soundtrack. Excalibur is interesting. Like Dragonslayer, it’s dark, gritty and relies more on storytelling than spectacle. What sets it apart, is the 18-certificate, which allowed it to show more graphic violence and plenty of bare flesh and sex, including more than one sexual assault. For a full analysis of this underappreciated classic you should read what Alec Worley had to say about it, in depth: here.

Time Bandits, like Dragonslayer, is supposed to be a kids’ film but it too has dark elements. Aside from the Pythonesque satire. In this, evil is a genuine cosmic force, and the Supreme Being is disturbingly indifferent. The threat here feels more existential than physical but, like Dragonslayer, Gilliam inserts a strong anti-authority narrative and an ending that feels shockingly bleak for a kid’s film.

The Expanded Landscape

If 1981 felt like an experiment, 1982 delivered the finished article. Among a spate of straight to video garbage and wedged between the highly enjoyable but campy Beastmaster (directed by Don Coscarelli of Phantasm fame) and the excellent Dark Crystal is the daddy of them all. John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian. A film that needs no introduction and is, obviously, the vehicle that launched the Hollywood career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Conan manages to feature all the best elements of the previously mentioned films, aspects of horror and grim-dark, with magic and fantasy, and eye-catching creature effect. Not to mention a central character who is essentially a working-class hero rallying against a corrupt elite.

But I’m sure you know everything there is to know about that film, already.

1982 also featured another cult classic, The Sword and the Sorcerer, directed by Albert Pyun. It’s a bit of a tonal mess, with some awful dialogue and an overpowering music score. But it’s not terrible. Give it a go.

The following year the genre started to shit the bed, James Sbardellati’s Deathstalker has a keen following—and is weirdly experiencing a resurgence in popularity recently—being kind, one might say it’s a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ type of film. By the following year, the most interesting foray into fantasy was Neil Jordan’s surreal grimly dark fairytale A Company of Wolves. But, the arrival of the appalling Conan the Destroyer, an aptly named film pretty much signalled the death of mainstream studios interest in the genre. As the mid-80s approached Sci-Fi was back on the menu.

I am, however, neglecting to mention one notable entry, from 1983: Krull. A Sci-Fi fantasy that was too late to cash-in on either Star Wars mania or the brief fantasy boom. It’s a little like Hawk the Slayer with Stormtroopers and a bigger budget. It has some very cool ideas, a decent music score and a very cool magic weapon. There’s a weird but creepy monster called The Beast, and the Widow of the Web sequence edges towards genuine horror. But it suffers from poor pacing, a messy script and tonal inconsistencies that leave you wondering what this film is supposed to be. It’s fun and, in my opinion, is a better film than Hawk. But it’s no Dragonslayer, or Conan. It’s perhaps fair to say that this era was book-ended by Hawk the Slayer and Krull with Dragonslayer and Conan being the meaty sandwich filling.

It’s not until 1987 that we get another genuinely great straight-up fantasy film, with the masterpiece that is Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride. But that will have to be another article at another time.

Final Word

Of course, there were other fantasy classics prior to the 80s. I’m a fan of the Sinbad films and the classic Jason and the Argonauts. But it felt like, in the 80s, filmmakers got more adventurous and with better visual effects and cinematography were able to make more outlandish and expansive films. Sure, nothing really touched the post-millennial Peter Jackson LOTR films in terms of quality. But I feel that 1981-82 was a golden era in sword & sorcery, or swords & sandals fantasy films and have been saying for a while that this genre is ready for a resurgence on the big screen. With the recent announcement that Arnold is set to return as King Conan, who knows? Maybe I should dust of my dice and find myself a Rolemaster campaign to join.

What do you think? I would love to keep the conversation going and would very much appreciate your thoughts on this movie sub-genre.

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Troy

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It’s funny how Sci-Fi has been warning us for years about the dangers of authoritarianism and the existential risks of a dystopian future where a handful of psychopathic imperials own everything and destroy all who oppose them.

Sure, they have laser swords, or giant space stations or robot armies… but we’re getting there!

I never thought I would be living in the very dystopia that Sci-Fi has long been warning us of.

Weirdly, despite history showing us that every authoritarian regime didn’t become an imperialistic threat because of the psychopaths who created the model, but because of the regular people who stood back and said, “keep politics out of it”.

It’s weird, also, that certain voices on the internet—when I say voices, I mean keyboard warriors who grew up reading 4Chan message boards—seem to be very annoyed that a filmmaker like James Gunn is presenting far-right fascists as the villains in his films and TV shows, like that’s even a controversial idea!

Wait, what? People are mad, that the bad guys are being portrayed as the bad guys?

What’s that old saying? If there is a Nazi having dinner with ten other people, you have eleven Nazis sitting around the table. Something like that.

It currently seems pointless to talk about protecting your own mental health, because what’s the point of being present, in the moment, where your thoughts can’t harm you, when the world around you is on fire, you’re still going to burn!

If you are struggling, you can find some help: HERE

Anyway, it’s been a while since I did one of these recommends thingamajigs. I suppose escapism is the next best thing to inner peace, right?

FALLOUT SEASON 2

The latest season of Fallout was great. Season one was one of the best shows of the year in 2024, alongside Shogun. Season 2, although not quite as good, in my opinion, as season one (although that might be down to how fresh and new S1 felt), this was top fun. Ella Purnell returns as Lucy MacLean, the clean-cut vault dweller who is hunting for her father, Hank, played by Kyle MacLachlan. The ever-reliable Walton Goggins, once again steals the show as anti-hero (or anti-villain?) The Ghoul and Aaron Moten return as Maximus the reluctant knight of the Brotherhood of Steel. This season sees more world building, more backstory, particularly in the flashback scenes that build on the history of Vault Tech and the mysterious tech-billionaire, Mr House. It’s ironic that Amazon Prime are airing a satirical, dystopian fantasy featuring the authoritarian Brotherhood, and the even worse Legion all while its real-world billionaire owner is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from those very villains. I’m sure there’s more than eleven Nazis sitting at that table!

We get more character development, more solid visual effects and plenty of easter eggs for anyone who’s played the games. This series is a masterclass in how to develop an adaptation of an existing IP faithfully enough, while also inserting new characters and compelling stories into the mix.

28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

If you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it. I went to see this at the cinema and, as someone who isn’t the biggest fan of the franchise and who had a mixed reaction to the previous instalment, this is my favourite in the series by far.

We are treated to plenty of Ralph Fiennes as Dr Kelso and, of course, Jack O’Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal—in what might just be an even better performance than his turn as Remmick in Sinners. Director Nia DaCosta does a sterling job of creating a visual language that informs the atmosphere of the film. The visual style draws you in and makes the two contrasting characters feel very different. Kelso is calm, likeable and his world relatively peaceful. Jimmy is chaos and evil personified, and his scenes feel very claustrophobic and threatening.

Then, of course, there is that needle drop moment towards the end. If the visuals alone weren’t enough to justify seeing it in the cinema, hearing Iron Maiden blasted out of the surround sound speakers was.

If only international audiences understood the significance of the Jimmy Savile reference, then they would get why Jimmy Crystal’s cult is so sinister and the box office numbers may have been more impressive.

If you missed it, you’ll have to wait until it’s available on streaming… it might even be available by now.

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FLORIDA HIPPOPOTAMUS COCAINE MASSACRE

Issue one of this comic from Mad Cave Studios is f***ing bonkers! I can’t even accurately describe to you what it’s like. There’s a Florida waterpark that has a Hippopotamus display during some kind of music festival. Meanwhile, a psychotic, obese drug lord has a federal agent in his captivity. The FBI are spying on the criminals, when the agent’s maverick cop brother turns up, guns blazing, which forces the criminals to sets off charges that blow up the water park and the Hippos. Yeah, that doesn’t do this fever dream of a comic justice.

Written by Fred Kennedy and illustrated by James Edward Clarke—two creators I have never personally heard of—who do a fantastic job of writing and rendering a very dynamic, visually impressive and utterly chaotic narrative.

Now, Mad Cave do have a tendency to hit the ground running with their issue #1s. I have read several strong starters that have trailed off massively by the second or third issue. Because most of their mini-series are 5 issues instead of 6, it often feels like the writers don’t know how to compact their storytelling into five instalments, meaning that the final issue often feels rushed and the climax unearned. I hope that isn’t the case here, but even if this story goes nowhere, it’s still worth having in your collection or at least reading on Globalcomix.

EXORCISM ISLAND

This one is available on Kindle Unlimited in five parts. By the same team who brought us the excellent Mugshots (Mad Cave) of and Chris Matthews. This follows a group of Catholic Priests on a remote island, which acts as a prison for the Satanically possessed. The main character has to confront his own past transgressions and waning faith as he is drawn into this horror whodunnit. An interesting cast of characters, and a very weird and creepy horror villain. I suppose you could say it’s a little like The Exorcist meets Shutter Island, if it was directed by John Carpenter.

Typically, these Comixology Originals on Kindle Unlimited get collected into physical trade books, so if you aren’t into the whole digital reading experience, you’ll have to wait for that, but I have no idea when that will be, or who the publisher will be.

Final Word

These aren’t the only things I have enjoyed so far this year but they’re the highlights, the things that sprang to mind when I decided to write this. I’ll no doubt do another one of these recommends lists later in the year and have some more films, TV shows and comics to waffle on about. That is, if we are all still here, given the behaviour of a tiny group of despotic pensioners with too much influence and not enough morals. Who knows?

In other news I recorded another episode of the Mega City Film Club with, Eamonn and Conrad, discussing two of my all-time favourite films. I did a dialogue edit this week for a ten-page anthology comic strip that should be entering the world this summer and pitched a couple more stories. I have so many stories to tell in comic form, but it’s not easy getting this stuff made. So, if anyone wants to sponsor me so I can pay artists and printers and get some comics made, let me know. Or, if you have a time machine and know where I can find the Sporting Almanac, drop me a private message.

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Stay sane.

Troy

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I’m so mentally tired right now. I have been paying far too much attention to the raging forest fire that is global politics and the apparent start of World War III (thanks to that shitty-pants-wearing fascist in the White House).

Meanwhile, the Epstein class—whose individual political alignments don’t appear to make much sense—look a little clearer when you consider that, aside from a number of world leaders and aristocratic diplomats, neo-fascist white supremacist Steve Bannon appears multiple times in the files, alongside renowned leftist social-philosopher Noam Chomsky. Add to that the fact that every tech billionaire seems to have had some kind of relationship with the man, and it becomes obvious that the one thing all these people have in common is an overwhelming sense of sociopathic privilege and the belief that women and children are mere cattle for the grape-juice pizza parties they attended while openly plotting the demolition of Western democracy.

I guess Roger Taylor was right (video).

I’m so tired that my dreams have become increasingly weird.

This week I dreamt that I was taking a walk with Garth Ennis, who was telling me all about the early Vertigo days. The following night, I found myself in a oneironautical conversation with John Constantine—the main character from the comic series Hellblazer (probably due to my recent bedtime reading habits). Then, last night, I dreamed an entire story arc for my own comics character, Roxie.

You can introduce yourself to Roxie and her world here, but keep your eyes out for her anthology debut later this year.

Anyway, all this means that I am not in a good place creatively (my health is fine, don’t worry). I’m just a bit jaded right now, it doesn’t help that I have a bit of a cold, too. All that means that I couldn’t think of anything meaningful to write about this week.

So instead of a deep dive into a comic character, an analysis of the socio-political subtexts of classic horror films, or reflections on writing craft, here we are. In fact, even as I type this preamble—slightly distracted by the England versus India semi-final of the T20 World Cup—I still don’t know what I’m going to write about.

But you will know in just a few seconds.

Read on…

BAD BLOOD

Yeah, so it turns out that I’m not really going to write anything. Back in the lockdown days, myself and John (the other half of Sweet Nightmares) dipped our toes into podcasting. It lasted for six months and then we both realised that neither of us had enough time to keep it up. John is a VFX artist working in film and television and he knows a thing or six about visual effects, so here’s a breakdown of how CG blood works in modern filmmaking.

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FINAL WORD

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If we are all still here next week, assume that normal service will be restored.

Troy

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It’s a funny thing that whenever I’m asked — not that many people ever do ask me this — who my favourite comics character is, I will typically say Judge Dredd. But, in truth, Dredd isn’t my favourite character. Yes, he’s the character of whom I’ve read the most stories, by far. But Dredd isn’t the main reason for that. Let’s be honest, he’s a bit of a bellend. A cold, sociopathic, authoritarian bully. A servant of a system that oppresses almost every single human right and personal freedom. No, Dredd is not a likeable character. But he does have a cool uniform, a cool bike, a cool gun and some cool catchphrases.

But is he the main character in his own stories? Some might say the real protagonist in Judge Dredd is Mega-City One itself. Or the oppressed and depressed citizens, or the villains, or the various supporting cast members like Judge Anderson, Hershey, McGruder, Giant, Max Normal and Walter the Wobot, among others.

Dredd does have a development arc, of sorts, but it’s one that’s been almost 50 years in the making (this month signals the 49th birthday of JD) and the curve is barely noticeable. He’s slightly softened his attitude towards justice, changed his mind about mutants and, more recently, about the Mechanismos — robot Judges.

Dredd is a great vehicle for stories, and political satire in particular. The droids who have written Dredd over the years have built some great stories around him, John Wagner and Alan Grant obviously being the best of them. But something else that Dredd has always been blessed with — and that has had a major impact on building the lore and the world of Dredd — are the artists.

As I said, it’s been almost 50 years since ol’ stoney-face first appeared in the pages of 2000 AD and, in those early years especially, the artists who worked on the strip had a significant say in the aesthetic and vibe of not only Dredd and co., but of Mega-City One, the Cursed Earth, the Black Atlantic, the Undercity, the other Mega-Cities and even the off-world settlements. Too many artists to mention, really. But let’s discuss the founding fathers, as it were. The four artists from Dredd’s youth who really defined the look.

I think it’s difficult to argue against this list — although I’m sure some of you will so if you think one of these artists should be replaced by another let me know in the comments. But don’t worry I’m also going to include some honourable mentions and you might find your personal favourite there. If not, let me know who your favourite Dredd artist is.

1. Carlos Ezquerra

Let’s be honest. Carlos is the daddy. Carlos is the co-creator of Dredd and the artist whose initial character design famously made John Wagner say, “He looks like a fucking Spanish pirate — I’m not writing that!” Due to office politics, Carlos and Wagner both stepped away from the character before his first appearance, and Carlos concentrated on Battle Action, drawing stories like El Mestizo, Rat Pack and Major Easy, leaving the character to be developed by other artists (see below).

When Carlos eventually returned, Dredd had evolved significantly, both aesthetically and thematically. His return came with the epic Apocalypse War in 1982. After that, he was a prolific, ever-present force on Dredd right up until his untimely demise in 2018. Rest in power, champ.

King Carlos — as he became known by fans — drew amazing cityscapes, wonderfully weird and crazy characters, and very sexy women. Over the years, under Carlos’s pen, Dredd’s shoulder pads grew significantly, as did his chin. A master of black-and-white inks, when the comic went full colour Carlos proved that his colours were every bit as good as his inks. He never stopped evolving, becoming an early adopter of digital colouring sometime in the mid ’90s, I think.

Carlos is the definitive Dredd artist and one of the greatest comic artists of all time — it’s probably fair to say that Carlos Ezquerra is the Moebius or Kirby of British comics.

2. Mick McMahon

When Carlos stepped away from Dredd in 1977, 2000 AD needed someone who could draw like Carlos. Enter Mick McMahon. A young up-and-comer who was still learning his craft, he drew Dredd’s debut in Prog 2 and had a massive hand in developing the character and his world over the next few years.

For many fans, McMahon is the Dredd artist and one of the greatest of all time. He drew most of the mega-epic The Cursed Earth, as well as creating the Angel Gang and Judge Cal. By his own admission, he was still learning how to draw, and his early work contained some questionable anatomy, leading to the now-iconic big boots look of Judge Dredd.

Mick was a fast and prolific artist whose style evolved massively. For my money, his best work was on The Judge Child Quest, by the Apocalypse War precursor, Block Mania, the more abstract elements of his now almost cubist style were starting to reveal themselves. That was also the story that drove him to step away from comics for several years because he was sick of drawing crowd scenes.

Fortunately for 2000 AD fans, he returned in the mid-eighties with another evolution of style, working on Slaine with writer Pat Mills.

3. Brian Bolland

For someone who only really drew a handful of Dredd stories, his reputation is remarkable. Yes, he had a hand in some of those early epics, from The Cursed Earth to The Day the Law Died and The Judge Child. But it’s for creating the Dark Judges and Judge Anderson that he will always be remembered.

Bolland also evolved Dredd’s aesthetic more than any other artist since Carlos, moving away from the executioner’s-cowl-style helmet design and small shoulder pads towards the now-iconic bucket helmet and big pads.

Bolland is better known to non-British comic fans for his many breathtaking covers for Marvel and DC and, of course, for illustrating the Alan Moore-penned The Killing Joke. But to me, he will always be a Judge Dredd artist and one of my all-time favourite artists, full stop.

4. Ron Smith

It’s difficult to think of anything else that Ron Smith is known for — apart from being an ex-Spitfire fighter pilot in WWII. Maybe the more learned amongst you can let me know what else Ron Smith worked on outside of Dredd and a bit of Rogue Trooper.

Smith was the most prolific artist on Dredd when I first started reading 2000 AD in the early ’80s and was, for many years, my archetypal Dredd artist. It was always Smith’s Dredd that appeared in my head whenever I thought about the character. He drew Mega-City One like the sprawling future metropolis it was. He made Dredd look more imposing and heroic than any other artist — Smith’s Dredd was almost John Wayne in synthi-leather and shoulder pads.

Oh, and let’s not forget the infamous Ron Smith bums. He often drew Dredd from angles that seemed to emphasise his gluteals, for some reason. Each to their own.

In addition to amazing cityscapes, Smith really brought the citizens of Mega-City One to life. Everyone on the page had their own personality: the skin-tight outfits, the single knee pad, the weird headgear, and so on. Smith never got his own mega-epic, but he did create some iconic minor characters, with the likes of Otto Sump, Dave the Orangutan and Citizen Snork. He brought great humour to the strip too, making him the perfect artist for stories like The Stupid Gun.

So, that’s the founding fathers. Do you agree? Of course, I know there are many other artists who deserve a mention — and many whose omission might annoy you — so let me know who I’ve missed in the comments.

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Honourable Mentions (golden age)

I’ll keep this brief because I don’t have enough room to write a full biography of each artist. I am aware that this list is incomplete, but these are the artists whose work sticks in my mind for various reasons, which I will attempt to justify here.

Ian Gibson narrowly misses out on the Mount Rushmore treatment. A prolific and strikingly original artist, he worked on many of the early Dredd strips, including the important Robot Wars. But Gibson is perhaps best known for his breath taking work on both Robo Hunter and The Ballad of Halo Jones, so he already has his place in the 2000 AD hall of fame.

Steve Dillon is better known for his work in American comics, especially Preacher and Hellblazer, with Garth Ennis. Dillon drew a handful of Dredd strips in the early ’80s, with Cry of the Werewolf featuring some of the best black-and-white art I’ve ever seen.

Cam Kennedy, perhaps better known for his work on Rogue Trooper or The V.C.s, illustrated classic stories such as Supersurf, The 7 Samurai and The Art of Kenny Who, among others. Those strips alone elevate him above many others on this list.

Kim Raymond is perhaps the least well-known name on the list, and possibly a surprise to some. But Raymond was a semi-regular on Judge Dredd in the early ’80s and was responsible for creating the best rookie Dredd ever saw in Judge Dekker — whose heroic sacrifice came several years later in the story Judgment Day.

Colin MacNeil came along too late to make it on to the rock face, but he will forever be a part of Dredd folklore due to his exceptional painted artwork on what is probably the greatest Dredd story ever, America.

Brett Ewins is another artist who is better known for other characters, including Rogue Trooper and Bad Company, as well as his mind-bending work for Deadline and Crisis. But Ewins appeared on several Dredd strips in the mid ’80s, including The Haunting of Sector House 9, and also illustrated some Judge Anderson solo stories.

Brendan McCarthy is a contentious pick for some, due to his outlandish, psychedelic weirdness. But McCarthy illustrated parts of Oz and defined the look of the evil clone Judges, the Judda. Say what you like about his style, but you’ll not see a lot else like it.

Cliff Robinson — I have to mention Cliff. He doesn’t have many Dredd adventures of note on his CV, but he has illustrated some of the most iconic covers over the past couple of decades and definitely deserves a mention.

Honourable Mentions (modern age)

Many of the past masters have moved on. Of the four founding fathers, only McMahon and Bolland remain, and neither is working full-time any more. We have sadly also lost Gibson, Dillon and Ewins. So when Rebellion took over the stewardship of 2000 AD at the turn of the millennium, new artists were brought in. Here are some of the modern masters.

Henry Flint is the modern king and has been hugely prolific throughout the Rebellion years. Flint’s style was clearly influenced by Dredd alumni Ezquerra and McMahon — with a hint of Kev O’Neill for good measure. In recent years his style has evolved and he appears to be channelling mid-eighties Frank Miller, which is fine by me.

Dan Cornwell is the current Dredd go-to for many and, seemingly, John Wagner’s new Carlos. If that isn’t enough to elevate him up anyone’s list, I don’t know what is.

Jake Lynch, like Flint, is heavily influenced by Mick McMahon. He’s not a copy, but you can see the lineage, which makes him a perfect fit for Dredd and a welcome regular on the strip.

PJ Holden — I’ll admit it took me a while to warm to PJ, but he’s so good and so reliable that I now wish we saw him more regularly on Dredd. But his 2000 AD legacy will probably always be as the artist who co-created Chimpsky, so he has that going for him.

R.M. Guera is a recent addition to the alumni. Guera, better known for his work on the incredible Scalped for DC Vertigo, has recently drawn some excellent Rob Williams-penned stories. He is the first artist for a while to slightly re-design the classic Judge uniform and has become an instant fan favourite.

Final Word

Like I said, I know there are dozens of artists I’ve failed to mention, but these are the names that I think have had the largest impact on Dredd over the years. I’ll stand by the four founding fathers as a definitive list, but I’d love it if you told me who your favourite artist is, or named any artist you think deserves a mention — or who created a character or moment that sticks with you.

I can already think of a few more names, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Over to you.

Troy

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Have you ever noticed the irony in how people who self-identify as ‘truthers’ are almost always interested in a version of the truth that can rarely be confirmed by evidence?

In politics and in the media the truth has often been served with a liberal sprinkling of elaboration and a dollop of ideology on the side. I think it’s quite important in today’s world of polemic online discourse—which is amplified by a media that increasingly deals in outrage and polarisation to drive engagement-based profit—to remember to ask ‘what evidence is there for this claim?’ One should remember that, sometimes, two, or more truths can exist.

We used to call that nuance.

With the increasing politicisation of almost every topic from public health to the colour of one’s hair and beyond, it seems that every discussion becomes a tribalistic butting of heads, where differing opinions or counter-arguments are taken as a personal attack, or virtue signal that must be met with hostility.

As we transition from an era of extreme market consolidation to technological centralisation, it may seem that this atmosphere feels uniquely modern, but the anxieties underpinning it are not.

In the 1980s, a comics revolution was underway and creators were producing seminal works shaped by cynicism and dystopian anxiety.

Concerns about rising authoritarianism, crumbling social safety nets, market fundamentalism and conspiratorial rage were informing stories that diagnosed the same societal tendencies that are amplified today.

So let’s talk about it.

DID YOU MISS THE SUBTEXT?

1980s Anglo-American comics used dystopia, satire and deconstruction to expose authoritarianism, neoliberal dehumanisation and populist rage. Rather than functioning as blueprints, these works almost operated as cultural stress tests. Had John Wagner, Alan Moore or Frank Miller written a story set in 2026 about a massive global conspiracy organised by a small group of some of the richest and most influential men in business and politics—men who consider the cost of labour to be a “tax on productivity”, who believe liberal democracy is impeding their personal freedom to exploit the planet and accumulate even more wealth; men who want to replace human labour with AI robots and use the majority of us as cattle for their strange pseudoscientific “longevity” projects in order to unlock immortality and live like gods—that would have been a pretty sick dystopian sci-fi horror story.

Except they didn’t write that story. This is what appears to be happening right now, beneath our noses.

This year sees the 40th anniversary of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This was actually the first Batman comic I ever read, having only seen the classic (but admittedly silly) television series. Miller’s Dark Knight was a visionary tale of a dystopian near-future version of a middle-aged Bruce Wayne who dons the cape and cowl once more to fight the rising tide of street gang crime, while working at odds with the police department and, indeed, the government. Vigilantism has been outlawed, Superman is now a government prop, and superheroes like the Green Arrow have become domestic terrorists. Miller’s version of Gotham is dark, mean and authoritarian. Batman represents the right-wing edgelord who positions himself as a “strong-man” lone gun on a one-man mission to do the work the state has failed to achieve.

This idea—that street crime is some kind of unavoidable cancer on society that must be met with force—is the foundation of 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd. Dredd was the satirical embodiment of neoliberal authoritarian attitudes to justice at all costs—but not justice in the sense of fairness or due process. This is an oppressive, aggressive, state-level system of militarised policing where almost everything is a crime. Judge Dredd is the logical end point of that: judge, jury and executioner who dispenses instant “justice” at the squeeze of a trigger. He’s Dirty Harry meets the Gestapo.

To understand how Judge Dredd came to be, one must understand the political environment in the UK in 1977, when the character was first published. The country was facing an energy crisis, high unemployment and a highly organised labour movement that saw the nation grind to a halt in the face of mass industrial action. In the background, however, was a growing populist right-wing narrative that the people were at fault, that they had “had it too good”, to directly quote Margaret Thatcher.

By the 1980s, under Thatcher’s government, the trade unions had been weakened, UK industry and coal mines—therefore a huge source of income for working-class families—were being shut down and natural resources sold abroad. As unemployment soared and new taxes were introduced, public discontent was met with increased policing and expanded powers of arrest, including wider stop-and-search laws. Yes, the 1980s had neon colours, tacky music and hairspray, but there was also grey brutalism, long dole queues and plenty of neoliberal gaslighting. Judge Dredd was John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s critique of that.

In a recent podcast interview, when asked how he felt about the fact that Judge Dredd now looks like a blueprint for US authoritarianism and federally mandated vigilantism against its own people, Wagner seemed both sad and angry. What had started as his way of making sense of the nasty politics of the day, in the form of satire, now appears prescient and sinister.

2000 AD wasn’t alone in satirising the state. The Comic Strip Presents…, which gave the world comedy legends such as Robbie Coltrane, Rik Mayall and Dawn French, was a highly satirical adult series that became known as “alternative comedy”, because classism, racism and sexism were apparently considered mainstream.

So while Frank Miller was asking questions about institutional failure and positioning Batman as a parody of the libertarian idea of a “strong-man” populist who takes matters into his own hands—he literally leads a gang of neo-Nazi-looking street thugs to become his own private vigilante force that does a better job than the police—he was also inviting deeper questions about the ethics and effectiveness of rigid law and order. Most social academics would agree that street crime is often symptomatic of a failed society and the erosion of social safety nets that drive poverty. Some might argue that the real criminals sit in Congress, Parliament or in corporate boardrooms.

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A couple of years after The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen was published.

This was a subversion of the superhero genre that questioned the morality of allowing a small group of individuals to wield enormous power and influence. One character feels especially relevant today. It might be argued that he embodies what we now refer to as incel culture: a morally rigid and violent reactionary shaped by extremist objectivism and a heightened sense of trait disgust. Rorschach is undoubtedly the most compelling character in the series, but he is not a good man. A noir-like detective who hides behind an ever-changing mask, he appears to care about society’s ills, yet his inner monologues reveal a darker psychology that echoes Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Where Rorschach feels most contemporary is in his radicalisation by the far-right newspaper The New Frontiersman, a publication promoting conspiracy theories and reactionary social agendas.

Let’s circle back to Thatcher’s Britain and discuss a lesser-known British comic from the pages of 2000 AD. Sooner or Later was a psychedelic and surreal satire on the plight of the working class in Britain in 1986. Written by Peter Milligan and illustrated by Brendan McCarthy, it begins with the protagonist, Micky Swift, being told to “get on your bike”. He travels through time and is forced to find work to pay his way home, despite there being no jobs available. Ironically, he finds himself in a future where no one but the ruling elite actually has a future. It is a clear metaphor for the hopelessness of working-class Britain at the time.

Today, we see a mega-rich corporate class extracting wealth from society while telling the rest of us to work harder and stop wasting money on luxury items like avocados. Hustle culture insists that you simply need to work more, work harder or get a better job—but wages stagnate and opportunities shrink. Increasingly, people feel like cogs in a machine: if you are not producing value for the shareholder, you are deemed useless. In that context, it is no surprise that the arts are often targeted for cuts; individual expression and authoritarian neoliberalism sit uneasily together. In many ways, Sooner or Later, a single-page strip published weekly, is not far removed from Terry Gilliam’s cinematic fever-dream, Brazil, which similarly uses surrealism and absurdist concepts to satirise capitalisms uglier aspects.

The most recent 2000ad Thrill-cast has an interesting discussion about Sooner or Later: HERE

WRAPPING IT UP

It would be all too easy to believe that these incredible comics had predicted the future, but that’s not quite the case. They were mapping patterns and critiquing aspects of the societies in which they were created. Anyone who has ever read a history book can tell you that history often repeats itself. Systems of oppression work so well for a select few who exploit them that they become tried-and-tested processes, highly effective and difficult to dismantle.

If you look at these four comics individually, each shines a light on different aspects of that system. Taken together, however, they offer a much clearer vision of the bigger picture. From Miller’s Dark Knight and its cynical view of working-class crime and systemic failure, cross-referenced with Judge Dredd’s condemnation of authoritarian structures, you begin to see how broken the system truly is. Add to that the absurdity of Micky Swift’s desperate situation in Sooner or Later, and Rorschach’s reactionary accusations that society’s decay is caused not by the abusers of power but by those at the bottom of the ladder—left with little option but to scramble for a foothold on the lowest rung.

Collectively, these works show us that uneven power structures, social inequality and exploitation are sustained when reactionary forces redirect blame towards the victims and manufacture culture wars among the masses as a distraction from the corruption and dishonesty at the top.

It worked in the Roman Empire. It worked in Victorian Britain. It worked in twentieth-century China. The mechanisms do not change — only the branding does. The more uncomfortable question is not whether the pattern is repeating, but whether we are mistaking it for normality.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on it, but what do you think? Let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree, or if you have anything to add to the discussion.

Troy

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I have never really collected anything — apart from Panini stickers during the 1986 World Cup — and music. I don’t have physical media these days, but I used to own a lot of records and CDs. But that’s not ‘collecting’, not in the comic sense — no, comics collectors don’t seem to collect comics to read, like I used to buy music to listen to. They collect comics to wrap in plastic and store away, occasionally glancing at the lists of the comics they own and don’t read.

Okay, I’m on the wind-up. Of course most comics collectors read and love comics, and it’s the search that brings you joy because that is what gives you a sense of purpose, it’s your hobby! But the completionism mentality (which obviously doesn’t only apply to comic collectors) is one that has always baffled me, and I’ll tell you why.

I feel like there is a thin line between hobbyism and pathology, where at its worst, it’s steeped in a misguided sense of achievement. To the obsessive-compulsive completionist, happiness isn’t something in the here and now; it’s a feeling of mild elation or instant gratification — the dopamine hit that lasts for a couple of minutes and then is gone. That’s not happiness, and if that’s what you think happiness is, you will never experience true happiness because you’re always looking without for something that exists within.

Let me explain. This is a cognitive phenomenon whereby we tell ourselves that we are lacking something and gaining that thing will make us happy. I see this all the time in fitness, where a person might tell themselves something along the lines of, “I will be happy when I have a six-pack.” They do everything in their power to achieve that and then, once they have the aesthetic they were seeking, they suddenly realise they still don’t approve of their-self.

It’s like a constant hamster wheel. You tell yourself, “I will be happy when I have (insert issue number).” But then you eventually acquire it and feel ‘happy’ for a few minutes, after which the dopamine subsides and there’s nothing left. You feel empty again, so you seek out the next issue and the next. Why? Because you might believe happiness is something tangible that comes from an external place and exists at some point in the future. Rather than a sense of peaceful contentment in the moment, right here and right now. No, I’m not going full Eckhart Tolle. But think about it. If you never stop to just be, you will never truly be ‘happy’. Because true ‘happiness’ is a feeling of inner peace that you can access at any time in any place, whether you have that copy of that comic you need to complete that collection, or not.

Wait, before you get all defensive, this isn’t a personal criticism and, honestly, collecting comics, or stamps, or postcards, or whatever, is a lot healthier than collecting guns! At least you also get to enjoy the contents of the comic and aren’t hurting anyone else, right? But just be mindful that the acquisition of stuff isn’t what makes you happy, it’s the search that compels you.

If you can channel that feeling you have when the comic is in your hand, then you can access that when you are in a packed shopping centre, surrounded by consumerist zombies the week before Xmas.

Because the feeling of happiness didn’t come from the comic itself; it came from inside you, and no one and nothing can take that away from you. Just ask Viktor Frankl:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Wow… that went off on a tangent I hadn’t planned. It’s probably all bollocks but anyway, it was relevant because happiness is related to today’s post. At a time when it feels like society is falling apart at the seams and the world is run by sociopaths, we all need a coping strategy. Mine is horror films. Because when the threat of an existential crisis looms constantly overhead, why not lean into it?

WHY HORROR BUILDS RESILENCE

There are some schools of thought in psychology circles that suggest watching horror films helps build emotional resilience. Some small studies have shown that the more someone enjoys horror films, the better developed their coping ability appears to be.

There is a theory in psychology called the ‘Practice Model’ (1), which describes the interplay between context and individual neurobiology and psychology in the development of skills. In relation to horror fans, the theory suggests that watching traumatic events unfold on screen conditions you to adopt coping mechanisms that can then be activated during real-world situations. I suspect there’s a lot more nuance to that, but I’m not a psychologist.

Another related idea is ‘simulation theory’ which is a philosophical argument that implies our lived experience is akin to that of a computer simulation (2). But in human psychology it suggests that humans use imagination and fiction to simulate experiences in a safe environment. Applying this to horror films, it might be hypothesised that watching them is a form of fear or stress inoculation for the nervous system (3).

During COVID, some studies appeared to show that fans of certain types of apocalyptic horror reported less emotional distress, possibly due to ‘trait morbid curiosity’ and having mentally prepared themselves by watching those films (4).

There are a number of studies and articles that have looked into the dominant personality traits of horror fans. These can be quite contradictory. Some imply that fans of horror films have low empathy, high narcissism and low agreeableness. But none of those claims track with my personal experience, or with the personality traits I observe in other horror fans I’ve interacted with. I suspect that it depends on the types of films being enjoyed, how that enjoyment manifests itself and the populations being assessed.

I read one article on Psychology Today that claimed men are more likely to be horror fans than women. I’d like to see those statistics, because I’ve personally met a lot of female horror fans and, in fact, most of the horror experts I’ve listened to on podcasts are women. But then I found another article (written by a woman) that seemed to disagree with the above and align more closely with my own thoughts. Am I cherry-picking information to support my theory? Probably, but this isn’t an academic paper. Here’s the list:

• Cravings for adrenaline – horror fans are thrill seekers. Maybe we also like extreme sports or spicy food!

• Comfort with the unknown – This suggests we may have a higher tolerance for uncertainty, perhaps feeling less need to control everything, which is the opposite of that earlier assertion that horror fans are narcissists.

• High empathy – We don’t enjoy horror films because we like seeing people being hurt; we empathise with them, and that allows us to become emotionally invested in the characters.

• An active imagination – I think that’s a given. Most of the people I know who don’t enjoy horror find it too ‘silly’ or unrealistic. I would even go as far as to say that sociopaths, psychopaths or narcissists might struggle more with suspension of disbelief.

• Ability to detach from reality – I don’t know about you, but as much as I can suspend my disbelief, I can also compartmentalise my feelings quite effectively. The fact that horror films are scary and shocking doesn’t upset me, because I can separate what’s happening on screen from my reality.

Like I said, there is a lot of nuance here. But I suspect that people who display those darker personality traits might be watching horror films for the wrong reasons. Instead of detaching from reality, compartmentalising their emotions and empathising with the victims, they may be enjoying the gore and pain — perhaps even identifying with the antagonist.

The fact that a lot of horror fans tend to be creatively minded and also enjoy other forms of escapism like sci-fi and fantasy suggests that we aren’t all a bunch of psychopaths waiting to happen. Let me know in the comments what you think.

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SOME EXAMPLES

(REC) (2007)

Adrenaline.

The first time I watched this film, I had no idea what I was getting into. By the time the climax arrived, I was hiding behind my knees on the sofa, with my fingers jammed between my teeth. The final 10 or 15 minutes are such an adrenaline ride that my heart rate was through the roof — and I loved it! It was stress-inducing and frightening, but that is what made it so thrilling.

It was an almost identical feeling to shredding down a steep black run on a powder day (snowboard reference). The adrenaline surge one experiences watching horror is equivalent to the thrill of a well-shot car chase or fight sequence for fans of action movies.

RINGU (1998)

Comfort with the unknown.

As much as I rave on about The Thing as my favourite horror film and, probably, my favourite film full-stop, Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is, for me, the definitive horror film. It nails the whole feeling of existential dread and fear of the unknown.

The fact that the film never fully explains itself leaves you feeling off-centre the whole way through, and just as you think you’re finally going to get the explanation, that moment happens. Not only does it fail to answer your questions, it leaves you with a new fear of television sets.

It’s exposure to this level of uncertainty that, perhaps, trains you to be more tolerant of the unknown and more open to new ideas, cultures or experiences in real life.

CARRIE (1976)

Empathy.

Stephen King’s coming-of-age horror movie is as much a criticism of religious conservatism and social hierarchies as it is a story about a girl with terrifying powers. Carrie is the main protagonist, and the antagonists aren’t typical horror monsters. They are the privileged middle-class school kids who mercilessly tease Carrie for being different, and her bat-shit crazy mum — a religious zealot who tortures and shames her daughter constantly in the name of Jesus Christ.

In order for the film to work, you have to empathise with Carrie, because when she is driven to breaking point and brings about the film’s bloody conclusion, it is clear that she is the victim and, although the extent of her retribution is horrific, you can sympathise with the reasons behind it. Without empathy, Carrie is just another horror monster.

SUSPIRIA (1977)

Active imagination.

Choosing Dario Argento’s abstract masterpiece might raise some eyebrows, but bear with me. Suspiria is a surreal, hyper-stylised fever dream of a film. It is visually stunning and makes great use of colour palettes and music to evoke emotion and enhance its dream-like qualities.

On the surface, the film makes little sense and is full of plot holes. But the style and the vibe are the point of the film. You have to suspend your disbelief and just go with the flow. Your imagination fills in a lot of the gaps and draws you into the film.

This is a key aspect of all great horror films. If they spell it all out for you, leave nothing open to interpretation, then how can your imagination possibly run away from you and fill in the gaps?

Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky has said that stress doesn’t happen to you; it’s how you think about things that happen. Horror films like Suspiria could be a great way to build resilience against catastrophising real-world situations.

HELLRAISER (1987)

Detachment from reality.

Clive Barker’s horror masterpiece is a weird, visceral viewing experience that makes you feel emotionally uncomfortable and stomach-churningly disgusted in equal measure — but only if you accept the absurdity of its premise. Apart from its queer-coded ‘coming out’ narrative, it has a skinless man living under the floorboards and weird beings who exist in the gaps between time and space.

And yet, somehow, the scene where Andrew Robinson gouges his hand on a nail while moving furniture is one of the most discomforting moments in the film for me (see? Empathy!).

In order for Hellraiser to work as a horror film, you must suspend your disbelief regarding the more fantastical elements, because trying to rationalise the story or pick apart the plot holes is missing the point.

Maybe, in watching films of this ilk, when you are presented with horrifying situations in real life, you have already established the emotional coping mechanisms to deal with them.

FINAL WORD

If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the constant flood of terrible news, the rise of global fascism and the revelations that most of the billionaire class and their politician cuckolds are members of an evil grape juice club for nonces, you might want to watch some horror films. Even if you don’t do it to build emotional resilience and just need a couple of hours of aggressive escapism, you could do worse than watching the entire John Carpenter back catalogue, or binge watch a bunch of Italian Giallo films.

Obviously, I have touched on some heavy topics here, so if you feel affected by anything in this article, the NHS has a number of support groups you can find here.

So, what do you think? Are you offended by my comments on pathological completionism? What do you think about the notion that enjoying horror makes it easier to handle the harshness of reality? If you are a horror fan, let me know in the comments why you enjoy watching horror and what your favourite films are.

Also, don’t forget that you can purchase horror-related merchandise from our online store: SN-Media.redbubble.com

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Reference:

1. Guerra, N., Modecki , K., & Cunningham, W. (2014). Developing social-emotional skills for the labor market: The PRACTICE Model (Policy Research Working Paper No. 7123). World Bank Group. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/970131468326213915/pdf/WPS7123.pdf

2. Wikipedia contributors. “Simulation hypothesis.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 1 Feb. 2026. Web. 11 Feb. 2026.

3. Goldman, Alvin I., Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading, Philosophy of Mind Series (New York, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Sept. 2006), https://doi.org/10.1093/0195138929.001.0001, accessed 11 Feb. 2026.

4. Scrivner, Coltan et al. “Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Personality and individual differences vol. 168 (2021): 110397. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397

These days franchise films are big business. It feels like every half-decent IP has been co-opted by multi-billion-dollar studios to be mined for bad ideas and turned into a drab, emotionless puddle of corporate piss. Star Wars, the once magical trilogy of films that captured the minds of two generations, is now just an excessively commercial content farm. The same goes for Marvel and DC, Alien, Predator, Terminator and so on. Horror has traditionally always had its franchises too: Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, etc. All examples of one great film that was milked for everything it had. Each new episode an increasingly translucent ablution, expressed from the mammaries of the original concept.

But there is one franchise hidden amongst the effluence of commercial exploitation that stands on its own. Not necessarily for its quality, but certainly for its originality and faithfulness to its origins. I’m talking about Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm.

So let’s talk about it.

Overview of the Series

The Phantasm franchise is an American horror-fantasy series created by Don Coscarelli, who wrote and directed most of the films. It spans five features released between 1979 and 2016, which is mad! Although the original 1979 film opened to modest audiences, it quickly acquired a passionate cult following for its surreal atmosphere, eerie imagery and genre-blending storytelling. The central antagonist throughout is the mysterious mortician known as the Tall Man, played consistently by Angus Scrimm, who transforms the dead into… Jawas? Well, sort of. I’ll get into that in a bit. The Tall Man is a criminally underrated horror villain and far more interesting than Jason Vorhees, or even Leatherface, in my opinion.

I should also mention the film’s score. Every great horror film needs an iconic, unsettling soundtrack, and Phantasm delivers a superb piece of atmospheric synth that sits comfortably alongside Goblin’s legendary score for Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

Let’s take a look at the original film and then, in a little less detail, glance at the four sequels.

1. Phantasm (1979)

To understand why Phantasm endures, you have to start with how strange and personal this first film really is.

As I said, it’s written and directed by Don Coscarelli. Coscarelli is known for making other cult classics including the Bruce Campbell-led Bubba Ho-Tep and the classic sword-and-sorcery film The Beastmaster. The film’s main cast were largely unknowns: A. Michael Baldwin (Mike), Bill Thornbury (Jody), Reggie Bannister (Reggie), and Angus Scrimm (the Tall Man). Scrimm and Bannister appear in every instalment of the series.

It was a very low-budget film, even for its time, with an estimated budget of $300,000.

The film follows young Mike, a 13-year-old boy who is grieving the loss of his parents, when he becomes aware of sinister events in his town centred on the mysterious Tall Man. The film is, like a lot of 1970s horror, a little bit style over substance and is more about vibes than narrative. That said, it has very clear subtextual themes, which I will discuss in a bit. It has a deliberately dream-like atmosphere. The whole idea, especially the terrifying flying orbs, came to Coscarelli in a dream.

The film blurs reality with surreal horror. The story unfolds from the perspective of Mike, who may or may not be an unreliable narrator. It is implied that everything we see exists only in Mike’s vivid imagination as he struggles to deal with the loss of his family. When Jody, the older brother he idolises, tells him that he is leaving to find his own way in life, Mike struggles to deal with the idea of losing him as well. He follows Jody around and, at one point, even watches him having sex with the mysterious Lady in Lavender in a cemetery — a classic 1970s horror trope. The Lady in Lavender turns out to be a gender-bending manifestation of the Tall Man, which is weird. But nothing about this film is mundane. It’s an interesting premise that potentially questions traditional concepts of gender and masculine sexuality.

When Mike becomes obsessed with the Tall Man, he follows him into the mortuary which, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, is much bigger on the inside: a mausoleum that contains a seemingly endless maze of marble corridors and several dark secrets.

Just as you think you know what this film is about, you get to see a man have his skull drilled into by a flying metallic orb in all its glorious, blood-splattering horror. But if you thought that was as weird as it gets, you would be wrong. Mike discovers that the Tall Man has an army of evil hooded dwarfs who, it turns out, are the compressed bodies of the dead dug up from the cemetery. These dwarf-like creatures resemble the Jawas from Star Wars, which feels like a clear influence. It’s a bit tacky but what do you expect from $300k? The Tall Man has an interdimensional portal that transports these slaves to some undefined planet with a dense atmosphere, where the compacted creatures are used as labour for reasons that are never truly explored.

Together, Mike and Jody, with the help of Reggie and a local blind psychic, defeat the Tall Man — only for Mike to wake up and, we are informed, it was all a dream. Jody died in a car crash and Reggie is now, somehow, Mike’s sole guardian. This leads to the twist ending where the Tall Man returns through a mirror, resulting in the iconic “BOOOYYYYYY!”

Yes, it has a low budget. Some of the acting is weak at best. The effects on the flying orbs are genuinely impressive, but the weird bug-thing looks like a fluffy toy and slips into self-parody. There are so many plot holes here that the film barely makes any sense — but does that matter? I am a fan of horror that leaves you guessing, and the way this film confuses you makes you feel off-centre. That disorientation creates a strong sense of the uncanny which, I think, works really well. The surreal hypnagogia of the film feels Lynchian, and the fact that it leaves you wondering, “Was this all a dream or not?”, is, I think, a key part of the plot and a big part of the film’s appeal.

On the surface, it’s a goofy, low-budget vibes movie. Beneath that, it explores themes that are relatable to most of us: fear of mortality, dealing with grief, and transformative concepts that feel like a commentary on the transition from childhood to manhood. It is a very male-dominant perspective of the world, and that is important in deciphering the subtext. As it’s Mike’s POV, we see him almost fawningly obsessed with his older brother — the man he hopes to become. Mike is about 13, so he is probably going through puberty, which makes the scene where he witnesses Jody having sex in a cemetery appear less creepy. He’s likely just discovering sexual desire for the first time. He’s at that liminal age where you are no longer a child but not yet a man, and for the first time you are starting to question where you fit in.

Many of the film’s fans are (or were, when they first saw it) teenage boys. As Angus Scrimm once said, the film ‘gives expression to all their insecurities and fears’ — which neatly sums up why it resonates so strongly with adolescent viewers.

It’s also worth noting that some of the film’s jarring vagueness — the way it introduces story elements and then fails to develop them — may be a consequence of heavy editing. The film was in production for a couple of years, and so many scenes were cut from the final release that many of them reappear in later sequels.

On a personal note, I’ve always loved stories that make you question consciousness and reality. I often have very vivid, strange dreams, and this film very much captures that experience for me. The scene in the mausoleum is particularly chilling, I think we have all had that dream, where you are running along an endless corridor!

Because of its relative cult success, Phantasm spawned a bigger-budget sequel in 1988 — almost ten years later.

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2. Phantasm II (1988)

Don Coscarelli returned as writer/director. Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm also returned, but A. Michael Baldwin was replaced by James LeGros as Mike. I can only assume the studio insisted on having a more recognisable face to help market the film.

With a budget of around $3 million, Phantasm II leans more into action and science fantasy. It looks a little more cinematic and has a larger cast — including love interests for both Mike and Reggie — more elaborate sets, and better effects with lots of body-horror and guns. Although it is a continuation that further explores the lore behind the Tall Man, much like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, it almost feels like a reboot, especially given the jarring change of lead actor.

It does, however, maintain the core themes of death, transformation and the surreal, dream-like qualities of the original, with the Tall Man continuing to function as the embodiment of death’s inevitability.

As an interesting aside, it is rumoured that Brad Pitt read for the role of Mike but clearly didn’t get the part. I have no idea if that is true, but could you imagine if Pitt had become part of the Phantasm-verse? He might never have landed that role in Thelma & Louise that helped catapult him into Hollywood superstardom.

3. Phantasm III, IV, V

The third film, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, was released in 1994. Its slightly smaller budget of $2.5 million didn’t stop it from possibly being the best of the sequels. We see the return of A. Michael Baldwin as Mike and the introduction of Rocky — the first female character in the series with genuine agency… and nunchaku! The film is basically Reggie’s road movie and continues the themes of the previous entries while deepening the connection between Mike and the Tall Man, with the antagonist seemingly needing Mike’s now-established psychic abilities to assist him in his quest to raise an army to conquer dimensions.

The film ends more or less how the first film did, leaving things open for the next instalment. I like this one. While it’s not as good as the original, it has some genuinely cool moments and leans a little more into comedy horror. I especially like the character of Rocky, who departs at the end of the film and never returns to the franchise. This leaves me wanting to know what happened to her, and I would love to write a comic series following the further adventures of Rocky in the Phantasm-sphere (see what I did there?). How about this for a title? “Phantasm: Music of the Spheres”. Someone send this article to Don Coscarelli and tell him to get in touch!

The final two films in the franchise are Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998), which has a much lower budget and plays far more like a fever dream, leaning heavily into the surreal and oneiric elements of the earlier films.

The final instalment, Phantasm: Ravager — which I must confess completely passed me by at the time — was released in 2016. It was produced and co-written by Don Coscarelli, but this time directed by David Hartman. If anything, it appears to serve as both a farewell and a full stop to the series, as well as a fitting tribute to Angus Scrimm, who passed away shortly afterwards at the age of 89. That final aspect brings the series full circle, reinforcing its original themes of mortality anxiety and adding a potent poignancy to the Tall Man’s role as a symbol of death’s inevitability.

Final Word

You can probably tell that I am a fan of this series, the first film in particular, which I find genuinely unsettling in parts. I’d love to hear what you think about these films in the comments but, for now. Let me wrap this up with one final soundbite:

In an industry obsessed with endless expansion, Phantasm survives by refusing to fully explain itself.

BOOOOOYYYYYYY!

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This occasional series looks at some of the comic characters and series that have influenced me over the years. So far, I have focused on classic British characters such as Rogue Trooper and Judge Anderson. The only US comic character I have discussed to date is Red Sonja. I have never cared for superheroes, so you will not find me talking in depth about cape comics.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as you are probably aware, British comics were aimed at children and typically took the form of weekly anthologies. One such title was Battle Picture Weekly, the same comic that featured Charley’s War by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun.

As mentioned, these comics were aimed at children, specifically white working-class boys. This made it a point of controversy whenever creators attempted to introduce non-white characters. Pat Mills, inspired by Muhammad Ali, who famously asked, “Why are all the angels white? Why ain’t there no Black angels?”, posed the same question of British comics. While editor of the notorious Action comic, Mills asked John Wagner to create the character Blackjack, an Ali-inspired strip about a heavyweight boxer.

Mills has claimed that the publisher was nervous that someone might be offended by the character. The 1970s were still a fairly conservative time in terms of diversity, so it is difficult to believe that corporate bosses were primarily concerned about offending people of colour. It seems plausible that they were worried about receiving criticism from the racist, right-wing press for ‘poisoning’ the minds of white boys by giving them aspirational non-white heroes to support. One executive even suggested making Blackjack the sidekick to a white boxer. Mills rejected the idea and ran the story regardless.

That provides some context for the character I am about to discuss.

MEET EL MESTIZO

After the huge success of Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy films (yes, they’re not kids’ films, but British boys’ comics always drew inspiration from cinema and television), editors were keen to tap into the same visual language. Hellman of Hammer Force was inspired by Robert Shaw’s character in The Battle of the Bulge. Hook Jaw was based on Jaws, while Death Race 2000 closely resembled the violent future-sports and social satire in Rollerball, starring James Caan. Editor Dave Hunt asked writer Alan Hebden to come up with a Civil War–era Western series that riffed on the aesthetic of those so-called spaghetti westerns (1).

Star artist Carlos Ezquerra, who had been working with Mills and Wagner on the development of Judge Dredd for the new science-fiction anthology 2000 AD, had fallen out with editorial and was brought back to Battle, a comic he had previously worked on extensively with series such as The Rat Pack and Major Easy. Ezquerra, a British comics folk hero and regarded by many as one of the greatest comic artists of all time, was a fan of the films and enthusiastic about the idea of introducing a Black character to Battle for the first time. He was also happy to be reunited with writer Alan Hebden, so it was a win for him. Ezquerra stepped away from 2000 AD and Judge Dredd to concentrate his efforts on Battle, and on El Mestizo in particular.

To make Mestizo more appealing to readers, it was suggested that he resemble Jimi Hendrix. I’m not sure why, but it works, and he looks very cool.

Aside from the challenge of ‘selling’ a Black hero to a mostly white readership, there was the additional difficulty of keeping those boys invested in a period drama set during the American Civil War, in a comic that largely featured stories from the two world wars. There were no machine guns, tanks, or fighter planes. Instead, readers were given horses, blue and grey-coated troops, steam trains, and six-shooters.

Needless to say, it took a while for readers to warm to him, and he only lasted for one story arc. In the decades since, however, El Mestizo has regained popularity among comics fans and achieved something of a cult status. This is due in no small part to Ezquerra’s exceptional artwork. Looking at these pages, it is clear that Carlos put a great deal of enthusiasm and passion into the character and his world.

CONTROVERSY

Let’s get this out of the way first. Accusations of cultural insensitivity have been levelled at the character by some, largely due to his origin as a freed slave. However, Carlos recalled things somewhat differently. It was not so much that liberal-minded readers were offended by depictions of Black slavery. As he put it:

“England in the seventies was not the right place for this character.”

I think you can infer what he meant here, and, let’s face it, the 2020s increasingly feel like the 1970s when it comes to the rise of certain media narratives and political agendas.

As for the character’s name, El Mestizo was of mixed Mexican and African American heritage. Mestizo is a Spanish word meaning ‘mixed’ and was often used, in a pejorative sense, to describe people of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry. It is a linguistic legacy of Spain’s colonial past (2).

Whatever the reasons, Mestizo did not last long, much to Ezquerra’s disappointment. This would later prove to be something of a blessing in disguise, as Carlos went on to team up once again with John Wagner to create the iconic series Strontium Dog for Starlord.

Reading Mestizo now, you can clearly see the style and sensibility that Carlos carried over into Strontium Dog, with mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha sharing many characteristic similarities with Mestizo. You could even argue that Johnny Alpha is a distant cousin of Mestizo.

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THE PREMISE

Drawing inspiration from Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’, El Mestizo was a wandering bounty hunter who would end up working for both sides during the American Civil War. While taking on these jobs, he claimed to have no interest in the political machinations of the war itself. He frequently played both sides against each other while pursuing a murderer named Hurtado.

During his adventures, he visits a plantation where he is reunited with his friend Shelley (she is probably more than that, but this was a children’s comic, so the relationship between the two is deliberately understated). While there, Mestizo takes it upon himself to seek revenge against his former owner, only to witness Shelley being mortally wounded by Union marauders, reminiscent of the ‘Red Legs’ in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales.

The comic followed the standard format of the time: four- or five-page instalments in a weekly anthology. Each instalment was a self-contained episode that fed into a wider narrative. Despite being aimed at eight- to twelve-year-old boys, the stories—like everything else in Battle—were surprisingly violent, packed with action, and underpinned by clear socio-political subtexts.

Battle differed from many other British war comics in that most of its protagonists were working class in nature. Instead of focusing on the officer class—where posh toffs like Biggles dominated—readers were given citizen soldiers such as Charley Bourne or The Sarge. El Mestizo was no different in this regard: a former slave with no political allegiances, distrustful of warlords and officers, and often expressing overtly anti-war sentiments.

In recent times, we have seen El Mestizo reappear in the Garth Ennis-led Battle Action specials. The character appears in issue 4, in a story by Rob Williams and Henry Flint (here).

You can order a digital edition of the original run (here).

FINAL WORD

El Mestizo had a great deal of potential that was never fully realised. I suspect it might have fared better in France, where Western and cowboy comics traditionally enjoyed greater popularity. That said, it becomes particularly interesting when viewed as part of the creative genesis of Strontium Dog. If you consider that such an iconic strip might never have existed without El Mestizo, its importance becomes much clearer.

Even without that broader context, the strip stands on its own as a solid Western action series with a genuinely cool protagonist. I am glad that El Mestizo has found renewed relevance and, despite the perceived issues surrounding his name, he deserves a place in the pantheon of great British comic characters, as well as serving as a celebration of the master himself, Carlos Ezquerra.

What do you think? Do you have any thoughts on El Mestizo? Is there anything I have missed, or any points you would like to discuss further? Drop a comment below.

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References:

1. Wikipedia contributors. “El Mestizo.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Jul. 2024. Web. 29 Jan. 2026.

2. Wikipedia contributors. “Mestizo.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Jan. 2026. Web. 29 Jan. 2026.

In The Bone Temple, she makes excellent use of colour palettes and camera work to represent contrasting worlds. The Jimmies scenes are mostly shot in close proximity, with frequent close-ups that evoke a sense of danger and claustrophobia that makes the brutality feel visceral. Meanwhile, Dr Kelson’s (Ralph Fiennes) story is filmed using mostly wide and long shots, with sweeping camera movements that convey calm and serenity. There is a visual language at work here that you might miss if you aren’t paying attention — which is precisely why this is such a rewarding film to see in the cinema. Going to the pictures is the filmic equivalent of going to church.

On Monday, I watched the new Matt Damon and Ben Affleck film on Netflix, The Rip. This film has no such subtleties. It is an exercise in missed opportunities. A great cast is wasted on a script that is around 80% exposition. The story — which has the bones of a decent police thriller — is devoid of subtlety or nuance, and the action scenes offer no real sense of tension or drama.

The final twenty minutes consist largely of the cast repeatedly restating major plot points and explaining the ‘twist’ over and over, as if to ensure the audience understands that this is, indeed, a film with a twist — and exactly how that twist works. Beyond Damon and Affleck, the cast includes Teyana Taylor, who has just won a Golden Globe for the brilliant One Battle After Another. I was looking forward to seeing her again here. I needn’t have bothered. Her role is reduced to little more than window dressing. Her character says and does little of interest or usefulness throughout. It’s a waste of a good actor, they might as well have cast a crash test dummy.

But there’s a reason for this — so let’s talk about it.

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER

For those who pay attention, Netflix have, for some time now, employed a principle known as “two-screen compatibility” (sometimes called second-screen optimisation). This is something their executives apparently insist on for certain films and shows, to account for the fact that many viewers are not fully engaged while watching their streaming service. Instead, they are simultaneously scrolling on their phones while the film or programme plays in the background.

As a result, filmmakers are required to spell the plot out to viewers and constantly include expositional call-backs to moments that have just happened, in case the viewer missed them while watching a 30-second clip of some twat on TikTok talking about Mercury Retrograde (which doesn’t happen, by the way), or an AI animation of Donald Trump shitting his nappy.

In a recent interview, Matt Damon talked about this approach and how action now needs to be front-loaded. A big action sequence has to occur within the first five minutes to grab the viewer’s attention, followed by major plot points being recapped three or four times. Characters must be repeatedly reintroduced, along with their motivations. There should be no subtlety or nuance, because the audience might not be paying attention and could switch off if they miss something important.

You might argue that a film like The Rip doesn’t require much subtlety or nuance and is therefore well suited to this format. But the result is dull, lifeless, and instantly forgettable. If I wanted to half-watch something, I’d choose an action film I’ve seen a dozen times, something like Enter the Dragon or almost any Bond film.

Interestingly, The Rip is directed by Joe Carnahan, who wrote and directed Narc (2002). That film is a very underrated neo-noir thriller, far better paced, far more subtle, and considerably more nuanced than The Rip. It also has a genuinely ambiguous ending that makes you want to go for a pint afterwards and talk through what it actually meant.

I understand why Netflix are doing this. They have analysed their data and know exactly when viewers drop out of shows. Unlike cinema releases, they don’t rely on ticket sales, they rely on viewer retention.

Still, it feels like they are catering to the lowest common denominator. It’s the television equivalent of a Taylor Swift song. The formula is rigid: it must be three minutes long, must feature a familiar hook within the first thirty seconds to hold attention, must rely on familiar chord progressions, and must include an upbeat, sing-along chorus. Any deviation risks the listener skipping the track and running the danger of being exposed to something genuinely interesting. Although I doubt the typical Swiftie would even bother listening to a post-punk band like Amyl and The Sniffers or the Ukrainian metal band Jinjer, but that’s their loss.

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WHY IT HARMS PACING

The core problem with the so-called two-screen principle is this: over-exposition slows the rhythm of scenes that could be purely visual. It renders genuinely interesting dialogue between characters redundant. There would be no entertaining but character-defining monologues like Madonna’s big dick in Reservoir Dogs. That scene doesn’t explain what is happening, why it’s happening, or how anyone feels. It’s just a vibe, but an important one that sets the tone for the entire film.

Regular reminders and mini hooks disrupt the flow of a story. They interrupt a scene’s natural rhythm and turn it into a series of abrupt stop-starts. Think of the moment in Jaws, just after the lagoon attack, when Chief Brody looks out to sea and realises that, in order to defeat this monster, he must overcome his character flaw and enter the water himself. If that film were made for Netflix today, that brief, silent realisation would likely become a ten-minute dialogue scene.

Something similar happens in the penultimate episode of Stranger Things season five. You know the one, where Max and Holly are in the Upside Down. Instead of simply running for their respective portals before they close, we are subjected to an absurdly over-verbose exchange in which Max recaps their entire story arc, explains exactly how they both feel and why, and outlines precisely what they will do next. It’s garbage, and it makes the episode drag. And don’t get me started on Will’s coming-out scene. Yes, it’s important and emotional, but come on. You have a world to save, your friends clearly don’t care that you’re gay, get on with it!

Ultimately, it feels condescending. It collapses tension, blunts emotional impact, and prevents the audience from truly engaging with the characters. Nothing is inferred, everything is spoken aloud.

That said, this rule does not seem to be enforced across the board. Shows like Adolescence, Baby Reindeer, or Monster are not bound by the same creative restrictions. They are slow-burn, character-driven stories that rely on visual cues, framing, blocking, emotional inference, and nuanced performances. They are also highly acclaimed and award-winning.

So perhaps Netflix does understand that certain stories demand a more traditional approach. It may simply be that shows like Stranger Things, or films like The Rip, are aimed at younger audiences and deliberately designed to accommodate the shortened attention spans of the TikTok generation.

IT’S COMICAL

If I were to compare this style to comics, I’d say Netflix are using methods similar to the kids’ comics of the early 1980s that I grew up with. Rogue Trooper — which is coming to the big screen this year — was one of my favourite characters as a kid. But if you read those stories now, Gerry Finley-Day’s scripts do exactly what I’ve been describing. They show and tell. They telegraph the plot, characters barely emote at all, and when they do, they literally tell the reader what they’re feeling.

The dialogue is almost entirely expositional: “Look out, Rogue, that Nort soldier is throwing a grenade!” Yes, thanks, Gerry, we can see that on the page.

To be clear, this isn’t a dig at Finley-Day, Alan Hebden, or any of those classic writers. They were writing for a specific audience — namely eight- to twelve-year-old boys — and within that context, the work does exactly what it’s meant to do. But could you imagine Alan Moore applying that same principle when writing Watchmen? Of course not. There’s a reason Watchmen is often held up as an example of what comics are capable of beyond the show-and-tell, action-packed boys’ comics of the past.

LAST WORD

I suppose things aren’t going to change any time soon. Netflix and other streaming services don’t use box-office metrics; they can’t. Instead, a film or show’s success is measured using the following criteria:

1. Starts: how many people clicked play.

2. Completion rate: how many viewers watched all the way to the end.

3. Total hours watched: measuring overall viewing time and re-watches.

4. Time to completion: used primarily for TV shows to assess the binge-worthiness of a series.

5. Subscriber impact: did the film or show drive new subscriptions or prevent cancellations?

It would be nice if they took a few more chances and tried to compete with films that might win a Golden Globe or a Palme d’Or. But what incentive do they really have to do that? Winning film awards would do little for their profit margins. Yes, I know that award shows are mostly just a massive circle-jerk, but they are generally regarded as a mark of quality.

The thing is, I get why they do it but—here’s the problem from my perspective. If I am watching something that forces me to engage with it and pay attention—like the 2023 series Shogun did, I’ll put my phone to one side. If you feed me the kind of slop that’s on show here, guess what? I’ll reach for my phone… or a comic, or anything that will engage my brain, because your badly written screenplay certainly isn’t doing that.

What do you think? Have you seen The Rip? What did you make of it? Are you a fan of the two-screen method, or do you hate it? Maybe this will end up driving audiences back to the cinema, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? Let me know in the comments below.

Now go and get yourself a ticket to see The Bone Temple.

Don’t forget we have an online merch store, where you can pick up horror-themed clothes, prints and more: SN-Media.redbubble.com

Troy

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Ever found yourself boiling with rage as you walk through the high street on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by mindless automatons lumbering through their day like ants following a pheromone trail? Mums pushing prams, three abreast on a pavement only wide enough for two people; elderly people in long coats who seem utterly oblivious to the world around them; millennial mums paying more attention to their phones than their kids — all driven by an inhuman lack of self-awareness. Not so much the walking dead as the listless living.

It’s like an apocalypse of consumer zombies. It’s almost as though George A. Romero had visited Hitchin town centre before writing and directing the seminal Dawn of the Dead.

It’s even worse in supermarket aisles.

Back in 2020, those good old days of COVID-induced lockdowns — when you could go out for a walk and hardly see anyone — now feel like a distant, euphoric fever dream. But do you remember how, during those COVID times, we all joked about the zombie apocalypse? Because nothing says “coping mechanism” quite like a bit of gallows humour.

Anyway, that little rant leads me neatly to the topic of this post. Let’s talk about zombies — where they came from (as an idea), and then take a brief look at some examples of zombie stories in film, TV, and comics.

Origins of the Walking Dead in Folklore

Long before zombies became synonymous with global outbreaks, collapsing societies, and shambling hordes, they existed in folklore as something quieter and more unsettling. Traditional zombie myths were rarely about mass destruction. Instead, they reflected fears of lost autonomy, improper death, spiritual punishment, and bodies returning without the self — clearly today’s consumerist automatons failed to pay heed.

This article traces the evolution of the zombie from global folklore traditions to the modern cinematic monster, showing how cultural anxieties around labour, control, contagion, and social collapse reshaped the walking dead over time.

The idea of the dead returning in physical form appears independently across many cultures. These early zombies were not so much flesh-hungry monsters as bodies animated by magic, ritual failure, or spiritual imbalance.

Here are some classic examples that helped inform what would become one of horror’s most enduring monster tropes.

Haitian Vodou and the Zonbi

The word zombie derives from Haitian Vodou (or Voodoo) traditions, particularly the zonbi (1). The zonbi originates in Haiti and is one of the more sensationalised aspects of the Vodou religion (2). Legend has it that a corpse is reanimated by a bokor (sorcerer). The zonbi is said to perform labour while lacking free will or personal identity.

Some scholars argue that the zonbi has its roots in folk tales that used it as an analogue for the chattel slavery of West Africans who were forcibly brought to Haiti — a fate in which loss of autonomy was worse than death itself.

West and Central African Influences

Although the origins of the zombie myth are usually credited to Haitian Vodou, anthropologists and historians suggest that it may have originated — like so many other cool things — in Africa (3). Many African spiritual systems include concepts of the dead existing in a liminal or recallable state.

In fact, the idea of a resurrected body being controlled — either corporally or through soul-capture — which is central to most Western depictions of zombies, appears to originate here. But that’s not all: even the word zombie itself is thought to have African linguistic roots, centuries before cinema audiences became enthralled by the walking dead.

These beliefs travelled to the Caribbean through the transatlantic slave trade, forming the spiritual foundation of the Vodou zombie lore discussed above.

European Revenants and Draugr

In European folklore, revenants — derived from the Old French revenir, meaning “to come back” — are corpses believed to return to haunt the living. Archaeologists have uncovered so-called “revenant graves” across northern Europe, where clear precautions were taken to prevent resurrection, including stones laid across the legs or blades placed on the throat (4).

The term revenant appears to have been used interchangeably with ghost in parts of European folklore, though over time the concept was gradually folded into vampire lore.

Meanwhile, in Norse mythology, undead beings were known as draugir — as any player of Skyrim will happily tell you. Draugir were hostile undead, often reanimated warriors who guarded burial mounds to prevent grave robbers from stealing hidden treasures (5). This may even have influenced J. R. R. Tolkien’s Barrow-wights. If you’ve ever played a dungeon-crawler video game or Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll be very familiar with the trope.

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The Jiangshi and Others

The jiangshi from Chinese folklore is a particularly interesting case. Jiangshi means “stiff corpse” and shares as much DNA with vampires as it does with zombies. In Hong Kong cinema, jiangshi are often depicted wearing Qing Dynasty official uniforms and moving by hopping. However, in traditional folklore, a jiangshi imbued with sufficient yang energy could run and fight with extraordinary strength (6).

According to folkloric tales, “jiangshi came from the hills, soaring through the air, to devour the infants of the people.” That’s a pretty terrifying image, if you ask me — and one that definitely gets the creative juices flowing.

Perhaps one of the most well known depictions of Jiansgi in western cinema is Hammer’s Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

Similar figures appear in both Japanese and Native American folklore. Japanese shiryō and gaki embody unresolved desire and spiritual hunger persisting after death, while the Navajo chʼį́įdii represents taboo death and ritual pollution rather than spectacle.

Shared Themes of the Undead

Across cultures, the returning dead often signal unfinished business and social anxiety. Zombies embody the unsettling idea that the passage from life to death — and ascension to the afterlife — has somehow been disrupted, trapping the soul within a horrific, decaying shell.

They represent a loss of autonomy and free will. The out-of-will nature of zombies provokes a sense of disgust and fear that is deeply unsettling. In the case of the Haitian zonbi — with its ideological roots in slavery — this becomes a powerful metaphor for ego death, where the body persists in a perpetual state of forced labour. A bit like capitalism.

Zombies are bodies without autonomy or identity: a creeping, decaying sense of inevitability that is profoundly existential.

What originated in traditional folklore has since become a well-known — perhaps even overused — horror trope. So let’s turn to how the undead have been reimagined in modern popular culture.

From Folklore to Film: How Zombies Changed

Perhaps the earliest example of the walking dead in cinema is 1932’s White Zombie, directed by Victor Halperin and starring Bela Lugosi and Madge Bellamy, loosely based on William Seabrook’s The Magic Island. It literally depicts a voodoo priest who turns a woman into an unliving automaton. Viewed through a modern lens, it can be read as a commentary on malevolent control within toxic relationships.

The obvious zombie films to discuss are George A. Romero’s Trilogy of the Dead and Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell zombie trilogy. I’ve talked at length about two of those in this post here.

In the 2000s, Zack Snyder remade Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and introduced the world to fast zombies. This, alongside Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (which is technically not a zombie film, as the “infected” are victims of a pathogen rather than undead), marked a significant tonal shift in the genre.

The move from the creeping, unrelenting inevitability of the slow, decaying zombie to the fight-or-flight reflex induced by fast zombies arguably reflects changes in cultural anxiety. Zombie films of the 1970s and 1980s reflected — or satirised — Cold War fears, anxieties about “the other”, and, in Romero’s case, offered pointed critiques of American racism and the consumerist culture of late-stage capitalism.

Post-millennial fast zombies, by contrast, aside from an attempt to refresh the genre, could be seen to reflect fears about the pace of modern life, doom-scrolling culture, and the sense that we no longer have time to stop and reflect. Instead, we are forced to react reflexively, without contemplation or planning. Every interaction becomes a fleeting online moment, boiling down to a knee-jerk overreaction or a calamitous hot take.

Another, often overlooked Zombie film that plays heavily on the Haitian Vodou myth is Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow starring Cathy Tyson and Bill Pullman—featuring a superbly creepy performance from Zakes Mokae.

In television, there have been numerous takes on zombie stories, most of which boil down to the idea that the living are the real monsters. It’s an interesting notion to meditate on, but it has become such a dominant trope that many series about the undead are barely about the zombies at all. The Walking Dead — an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s and Charlie Adlard’s comic series — started off well but, in my opinion, devolved into a repetitive soap opera with the undead relegated to the periphery. Clearly, this slow-burn nature of storytelling is necessary for a long running series like that and the show has many fans who like that aspect. I just like the horror more than the family drama.

The comics themselves were ground-breaking but aren’t especially entertaining to read. The artwork is excellent, but there are pages and pages of verbose dialogue about often mundane matters. They do succeed in conveying the bleakness of an apocalypse and exploring aspects of the human condition, but I personally gave up after about the third volume.

In my view, one of the best television portrayals of a zombie apocalypse is 2008’s Dead Set, created by Charlie Brooker. It works better than The Walking Dead—probably because it’s a short, one-off series, rather than an ongoing soap. A very British social satire set inside the Big Brother house during a zombie outbreak, it manages to explore the human condition while keeping the zombies firmly front and centre. It’s clever, funny, and extremely gory. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour — if only because you get to see Davina McCall have her throat ripped out by a zombie.

Comic depictions of zombies are equally numerous. In addition to Kirkman’s epic, the bleak and brutal Crossed by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows is among the most celebrated. Ennis also brought zombies into Judge Dredd with 1992’s Judgement Day mega-epic, which saw the Necromagus Sabbat raise sixty million zombies from the grave to attack the living across the globe. While the story isn’t among Ennis’s best work, it’s notable for its crossover appeal, particularly seeing Starlord and 2000 AD stalwart Johnny Alpha teaming up with Dredd. Another notable series that took a very different approach to the genre is DC Vertigo’s I, Zombie created by Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred. Then there is Tim Seeley and Mike Norton’s Revival, a conspiracy thriller set in a rural US town where the dead mysteriously come back to life.

It would probably be remiss of me not to mention the video game series Resident Evil which, also became a cult film franchise that fans seem to like.

Final Word

There you have it — a brief history of zombies, from folklore to popular culture. I’ve only touched on a handful of films, TV shows, and comics, so I’ll hand things over to you. Let me know what your favourite versions of zombies are, whether in film, television, comics, or novels. And do you agree with my appraisal of what zombies truly represent, both in folklore and in modern popular culture? Hop into the comments section and say your piece.

If you fancy a T-shirt, hoodie, or phone case featuring zombie-inspired designs by John, head over to our merchandise store: CLICK HERE

- Troy

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REFERNCES:

1. Wikipedia contributors. “Zombie.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2 Jan. 2026. Web. 13 Jan. 2026.

2. Wikipedia contributors. “Haitian Vodou.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 13 Jan. 2026. Web. 13 Jan. 2026.

3. Wetmore, K.J. (2025). Nollywood and African Zombies. In: Bacon, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24734-7_25-1

4. Wikipedia contributors. “Revenant.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Nov. 2025. Web. 14 Jan. 2026.

5. Wikipedia contributors. “Draugr.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Jan. 2026. Web. 14 Jan. 2026

6. Wikipedia contributors. “Jiangshi.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 Dec. 2025. Web. 14 Jan. 2026.

What can you expect here? Mostly indie comics. No Marvel or DC (well, maybe an honourable mention), simply because I don’t read them. This is a random selection of small press comics, some of which I have mentioned here before. I’m not a conscientious collector and I don’t have a pull list (I didn’t even know that was a thing until a few years ago). I mostly read digitally, and some of the comics on this list may have been released before 2025, but I only discovered, or got around to reading, them last year.

That’s enough build-up. Here’s the list, in no particular order. Let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these and whether you enjoyed them. Please do also recommend any comics you think I might enjoy, based on this list.

BABS (Ahoy)

Written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Jaycen Burrows, Babs is a very funny Red Sonja parody that satirises modern culture through the lens of sword-and-sandals babe Babs. The name alone, being so mundane and non-fantastical, is itself a parody. It contains all the usual fantasy tropes: a chainmail swordmaiden, a magic talking sword, pious Paladins who may or may not be analogous to certain conservative groups in America, and, of course, incels.

I found this to be a fun, fast-paced read, with laugh-out-loud moments and splashes of ultra-violence that ooze Garth’s cynical sense of humour. Jaycen Burrows’ artwork is, as you would expect, brilliant, and perfectly complements Garth’s storytelling.

You can buy the trade of volume one here, with volume two, issue one out next week. It seems Babs is, thankfully, not going away for a while yet.

LIZZIE PARSEC (Hugh Newell)

It was thanks to the Awesome Comics pod crew that I discovered this, reading the first five issues on the GlobalComix app. Lizzie Parsec is essentially a “what if” comic, with the core idea being: what if Han Solo was a woman, and a massive dickhead to boot?

Written and illustrated by Hugh Newell, the artwork is simplistic but extremely easy on the eye, bursting with kinetic energy. I love it.

This strip honestly has everything I enjoy in a comic: adult language, a cute and sassy female protagonist, sci-fi, violence, and tonnes of dark humour. It’s a fast-paced sci-fi crime caper. I suppose you could call it a space rompera.

Essentially, Lizzie is a professional thief who is kicked out of her criminal gang for being too much of a pain in the arse. She then sets off on a quest for… well, I’m not really sure. She mostly just wants to steal stuff but, in doing so, she accidentally (on purpose) murders the richest man in the galaxy, unleashes a deadly alien organism, and becomes the most wanted person in the galaxy. It’s f***ing amazing!

Website: https://www.hughnewell.com/lizzie

AZIMUTH (2000ad)

Azimuth is an ongoing sci-fi adventure serialised in the pages of the weekly British anthology 2000 AD. It spun off from the long-running strip Sinister Dexter, but writer Dan Abnett (Guardians of the Galaxy, Warhammer 40,000) and artist Tazio Bettin have produced what I think is one of the best modern series to appear in 2000 AD. It’s weird, action-packed, and rammed full of Abnett’s wordplay.

The story follows Ramon Dexter into the virtual city of Azimuth, a data-driven metropolis where anything is possible. Ruled by an aristocracy of the New Flesh, concepts such as life, death, and body forms are fluid. Along the way, Ramon teams up with a “deepfake” cadavatar called Suzie Nine Millimetre, as well as a certain Psi-Judge from another dimension named Andi.

As strong as Abnett’s scripts are, the real star here is rising talent Tazio Bettin, whose work channels comic art greats such as Moebius and Arthur Ranson. Bettin has quickly become one of my favourite new artists.

I suppose this counts as cyberpunk, and it feels a little like a mash-up of Neuromancer and The Incal. You can pre-order the volume one trade from 2000 AD now.

webshop: https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/XB972/azimuth-volume-1

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POP KILL! (Mad Cave)

Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Dave Johnson, with art by Juan Santacruz, this tells the story of two competing fizzy drink corporations owned by twin brothers. It’s a very amusing, over-the-top action adventure that focuses on the protagonist John Pyle, a Bond-like corporate mercenary hired to take out the world’s leading cola scientist, Dina Delux, only to end up falling for her.

Here’s the official trailer:

It’s one hell of a romp, packed with sex, guns, and plenty of laughs. You can read it on GlobalComix or pick up the trade directly from Mad Cave—or from your local comic shop.

WULF AND BATSY

Written and illustrated by Bryan Baugh, I’ve definitely mentioned this one here before. It’s another small press comic that was put on my radar by the ACP. The story follows Batsy, a cute, sexy, and petite vampire, and her travelling companion Wulf—a werewolf. All they want is to find somewhere to settle down and live a peaceful life, to be left alone to eat human flesh and drink blood, but they keep getting into all manner of mischief.

Visually and thematically, it’s a clear homage to EC’s Tales from the Crypt comics and their ilk, with more than a hint of Warren-era Vampirella thrown into the mix. It’s a camp horror comedy that is simply too much fun not to read.

Check it out on Golbalcomix or go direct to Bryan’s website: https://bryanbaugh.net/wulf-and-batsy/

BATTLE BEAST (Image)

Written by Robert Kirkman, of The Walking Dead fame, and illustrated by Ryan Ottley, this is a spin-off from Invincible—which I have not read. I checked this out online when the first issue dropped and decided to stick with it. You don’t need to have read Invincible to pick this up and enjoy it immediately.

Battle Beast follows a Leonide warrior whose sole motivation in life is to find an opponent capable of giving him a glorious death in combat. He hasn’t found that opponent yet.

It’s interesting to have such a villainous psychopath as the main protagonist, but he does have a code of honour, refusing to kill “insects”—anyone he deems too weak to be his equal. Over the first few issues, he develops a subtle character arc as he begins to form a friendship with the partially digested (don’t ask) Prince Salaka, heir to the Fantanian Empire.

Ottley’s artwork is glorious. He clearly revels in the action and the gore. Kirkman’s scripts are, characteristically, a little verbose at times, but unlike The Walking Dead, Battle Beast is laced with humour and allows Ottley’s art to breathe.

PRAIRIE GODS (Mad Cave)

Written and illustrated by Shane Connery Volk, Prairie Gods is an episodic anthology series that might best be described as Twin Peaks meets Sin City. Each episode is set in the same dusty Midwestern town and features recurring characters who show up in each other’s stories. As each self-contained tale unfolds, the world gradually opens up and we see that all is not as it seems.

Well written, atmospheric, and extremely well drawn, this is a series that enthrals you and keeps you coming back for more.

The volume #1 trade is out now, ask at your local comic shop or check out the digital on globalcomix.com.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Those are the main comics that stuck in my mind. There have been more and I’m sure that, as soon as I press ‘publish’ on this, I’ll think of at least two others. Still, here are some honourable mentions. These are comics that I did read, or have been catching up on, but which weren’t necessarily published over the past year.

Hellblazer (DC Vertigo)

I have been doing a casual read-through of Hellblazer, the long-running series about British occult investigator John Constantine. Dark, moody, highly political, and dripping with very British cynicism, it has been written by a host of legendary creators over the years and illustrated by art stars such as John Ridgway, Steve Dillon, and Sean Phillips. I’m sure I don’t need to say much more about this iconic series.

Something Is Killing the Children (Image)

Created by writer James Tynion IV and artist Werther Dell’Edera, this is a typically Tynion horror-adjacent tale, with clear queer-coded themes in the subtext. It follows a secret society of monster killers, where the monsters can only be seen by children. The story centres on Erica Slaughter, a monster hunter, loner, and emotionally damaged outsider.

Judge Dredd (2000ad)

I couldn’t talk about great comics without mentioning ol’ stony face. Because the strip is permanently ongoing, it’s very difficult to single out just one arc from the past year. However, with writers such as co-creator John Wagner and current mainstays Rob Williams, Kenneth Niemand, and Michael Carroll, the character remains in very good hands.

Signing off

That’s my list, what did you think? Let me know down below, and don’t forget to check out the SN-media merch store on Redbubble.

Troy

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No, that’s not really what I’m going to do here. The world is full of graceless egotists with an inflated sense of self-importance and, if you are still paying attention to things said by strangers on social media, you have probably had it up to here (I’m touching my head) with the opinions of deeply insecure people who choose to narcissistically project their neurosis publicly, in the form of outrage bait, rather than seeking therapy.

That’s not to throw shade at anyone who has already done their end-of-year list. If I’m being honest, yours was probably better and more well informed than mine would have been anyway.

Us creatives are an emotionally fragile bunch and often cripple ourselves with ‘impostor syndrome’, which isn’t a recognised mental health diagnosis, by the way (1). Sure, you might feel like a fraud, but that’s perhaps a combination of low self-confidence and clinical perfectionism, which is a recognised mental health disorder (2). When I was a young man, I didn’t deal with criticism or rejection well at all. But these days I know where my lane is and I know what my limits are, and I certainly do not compare myself to anyone else. When I write something, I judge it by the standards I have previously set and whether or not I enjoyed creating it. I don’t sit there and think, ‘Well, that’s a piece of shit, Alan Moore would have done much better!’ That’s just self-flagellation. I quite like myself, so I’m not going to do that and, instead am going to big myself up. But there I go, talking about myself like some internet narcissist!

Anyway, here are some things I have done this year that I am proud of, and some things that are in the works for 2026.

I DID BLONDIE BEFORE SUPERGIRL

This one-shot story for the 2000 AD fanzine Zarjaz evolved out of a script I wrote about five years ago (it’s funny how time flies). Originally, it was going to be published in Zarjaz by then editor Dave Evans, who sadly passed away. After current editor Andrew Lewis relaunched the comic last year, I resubmitted my original script. Andrew loved the idea but wasn’t keen on the pacing, so he had me deconstruct the whole thing and made some suggestions to compress the story and alter the set-up slightly. That was all constructive criticism and, together, we evolved it from an okay script into a pretty good script. Much of the dialogue remained the same, but many of the action beats changed considerably and, I think, for the better.

I managed to keep the Hangin’ on the Telephone, Rapture and Call Me gags in there, but the best thing about this was seeing how artist Ed Traquino rendered my script into what really is a beautifully drawn comic. He injected an energy and sense of humour that perfectly captured the tone and style I was going for. Well done, Ed.

Judge Anderson is one of my favourite characters from 2000 AD and you can read why I love her so much right HERE.

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DUI-4

In the past week or two, the latest edition of the charity anthology Drawn Under the Influence has been released. You can purchase your copy HERE.

DUI was born out of the ‘Drink and Draw’ get-togethers organised by the Awesome Comics Podcast community, originally during lockdown, I believe. This issue has been collated by editor Simon Russell and he has done an exceptional job. It’s a really lovely-looking comic!

I can’t imagine how much work he put into it, not just designing and editing it, but corralling the 29 contributing creators to get their submissions in on time.

The theme was Influence. So I wrote a short script parodying one of my writing heroes, Quentin Tarantino. Yes, I know he’s not a comics writer, but it was on seeing Reservoir Dogs at the cinema that 19-year-old me felt inspired. I wanted to write cool stuff with cool dialogue, just like QT. The fact that he’s now a cantankerous old grump doesn’t dim the light of inspiration he shone on me back then.

Kieran Squires did a brilliant job on the artwork here. I think that one thing you learn to appreciate, as a writer, the more comics you make, is the skill and craft of comics artists. You might have written the thing, but they brought it to life. I always say to any artist I collaborate with, “I’m just the writer, you’re the director!” But really, they are more than that. A comic artist is the director, cinematographer, set designer, visual FX department, camera crew… everything!

The strip, as I said, was a parody of sorts, or an homage, if you like. We packed it full of classic Tarantino tropes, from fast-talking wise guys to blatant podophilia.

ROXIE VS THE SPOOKS

This one isn’t out yet, so keep your eyes peeled for an announcement sometime in the new year. Sector 13 Comics are releasing an anthology comic called Gothic that’s an homage to 1970s British girls’ comics like Misty and Spellbound, which mostly contained ghost stories. I wrote about Roxie here (HERE) and also wrote this short story set in her world (HERE). But what is really exciting about this one is that I have seen all the pages illustrated by Torgo Wells, with colours by Dan Walls, and it looks amazing! They’ve put loads of little Easter eggs into the backgrounds, which make me smile every time I look at the pages.

I’m sure they won’t mind if I share this brief glimpse with you.

Keep your eyes out for Sector 13 comics on social media for when they announce their publishing schedule for 2026.

Coming up in 2026

I can’t say too much right now, but hopefully 2026 will see a lot more comics-based action from yours truly. Plans are afoot!

In the meantime, I just want to let you know that I really appreciate you reading this Substack and, as long as my schedule allows it, I will strive to post weekly until I am no longer able to maintain that pace, or the tech fascists succeed in destroying everything.

Don’t forget that we have a merch store under the name of SN-Media on Redbubble, and treating yourself to some stickers, a t-shirt or mobile cover is a great way to support our work.

May 2026 bring you the utopian Star Trek future we deserve and not the dystopian Terminator hellscape we are seemingly accelerating towards.

Troy

References:

1. Wikipedia contributors. “Impostor syndrome.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Nov. 2025. Web. 18 Dec. 2025.

2. 2. Hung Nguyen & Eric M. J. Morris (2024) The role of clinical perfectionism and psychological flexibility in distress and wellbeing, Clinical Psychologist, 28:3, 207-220, DO

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