The Sleeze Brothers File (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 21)

The Sleeze Brothers File

Collection published: 1990
Contents originally published: 1989-90
Acquired: November 2021
Read: December 2021

Masterminds: John Carnell and Andy Lanning*

Writer: John Carnell
Blueprints: Andy Lanning, with Dave Hine and Stephen Baskerville

Colour-Man: Steve White

Calligraphic Crimes: Helen Stone and Bambos

Now that I've finished (mostly) tracking Death's Head's trajectory out of Doctor Who Magazine, I wanted to follow a different Marvel UK spin-off, the Sleeze Brothers, the shady P.I.s introduced in Follow That TARDIS! back in A Cold Day in Hell! At the time, I wrote, "The Sleeze Brothers went on to have their own comic series from Marvel. The Tardis wiki doesn't count it as part of the Doctor Who universe, but who knows why. [...] You can get it pretty cheap on the secondary market, but I am not sure I am motivated to do so..." And yet, I was! I am not sure if I could explain why, except that I found something charming and uniquely Marvel UK-ish about the whole thing. The pastiche-heavy future world of these strips struck me as being very much of a piece with Russell T Davies's "New Earth" setting, and thus something that fit into the Doctor Who universe in spirit, if not in continuity. (Though, having read them all now, they totally could be part of the Doctor Who universe.)

This contains six single-issue stories, plus an eight-page prologue establishing how the Sleeze Brothers—formerly minor criminals—became private investigators. If you read interviews about this series, it's often stated that despite the fact that though it seems like a Blues Brothers rip-off, it's really not; this is totally belied by this story, which opens just like the film, with El Ape Sleeze (or "El'ape" in some of the stories) meeting his brother Deadbeat after he's released from the penitentiary, following by a gratuitously destructive car chase. So who knows.

This is from the prologue, which if I understand correctly, was made specially for this collection. The inker credit is an informed guess. The usually reliable Grand Comics Database for some reason lacks detailed information on this series...
from The Sleeze Brothers File (art by Andy Lanning & Stephen Baskerville)

The six stories here are fine. None are works of genius, though by the end of the volume, I found there was a certain weird charm. Blues Brothers may have been a starting point, but it was never this weird. They get involved in gang wars, in attempts to use holotelevision to brainwash the city, in attempted presidential assassinations, in Clueesque murder mystery dinners, in behind-the-scenes shenanigans at award shows, in intergalactic peace conferences. Most of the time, they are almost gleefully unaware of the stories unfolding around them, not understanding why anything has actually happened.

I am always a sucker for detective parodies for some reason.
from The Sleeze Brothers vol. 1 #4 (art by Andy Lanning & Stephen Baskerville)

 I wouldn't say I loved any of these stories, but there was only one I didn't like, the presidential assassination one, which seemed to have little panel time for the ostensible main characters, and was too much on the convoluted side. (I think the cases should be beyond their understanding, but not mine!) Most of the time, I was enjoying the inane details and strange pastiche that makes up their universe. I mean, it's not high art, but it's so completely itself that I couldn't help but be charmed by it. 

Holding the book open flat to scan this page caused a 44-page section to detach itself from the binding! The things I do for blog posts no one will ever read...
from The Sleeze Brothers vol. 1 #3 (art by Andy Lanning & Stephen Baskerville)

As you watch the Sleeze Brothers going up against a two-headed pig police sergeant, crawling through sewers, ending up in an Alien pastiche, satirizing the sexual intrigues of the Kennedy administration, revealing the killer is a parasitic life-form living on his brother's back, encountering an army of ninja cats, it's clear that no one made this comic book to appeal to a preexisting trend or perceived gap in the market. No one here was out to make a quick buck, because this is not the comic that could make anyone one. This exists because John Carnell and Andy Lanning wanted it to exist, and because they loved it. And I think that comes through at its best moments.

I mean, it's not even clever parody!
from The Sleeze Brothers vol. 1 #2 (art by Andy Lanning & Stephen Baskerville)

I also tracked down the 1991 Sleeze Brothers one-shot, "Some Like It Fresh." This was a double-length story about the Sleeze Brothers going undercover at a temperance convention. It's nuts, in a delightfully madcap way; it was probably my favorite of all their stories, as it does that slapstick thing of just escalating throughout every time its protagonists make a bad decision. Shame that this was the last Sleeze Brothers tale, aside from an eight-page in Epic #2 I haven't yet tracked down, because it seems like they were beginning to perfect the whole thing.

* The credits in this collection are actually given narratively on the first page in the form of a police report. For example: "Up until the start of the second case (the so called 'Real to Reel' scam) it is believed suspect HINE, DAVE collaborated with LANNING on the blueprint work. After that point we believe BASKERVILLE, STEPHEN took over and was connected to the affair until the end." So I've done my best to convert this back into credits you can understand... sort of.

This post is the twenty-first in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Age of Chaos. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Incomplete Death's Head
18. Evening's Empire
19. The Daleks
20. Emperor of the Daleks