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
    

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 11)

Collection published: 2014
Contents originally published: 1988
Read: April 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five

editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Simon Furman, Ian Rimmer, and Richard Alan

Pencils by Geoff Senior, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, Bryan Hitch, Lee Sullivan, and Robin Smith

Inks by Geoff Senior, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, Bryan Hitch, Stephen Baskerville, Lee Sullivan, Dave Elliott, and Robin Smith

Colors by Steve White and Euan Peters

Letters by Annie Halfacree, Richard Starkings, Gary Gilbert, Tom Frame, Gordon Robson, and Steve Parkhouse

This volume opens with its biggest story. "The Legacy of Unicron!" is an epic entirely set in the future timeline (though the future characters are battling over a time portal, so it is about a threat to the present day, even if we never actually go there. Like a lot of Furman's epics, it's a pile-up of conflicting factions and motivations: the Autobots, the Decepticons, Death's Head, and Unicron all have their own aims, and alliances shift throughout. It's a thing he's got quite good at by this point, and this is no exception. I don't think it's the best of these, but it is the kind of thing I enjoy-- and the kind of thing I wish I'd read when I was fourteen, because I would have enjoyed it even more then.

Also, these days, faux-mythic stuff in Transformers leaves me cold, but I would have ate it up then. Crazy to think that Furman's ideas here had an influence reaching all the way to Michael Bay!
from The Transformers #150 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

Notably, this story features my whole excuse for reading these Transformers stories as part of a Doctor Who Magazine comics marathon: at its climax, Death's Head falls into a time portal and disappears. He will never again appear in a Transformers story, but the next installment on my list will reveal where he went... (Cyclonus and Scourge are sent back in time, explaining how come in the UK stories they are created by Galvatron in the year 2006, but in the US stories they work for Scorponock in the 1980s. I'll be honest: I hadn't noticed. The way Furman handles it, it even makes sense that it hadn't previously come up that they were from the future.)

You're never gonna live the good life, dude. Just accept it.
from The Transformers #146 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

After that, we're back to the present day, with stories that do the usual Transformers UK thing of weaving in and out of US tales.* A few focus on Galvatron manipulating the Decepticons; others let us know what is happening on Cybertron. I mostly enjoyed these. These are some of the better Galvatron stories-- when he has BIG PLANS you know they are going to fail because otherwise the universe is doomed, but when his plans are smaller scale, he can demonstrate his intelligence and cunning by outmaneuvering Shockwave.

You don't mess with Galvatron because he is always messing with you.
from The Transformers #152 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

We also have undead zombies on Cybertron, which is fun stuff, though alas, the Wrecker leader Springer is often improbably indecisive. But it's nice to see Ultra Magnus cut loose, even if he somehow wasn't able to find the Ark in two years(!) of traveling across America. And then he's back to Earth for a showdown with Galvatron, building up to something bigger. (That evidently never actually happened!)

How did Emirate Xaaron get to be the leader of the Autobots with a face that dumb-looking?
from The Transformers #167 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson and Dave Elliott)

We also have a couple stories from the 1989 Annual. I will admit I zoned out during "Prime Bomb!" (Ian Rimmer is not a great prose stylist, I guess), but I did enjoy Richard Starkings and Robin Smith's "Peace," set in the far future, when the Autobots have finally won... and are so used to war that peace only lasts a day before hostilities restart. It's mind-boggling to contemplate, but the Transformers have been at war for four million years. How could they ever adjust to peace after that? It's a theme that James Roberts and John Barber took up to good effect in their IDW runs, but it's nice to see a bleaker take on it here.

Hey, kids! Comics!
from The Transformers #169 (script by Simon Furman, art by Robin Smith)

My big complaint about this volume is not really its fault per se: it's the last one! In his editorial notes, James Roberts often mentions the forthcoming volume six, but seven years later, it has never come to pass. I am sure there are valid financial reasons for this, but it's depressing; this was a high quality reprint series, and the UK stories are pretty tricky to access otherwise. Titan did collect many of them, and I will track those down eventually, but these were beautiful volumes and Roberts's interviews and commentary were amazing.

* The chronology for this volume is a bit smoother than that of the previous volume. (Allowing for the fact that it overlaps with the previous volume, but I'll ignore that here). Mostly these stories overlap with ones collected in the US Classics, Vol. 4. My suggested sequence is: UK #146-53; US #37-39; UK #160-61; US #40; UK #164-73; US #41-42, 44.

This post is the eleventh in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers A Cold Day in Hell! 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
    

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 9)

Collection published: 2013
Contents originally published: 1987
Read: February 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four

editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Simon Furman, Ian Rimmer, and Lew Stringer

Pencils by Geoff Senior, Will Simpson, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, and Lew Stringer

Inks by Geoff Senior, Tim Perkins, Dan Reed, Stephen Baskerville, Dave Harwood, David Elliot, and Lew Stringer

Colors by Steve White, Euan Peters, and Abadzis
Letters by Annie Halfacree, Richard Starkings, and Mike Scott

So far, Marvel UK's The Transformers has been on a nice upward trajectory: that comes to an end with this volume. It does get off to a nice start with the sequence of stories about Rodimus Prime of 2007 hiring a bounty hunter to kill Galvatron, who ends up tracking him to Earth of 1987 ("Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive!"/"Burning Sky!"/"Hunters!"/"Fire on High!"/"Vicious Circle!"). The bounty hunter is Death's Head, who will be the character who connects Transformers to Doctor Who Magazine in the long run. You can see why Death's Head went on to get his own spin-off: he's a fun, expressive, dynamic character, and the four-way collision we get here between Death's Head, Galvatron, the Autobots of 1987, and the Autobots of 2007 is kind of explosive stuff Furman excels at. Big, fast-paced action, with enjoyable characters. I liked the IDW Ultra Magnus, and I am quickly coming to appreciate the Marvel UK Ultra Magnus as well, even though he's a very different character. (I am not sure why it is taking him months to locate the Ark, though!)

Kind of awkward to have your hand shot off, yes?
from The Transformers #120 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

After that, though, it's a bit of a mix. There's "Ancient Relics!", a crossover with Action Force (the UK equivalent of G. I. Joe) that is mostly just tedious, uninteresting action sequences, with none of Furman's character flare. There's "Worlds Apart!", a really uninteresting tale of some Headmasters on Nebulos, apparently slotting in during an issue of the US Headmasters miniseries that hadn't even been reprinted in the UK mag yet at the time it came out.* And there's the UK retelling of the Headmasters series, and what can I say about the Headmaster concept except that I just really really hate it, because it overloads an already overloaded series with uninteresting characters.

Apparently the UK version of "The Headmaster Saga" presents a whole different reason the Headmasters traveled to Earth than the one the US stories gave, yes?
from The Transformers Annual 1987 (art by unknown)

But there is some decent stuff here, even if it doesn't rise to the high points of volume three. "Kup's Story" (a flashback of how Kup met Rodimus) is fun, as is "Ark Duty" (a flashback of Kup and Rodimus in the period leading up to Transformers: The Movie). The return of the Dinobots in "Grudge Match" was kind of silly (I liked the Dinobots throwing down the Predacons, but I didn't buy that they would let them off so easy), though I did like the "What's in a Name?" lead-in story that revealed Swoop's secret shame over "losing" his name. The "Ladies' Night" story, uniting three female characters from across the UK run, might have been more successful if the artists here were more skilled at drawing humans, not robots, but it was fine.

So that's what Rodimus Prime's alt mode looks like, yes?
from The Transformers #118 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

I did have to love "Stargazing," where a human boy teaches Starscream-- Starscream!-- the true meaning of Christmas. He thinks he's succeeded, but Starscream just wants to get one up on an Autobot.

This kid is Starscream's most compelling nemesis, yes?
from The Transformers #145 (plot by Simon Furman, script by Ian Rimmer, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

And Death's Head reappears in "Headhunt," which gives us our first glimpse of a 21st-century storyline not tied to the 20th-century one. I am curious to see how that is going forward, and how Furman pulls all the strands-- of which there are a lot at this point-- together. But this volume itself felt more like a chore than any previous one.

* The chronology gets a bit complicated here. The UK stories collected here (#113-45) overlap with the US stories collected in The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3, but those stories also overlap with the Headmasters miniseries, which wasn't collected until the US Classics, Vol. 7. And some of these UK stories fit in during Headmasters, and others are set purely in the future, and one ongoing plot from the UK strip is only tied up in the annual. And then also some of the US issues during this time reprinted UK strips! I suggest something like this, but your mileage may vary, and this also means you need to save some of the UK strips from this volume until you get to UK volume five: US #26-27; UK #113-20; "Vicious Circle!" (from UK Annual 1987); US #28; UK #125; US #29-30; UK #132; "Ark Duty" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #133-34; Headmasters #1; US #31; "What's in a Name?" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #135-38; US #32; Headmasters #2; "Doomsday for Nebulos"/"Stylor's Story" (from UK Annual 1987); Headmasters #3; US #35-36; UK #145-53; US #37; Headmasters #4; UK #130-31; "The Final Conflict" (from UK Annual 1987); US #38. This does rather stretch out Headmasters, so it functions as a sort of "meanwhile... in space" in advance of their appearance in #38. Okay wow that is messy... I should just do a Transformers reading order post at some point.

This post is the ninth 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
   

Review: The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone by Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi, Stephen Baskerville, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2014-15)
Acquired November 2016
Read September 2017

The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone

Written by Shane McCarthy
Pencils by Guido Guidi
Additional Pencils by Marcelo Ferreira
Inks by Stephen Baskerville
Colors by John Paul Bove
Letters by Tom B. Long

I wasn't a very big fan of Drift when he was introduced in All Hail Megatron, finding him a bit of a stereotypical tortured-man-with-a-dark-past-and-also-he-has-swords. Except he was a robot. I really warmed to him in More than Meets the Eye, though, which used Drift's spiritual awakening in his self-titled miniseries (which I actually haven't read) to reinvent him as an optimist, creating a sort of Kirk-Spock-McCoy-esque trinity with Rodimus and Ultra Magnus. But in volume 4, Drift was exiled from the Lost Light (taking the fall for something Rodimus did), and in volume 8, Ratchet set off in search for him. Empire of Stone shows what the two get up to together, as Drift tries to discover where he fits in the universe.

I may have come to like Drift, but basically, it turns out, only when he's being written by James Roberts, because back in the hands of his creator Shane McCarthy, he's the same old dull tortured-man-with-a-dark-past-and-also-he-has-swords; McCarthy just puts in one joke to explain away the difference between his Drift and Roberts's hippy-dippy version:

Also he's a little dismissive about Roberts's take in the book's extras.
from The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone #1 (art by Guido Guidi & Stephen Baskerville)

Though it has some high points (I liked the somewhat dumb Decepticon that Drift and Ratchet befriend), this is a pretty standard loner action story: Drift comes to the site of an old mistake, Drift angsts a bit, Drift redeems himself, stuff blows up. The best part is Guido Guidi and Stephen Baskerville's very dependable artwork. They do a good job in making clear storytelling and sharp action sequences, even if McCarthy's writing means there's too many action sequences.

Gotta love that melodramatic narration.
from The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone #3 (art by Guido Guidi & Stephen Baskerville)

The best part of the book is that though by the end Drift is still too cool to be either a Decepticon or an Autobot, he is coming back to the Lost Light, so he'll soon be back in the much more capable writing hands of James Roberts.

In Two Weeks: Meanwhile, on Cybertron... Optimus Prime seeks a little bit of Punishment!

Review: The Transformers: Regeneration One, volume I by Simon Furman, Andrew Wildman, and Stephen Baskerville

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2013 (contents: 2012)
Acquired August 2014
Read May 2016

The Transformers: Regeneration One, volume I

Writer: Simon Furman
Penciler: Andrew Wildman
Inker: Stephen Baskerville
Colorist: John-Paul Bove
Letterer: Chris Mowry

This is sort of an odd jump. The last volume of The Transformers Classics in the IDW Humble Bundle went up to issue #50 of the Marvel run; this begins with issue #80.5. It's been thirty issues since I left off, and in the interim, peace has been declared, Optimus Prime has grown old and depressed, and the Decepticons are plotting their return to power.

Now, I don't know what Simon Furman's run on the original Transformers comic was like, but this feels much more like a comic of the 2010s than one of the 1980s, with its bloated, decompressed storyline, and unrelenting grimness. Say what you will about Marvel's Transformers comics (and I have), but under Bob Budianksy, at least, they were always fun. This story here-- where we learn, among other things, that the population of Earth is dead, including most of the human cast of the 1980s comic-- doesn't really capture the spirit of the tales it's supposedly a follow-up to. I'm not opposed to darkness in Transformers; some of the IDW stuff I've read so far gets quite dark, but this is darkness without nuance or interest, the sort of adolescent grimness you get if you watch the first two seasons of Torchwood.

Let's take the nicest nice guy of all the Autobots and put him in PERPETUAL LIVING TORMENT.
from The Transformers: Regeneration One #83

I admit that I'm probably not the target audience for this (I've never read a Simon Furman Transformers comic before, though on the other hand, I do love Kup), but I didn't find much to enjoy here.

Next Week: That's the end of the G1 continuity (that I own), so we go back to the beginning, back to the era when Cybertron was under the control of an Autocracy!