Apathy Jack writes:
ABC Warriors: The Black Hole, by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley
Remember 2000AD? I read those as a kid, and they were nuts. Total craziness. I couldn’t get over not only the weirdness, but just the sheer volume of the ideas.
Just finished rereading a childhood favourite; The ABC Warriors story The Black Hole, where, basically, a group of robot soldiers have to travel through an unstable time-tunnel to shut down a black hole.
Total craziness. Nasty, nihilistic, and the most fun I’ve had reading on the bus in ages.
Here, the thoughts of the commander, Hammerstein, as he’s undergoing his military programming:
Signals go back and forth between my master and secondary programs.
Contradictory signals.
It’s alright to kill humans in battle. But not in camps.
When they murder civilians, it’s an atrocity. When we murder civilians, it’s tough retaliatory action.
Rebels on our side are freedom fighters. Rebels on their side are terrorists.
It’s good to love animals. Then kill and eat them.
But not children.
2 comments:
I always thought that Mills was just trying to hard to seem crazy and nihilistic - that's just what he wanted you to think about him. Now Peter Milligan, on the other hand - there was a 2000AD writer who produced stuff that seemed quite genuinely mentally unbalanced. You should read Milligan's "Bad Company," also from 2000AD, with art by Brett Ewans and Brendan McCarthy.
Or, you know, for all out mentalness, there's always Hewligan's Haircut, with Jamie Hewlett.
I'm a fan of Milligan's work; I have Bad Company, and if you haven't read it, you should check out Skreemer.
Part of the reason for the sheer insanity of the Black Hole is Simon Bisley's art. It was his first paid job, so he was young and inexperienced enough to throw in a lot of weirdness, but still have his work look typically amazing.
Post a Comment