To The Last Page

Ted McKeever’s 1990 5-part full-colour series for Epic really tested the boundaries of the writer/artist’s ideas and artwork, but also pushed the extremes that Marvel’s daring creator-independent imprint was used to publishing. The idea behind Plastic Forks is as bizarre as you could imagine and McKeever’s artwork really goes for it in a dynamic way. Two scientists are working on a way to make human reproduction self-contained, with both males and females capable of reproducing independently without any contact between the sexes. So far the experiment has only been tried out on monkeys, but after a dangerous incident in his laboratory, Dr Henry Apt recovers in hospital to find his sexual organs replaced with a mechanical construct. Escaping from the institution holding him, Apt takes off across the desert pursued by secret agents, finding assistance from an eccentric former soldier, Angel, building his own weaponry and escape vehicle in preparation for the coming apocalypse. But what

Perhaps Ted McKeever’s most wild and entertaining work, the creation of Eddy Current, an escaped lunatic from an asylum who believes he has superhero powers, gives the writer/artist free reign to indulge in the wildest of adventures and push his scratchy drawings to expressionistic lengths.   Eddy’s not insane and doesn’t know why he is in an asylum, but inspired by the adventures of his comic book hero the Amazing Broccoli, Eddy purchases a Dynamic Fusion power suit from one of the ads in the comic book, hoping to realise his true potential. If only batteries had been supplied, Eddy wouldn’t have had to plug himself into the mains, but when the activation of his suit brings the power down in the asylum, Eddy realises he has 12 hours to explore the city of Chad and perhaps find his old girlfriend. Instead he runs into a couple of violent backstreet criminals, is worshipped as the second coming by an unusual nun and, naturally in a Ted McKeever storyline, stumbles upon a fiendish apocal

Ted McKeever’s first graphic novel from 1986 looks a little primitive at the start, but very quickly develops into the scratchy, smeary, bold and angular style that we have become accustomed to seeing in his work. Even character types are familiar from Eddy Current and Metropol , as a group of oddball types in Union City band together to try and face down a dangerous menace to the city, and perhaps civilisation as a whole. Here in Transit , it’s City Commissioner Boss Traun who has designs not so much on controlling the city as using it for his own obscure and ultimately destructive aims. He attempts to gain this power and establish a new order through Reverend Grisn, who is standing as a candidate for mayor of Union City. The only means of stopping this threat could be through the unlikely form of Spud, an underground graffiti artist who has unwittingly witnessed the darker side of Grisn, along with a blind beggar and an ex-wrestler who give him shelter when he goes into hiding. Ther

Maybe you need to have read the previous book in the Jake and Juoma series ( Bait ), since there’s a sense of something missing here in terms of characterisation and the relationships between characters, but the writing - short, sharp and full of cliché - is such that I can’t imagine that there was ever much depth in the first place. Other than the exotic setting of Kenya, this is a really run-of-the-mill thriller, full of contrived, improbable situations and ridiculous one-dimensional characters. There certainly wasn't enough here to encourage me to make it to the end.