Saturday 16 June 2007

MACH 2, Meet MACH 3

In an interview in the new edition of Comics International (issue 202, May 2007), Pat Mills confirms what I suspected when I wrote my review of last week’s 2000AD, that new series Greysuit is a reworking of 1970s 2000AD strip MACH 1.


Mills notes that one thing he has changed is that Greysuit John Blake, unlike MACH Man John Probe, does not receive guidance from an implanted computer.

Which is probably a good thing, as he would be sharing comic pages with another 2000AD character who has conversations with his cybernetic enhancements.


This issue of Comics International also features another comic strip spy, with a well-illustrated article about adaptations of Patrick McGoohan’s TV series Danger Man (also known as Secret Agent in the USA).


It’s worth buying for that alone, if you are interested in comic-strip adaptations of old British television programmes. That’s handy, as production delays mean the news content that makes up the majority of the magazine is a tad out of date. This series has already covered Doctor Who and The Avengers; next issue is The Prisoner, with at least the next three issues after that covering Gerry Anderson shows.

(Special note to fussy Squaxx dex Thargo: yes, I know that the name MACH 2 has already been used, for a robot which threatened John Probe with obsolescence. But “MACH 3, meet MACH 4” just didn’t sound right.)


Panels

Greysuit “Project Monarch” Part 2 by Pat Mills (script), John Higgins (art and colours), S J Hurst (colours) and Ellie de Ville (letters), 2000AD Prog 1541, 13 June 2007

Nikolai Dante “The Romanov Dynasty” Part 2 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Alison Kirkpatrick (colours) and Ellie de Ville (letters), 2000AD Prog 1043, reprinted in Nikolai Dante: The Romanov Dynasty, Rebellion, 2004

Danger Man, art by Jesús Blasco, Lion and Champion, 1966, reprinted in Comics International issue 202, Cosmic Publications, May 2007,

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