Something I seem to hear (or rather, read) quite often these days is Doctor Who fans calling for the Daleks to be rested – or even, Heaven forbid, killed off altogether. What nonsense! And I’ll tell you for why.

Back in 1963, something rather special happened at the BBC, and I’m not just talking about the 23rd of November, either. No, fast forward to the Saturday after Christmas, and that day is when the programme really cemented itself upon the consciousness of a nation. It wasn’t the work of Terry Nation that did it either – you don’t need me to tell you that. For when the Daleks first wheeled themselves out in front of the cameras, we got our first view of possibly the most iconic creation ever in the history of modern entertainment.

The Americans have never even come close.

Forget your Batmans, your King Kongs and your R2D2s and ask yourself if you have ever seen anything as beautiful and as distinctive as a Dalek? Raymond Cusick didn’t deserve a pay rise for that design, he didn’t even deserve a BAFTA. What Mr Cusick should have got was the Turner Prize – or an OBE. For the Dalek is – to my mind, without question – the single most striking thing ever to have been seen on a television screen.

And we should just count our lucky stars that they were created for this little series we love called Doctor Who.

Now, much has been said, of course, about how the general public perceives the show. Usually we’re given an image of a man in a long scarf, with a girl and a tin dog at his side, roaming the universe in a Police Telephone Box fighting monsters.

Wrong.

Fighting Daleks: that’s how the public see the Doctor.

Which isn’t to belittle the programme (or the programme makers), and it isn’t to say that Doctor Who shouldn’t try and be – try and achieve – many other things. But the simple fact is, the Daleks have had such a huge and important impact on the show’s success, they have become completely synonymous with it. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that; for after all (and it’s a point that’s also been made many a time), where would Batman be without the Joker, or Holmes without his Moriarty – or even Danger Mouse without Baron Greenback? Every hero needs an arch enemy (well, that’s an argument for another time), and the Doctor needs the Daleks.

I can’t go on without a quick word on that popularity. The final episode of the rematch story, The Dalek Invasion of Earth (which is the story, after all, that kick-started Dalekmania in the ’sixties) had an audience only a fraction short of three times the size of An Unearthly Child, just thirteen months previously. And while that very first episode might have suffered a little, given the weekend upon which it was first broadcast, it’s unquestionably true to say that the Daleks took the regular audience for an early Saturday evening on BBC1, and at the very least, doubled it. That’s doubled it. Not bad going for some bicycle wheels and a bit of wood.

It also needs pointing out that, even though the first Dalek story was entirely self-contained and left the Daleks (a species indigenous not only to the planet, and the City, but also to the story, in which they first appeared) dead as dodos and without any possible hope of recovery, it was they who were chosen as the Doctor and company’s very first rematch just a year later.

The context and ramifications of this need emphasising.

Doctor Who wasn’t a programme that was designed to repeat itself – other than in terms of alternating historically-based stories with futuristic ones, of course. But just as the Doctor and his companions were intended to land the TARDIS in a variety of different historical situations, so the science fiction stories were supposed to throw up a diversity of locations, plots and characters. The very idea that the Doctor could come up against the same enemy twice in the space of nine stories wasn’t something that the original makers of the programme even considered. The fact that the Daleks were so incredibly popular,however, made it an inevitability.

And it’s also very useful to remember that, had the Daleks not fetched up on Earth in 2164 (or shortly thereafter), the precedence for sequels that led to multiple revisitations of Cybermen, Sontarans and Ice Warriors (among many others) would not have been set. In fact, it’s doubtful that Doctor Who would have lasted long enough for that even to have become an issue, it must be said.

So the Daleks weren’t just important because they elevated the show to such a degree of popularity that its longevity was guaranteed, but they also set the new standard by which the programme would become defined. Not just Doctor Who against the monsters, but Doctor Who inside an ongoing and evolving storyline, in which the Daleks would become a benchmark by which to measure not just future invaders, but also future continuity, too. The Daleks gave Doctor Who its soap, you might say, by becoming something recognisable and memorable (in terms of the series’ ongoing story) that the programme makers, as well as the TARDIS travellers themselves, could evaluate their progress against.

Not only that, they made (and continue to make) a bundle of money for the BBC – and we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of that. It was heavily rumoured recently that the powers-that-be within the Corporation insisted that Steven Moffat should be sure and feature them early within his first series in charge of the programme – and it ain’t like that hasn’t happened before, either. Because in the 1960s, the Daleks happened along the Doctor’s path twice a year, in six-part (as opposed to four-part, which was the general rule at the time) storylines, and this at the behest of Huw Wheldon, BBC Controller. The story usually told is that it was a female relative of his who enjoyed their appearances, hence his support – in reality, it’s likely he had half an eye on the BBC’s bank balance, too.

If we were to rest or retire the Daleks, with what would we replace them? One of the general complaints levelled against their continual reappearance is the lack of invention in the storylines in which they are used, but surely those stories would have remained the same had the presence of the Daleks within them been replaced by something else. Just try and imagine The Parting of the Ways with the Toclafane instead (Russell T Davies’ actual backup plan); the story needn’t alter much to accommodate the change – it’s not the Daleks themselves that’s the cause of any deficiency in the finished product (if indeed there is any), so we can’t lay any blame at their door – and it works the other way around, too. Imagine now if The Doctor’s Daughter had been lifted by their presence in place of the Hath: with a few alterations, the least loved story in Series Four would have become something evocative and spectacular.

It’s not as if we haven’t lived through this before, either. After the Doctor’s first rematch in 1964, the Daleks were brought back (as mentioned earlier) twice a year, for six weeks at a time, to entertain the nation. (The one notable exception was The Daleks’ Master Plan; for 1965, two six-part Dalek stories got rolled into one three-month-long epic.) This was a situation that looked set to continue throughout the rest of the decade; it was only the intervention of Dalek creator Terry Nation, in withdrawing the rights to their use in order to promote his own attempted Dalek series in America, that changed things. In 1967, David Whitaker wrote The Evil of the Daleks, a story in which they were killed off. By the end of the ’sixties, Doctor Who’s ratings had plummeted and the series was on the brink of cancellation.

Coincidence?

Barry Letts saw how unwise this decision had been. At the first realistic opportunity, he brought them back (as the curtain raiser on his second series in charge of storylines), and continued to use them once a year until he left – much the same then as now, then. He even upped the ante on their constant reappearances by persuading Terry Nation to move into uncharted territory: we finally went all the way back to their creation, and met Davros for the first time.

For a half-a-decade stretch of the 1970s, just as we’d seen in the 1960s, the Daleks were a regular presence on our screens. And although Doctor Who’s viewing figures went from strength to strength for a few years after their appearances became more sporadic, this was the only time in the series’ history in which they have done so – and it has to be said, Doctor Who also had a lot more going on to keep it popular during this period as well.

Here’s the rub, though – the point of this piece of writing.

All I’ve talked about so far is how the Daleks have affected the production of Doctor Who, or its perception by adults. But Doctor Who is really made for the 5 to 10-year-olds, or the mythological 8 to 12s.

My earliest, and most vivid, memory of the programme, is of Episode Six of Planet of the Daleks (I was born during transmission of The Mind Robber). In fact, my memory of Episode Six of Planet of the Daleks actually includes quite a lot that, with the hindsight brought to us courtesy of VHS and DVD, didn’t ever actually happen on the screen. In other words, two things: firstly, it was the Daleks who were responsible for bringing my imagination to life; and secondly, in an age of Doctor Who in which the Ogrons, Draconians, Drashigs, Sontarans, Sea Devils, Giant Maggots – and any other monster you care to mention – all made their first or most impressive appearance, it was still the Daleks that made me sit up and take notice. It doesn’t matter that Planet of the Daleks was a so-called “remake” of Terry Nation’s first Dalek story (in those pre-rewatchable television days, this was hardly an issue). For me, it was the first Dalek story.

My most distinct memories of the following series are all from Death to the Daleks, too. And the following year, Genesis of the Daleks came along and blew everything I’d seen to that point out of the water. For a young boy in the mid-’seventies, the Daleks were the most thrilling thing ever.

That’s kind of my point: for a young boy (or a young girl – or a young anyone-at-heart), the Daleks are the most thrilling thing ever. Full stop.

Imagine this: your first experience of Doctor Who is in one of the Dalek-free periods of the show. You have to wait two, three – even four – years before you catch your first glimpse of them. Imagine not having a first Dalek story, in other words. It’s unimaginable.

Every year – every single year – that Doctor Who is on the telly, there’s a new generation of five-year-olds watching it for the first time. And every single Dalek story ever broadcast has been someone’s first Dalek story; someone’s earliest memory of Doctor Who. Someone’s Planet of the Daleks.

We’ve recently come out of a fifteen-year period in which multiple generations of children didn’t have a first Doctor Who story full stop. So do we – do we, seriously – have the right to deprive any generation of five-year-olds, of their first Dalek story?

My argument is not that the Daleks should be rested – and certainly not retired. If I had my way, there’d be a rule that said they had to appear, once a year, every year. So that those simple pleasures that they bring to a young and inexperienced audience would never, ever be denied to anyone ever again.

They’re brilliant, the Daleks. Just brilliant. Why oh why would anyone want to put them to rest?

DOCTOR WHO: What’s going on?

The stories in time and space (normally Earth in the very near future or past) continue this week with The Rebel Flesh (BBC1 Saturday, 6.45pm), with a script penned by Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham.

Essentially the story is about some humans who make copies of themselves for some reason but the copies go a bit mad and the Doctor has to point a screwdriver at them and sort it all out very quickly in the last ten minutes of the second part next week.

Anyway, there are theories floating around about what is going on this series in the OVERALL ARC of things: is Amy really pregnant? Who is that woman with the eye patch? Why did a little girl in a spacesuit regenerate? Does the TARDIS have a toilet?

The

real question – and the possible answer to this series’ mystery – is beards. Whether you noticed or not, I’m thinking head-writer Steven Moffatt has cleverly introduced beards in every episode which will build up to the “big bad” for the finale – a big beard.

Think about it. In episode one (The Impossible Astronaut), the FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III had a beard while chilling out with the TARDIS crew following the Doctor being shot by a mysterious spaceman who had popped out of the lake.

In the second episode (Day of the Moon) the Doctor himself had a beard. In the third episode (The Curse of the Black Spot), all of the pirates had beards. And in last week’s episode (The Doctor’s Wife) Rory was spotted sporting a beard after hanging around the TARDIS corridors for 50-odd years.

So now we’ve established the real enemy in this series, we must ask where do these beards come from? I’m thinking the planet Chinneryhare 45.

Thousands of years ago there was probably a civil war between the two factions of beards – the neatly trimmed ones and the wild bushy ones. The ensuing nuclear war resulted in terrible disfigurements for the beard people and they launched into space to try and find a new home planet.

Taking with them their children (their offspring being designated “moustaches”), the beards travelled in fine spaceships made of razors and Brylcreem.

Arriving on Earth millions of years ago they just about outlived the dinosaurs (they couldn’t take them over with their terrifying powers, hence there was never a T-Rex with a beard or a Stegosaurus with a moustache). But then when humans arrived they pounced. Mercilessly.

Starting slowly with a pair of sideburns, soon the whole face of humanity was taken over. Think about it, have you ever seen a caveman without a beard?

It all links up and I am sure that in three week’s time when the finale airs, beards will be taking centre stage in an exciting stand-off with the Doctor. But the Doctor will not be fighting them alone.

Earth has had many alien visitors and all of them have been infected with a beard too. Expect the Doctor to join up with goatee-Cybermen and Craig David inspired Daleks in a battle to the death.

I’ve come full circle, my geekdom is complete. I’ve had two revelations in life, both of which rocked my world.  Latterly in 1990 whist driving down Eltham High Street in a friend’s car I heard the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. In Stones’ parlance the World turned on its axis. Having desperately been listening for music that touched me, and I knew it should somehow, I found plenty lacking and all of a sudden here was this vibe. The other, in remarkably similar circumstances happened on a sunny, hazy 70’s Saturday afternoon as my Dad stopped randomly to pop into a news agent and returned to hand me an impulse purchase, a copy of Starburst magazine. This was my introduction to Star Wars and a certain photo that instilled something into me.  This still, dry day in the back seat of a brown Mk II Cortina (on the same high street as my Stones revelation), a few towns over from where I lived a life full of a peaceful intrigue, was suddenly shaken by the photo of a weather beaten, golden droid. Even at that age I was well aware that anything shown at my rare cinema visits or on the few television channels was made up and clearly understood that this robot was a character in some movie that I was yet to see.  The urge to see the film didn’t exist as it would today for such a deep feeling the image threw up.  I just knew somehow that this was important to me and it would take a few years before C3PO and I would finally meet properly. Time just didn’t seem to matter back then.

Media being so immediate these days nearly everything has lost its meaning. Seeing adverts online the minute they are released and podcasts or webisodes during production we seem to be overly saturated with something long before it’s anywhere due to come out.  I was in no rush; I knew a little patience would eventually draw me into this universe created with a sense of warmth and reality that I hadn’t seen before. Being such a hoarder I am surprised that I haven’t still got this magazine, as with the boxes for all of the eventual merchandising my Mum probably threw it out to make space for lesser products that made my childhood. I was bought some of the toys before even seeing the film and it didn’t seem to matter, they all made sense to me. What never made sense to me was what happened to my Empire Strikes Back Luke, he just upped and disappeared on me, probably pinched by a certain infant villain and then best friend. Which, beside the point, is one of the things that bug me to this day. So as things happened I didn’t see Star Wars in the cinema and can’t claim the open-mouthed experience that some of you were lucky enough to have. I did see Superman around that time and can imagine what it would have been like with a box of Smarties and the cinema full of smokers tapping their cigarettes into the ashtray of the chair in front.

As it turned out I missed Empire too. My first actual look at George Lucas’ world was Return of the Jedi shortly around the time it came out. As one of the first families to have a video (have we got a video?) we very quickly consumed everything on the shelf of titles available to rent which was mainly crappy Disney stuff. But skirting around vaguely dodgy circles, my Dad came home with a few tapes that were amazing quality bootlegs and I finally had my hands on the third film of the trilogy. Return of the Jedi is probably the film I’ve seen most in my time on this planet and despite a slight dislike of the Ewoks, especially that poxy ginger one,  I was watching something that I knew I was a part of. Everything just clicked. Again this is where my view of these films differ from everyone else’s, as I was offered these characters with no back story I just understood where they must have come from. I didn’t know Luke and Leia had kissed, Vader was Luke’s father and he was also already a Jedi Knight. Ben was dead and a glowy Leia was obviously into Han so I fancied the Twi’lek that provided snackage for a stop motion rancor and just bathed in the genius of having a wookiee co-pilot, the Millennium Falcon (by far and away the sexiest spaceship that has ever existed on the screen) and the banter between two droids back on Tatooine where I first discovered them in print. The film had an ethereal quality from the outset. The moment after Luke gave himself up and the conversation with Vader in the corridor of that landing pad was just a scene that (no matter how many times I saw it) still struck me as something that I had dreamed up despite it being there at the same time during every viewing. The film was just magical to me.

Next up was A New Hope, on the television and taped for posterity. Much like the film structure we are used to nowadays, I was offered the story in an order that gave me more than it took. The droids again drew me into the film and finally I saw the desert planet, Mos Eisley and a dead Krayt dragon for the first time, long after many of my contemporaries. It didn’t seem to matter back then. At least in my world we weren’t dying to see films, the toys were about and we just dug them for what they were; a design of pure tangibility. Or ‘so cool’ as we were probably describing them at the time, who would have imagined the Snow Speeder as a ship? The film just worked, from the Jawas to the award ceremony and grins at the end. Of course I wasn’t of the mind that I should view these films in the order that George Lucas had intended. Or that a few decades later disappointed in the order he intended, wild eyed optimism was the theme of the day I still had one more film to go and had no idea that the film would be perfect.

Empire Strikes Back was the most ethereal of the films, the darkest and most unconventional. I knew the characters now but I wasn’t prepared for this. If I was to get picky then I’d say Jedi was a movie, Star Wars was a movie that had filmic qualities but Empire was a true film. In hindsight I’m lucky that I saw it last. My trilogy was finished on a high. A tauntaun sleeping bag with tubular intestine, Han using a saber, AT-ATs, the Battle of Hoth, asteroids, Dagobah, floating away with the trash, the Cloud City, Lando’s eyebrow, Boba, carbonite and the dour ending that just left a gap in your heart. To this day I still enjoy a rendezvous, there’s something satisfying about separate adventures and convening for the next step of a plan. Incidentally I once worked in a camera shop and was badgered by a customer about details for a tripod he wanted to buy, he is currently the only owner of a tripod made from carbonite in the world. It’s probably still quite well protected, if it survived the freezing process that is.

The Star Wars trilogy was a work of genius and a part of my youth that I can’t deny. But then as we grow up we put away childish things. And then we pick them up again and never put them down. I left secondary school in the early 90s to a lack of work under the then Tory government as they were busy screwing up the country and selling it off to whomever they could (sound familiar?). So in one of my moments of boredom I suddenly felt a stirring in the Force. Compelled to see Star Wars again, I went out to buy the film. This time round I was going to do it right, get them in order and enjoy them all over again. A New Hope was easy enough, a copy in my local Our Price and a speedy walk home. Back again in the 4:3 world of Lucas and I was able to enjoy it all over. Empire posed a problem as I could only buy the rental through a friend who owned a video shop but the price was ridiculous. All of a sudden I was the only Star Wars fan around; they didn’t even sell all of the films. So having been behind with the times originally I was ahead of the curve of the comeback. A bit of bootlegging later I had the trilogy again and grumbled a bit at the quality but given the reception we used to have on TV you sort of lived with it. Then the eventual re-issue.

At this point I finally saw the films in widescreen. You mean there’s more to them? Pan and scan wasn’t even a consideration for its existence to me. This is the trilogy that keeps on giving, more to discover and again it didn’t seem real. Seeing them for the first time was almost dreamlike. It also threw up one of my favourite moments. As I poured over the new footage stuck to the sides of the original I noticed the character in Jedi sitting down at the briefing for the Battle of Endor. Just as Luke says ‘I’m with you too!’ and walks in, the guy sitting on the left of the screen rolls his eyes. All’s not well in the rebellion then. Right up to the point of the cleaned up films being released without little extras being squeezed in (Greedo shooting first? Sod off), I still had this tentative thread back to the first moment that I saw Threepio stare at me with those friendly, slightly illuminated eyes suggesting that life didn’t have to be mundane.

But as Lucas did intend to disappoint, probably not on purpose granted, I was happy with what I had. The prequels were pointless. Especially as when the last came out I was online playing a wookiee in Star Wars Galaxies which was my geekdom striking back against what should have been full on adulthood. I’d heard about the game before it was released and obviously was going to play it. I had, still do until I do some Ebay listings, all of the games on all of the formats released. I just couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t just Star Wars, I was a sci-fi geek all over again. The kid in the car all of those years ago had given over to the dark side and refused to really grow up.  Admittedly it was mainly Star Wars. Trek, Who, most everything else didn’t really compete for my geekdom. 2000AD and hundreds of reprints by Quality comics dominated the 90s, a period of DC comics and a never ending love affair with graphic novels took me through to the new sci-fi genius Whedon’s output.

Galaxies for those lucky enough to play it at the right time was that kid’s dream come true. You could have the droids, you could fly about in space battles, visit the Pit of Sarlacc and get poisoned for your curiosity, jump on a speeder, visit Jabba’s palace, gesture at Vader to find yourself getting strangled by the Force and sit down in a cantina with similarly minded folk and wait for a fight to break out as they inevitably did. We all found the films in our own way but we all knew there was more to it than popcorn and the possibility of some toys later.  Of course much like the rest of the Star Wars universe the time was limited on how long you could dwell in it before an uprising changed everything. The cyclical nature of Lucas’s creation and eventual destruction was always on the cards, the game just lost the plot and again we’re in that downswing of little good coming from the franchise. Yeah the Clone Wars animation looks great but it’s too aimed at kids which the originals never really were. So as my geekdom has mirrored the Star Wars circular nature, now I can put it to bed for a bit. I can enjoy the films that pour out of Hollywood that all owe Lucas credit for changing cinema and science fiction for the better and know that I can just feel nostalgia for the good old days of my sunny youth.  The Starburst title started it all for me. I may even try and find that copy just for kicks if it weren’t just vivid imagery that sticks in my mind and not the actual cover of the issue. Writing this I realise I can again put away childish things, cherish my memories, revisit the films now and then and get on with my life.

Well until the Knights of the Old Republic comes out early next year. Face it, geekdom is addiction, my name is Bill Lynn and I am an addict. Starburst dealt me my first fix and George Lucas kept pumping out product, sometimes cutting it with something nasty or utilising the technology of the day for some designer version of the original 70s stuff we all got hooked on.  Fortunately as a child of the 70s and the speed of releases via the then media I learnt patience. Yoda would be proud.  I can throw a Stones album on, chill out with the making of Empire book and wait for the next fix as I know there’s no real rush.

One more time around?

Last week, as the Artifex Union’s (mostly successful) bid to halt all digital production of media came to an end, the floodgates were opened and properties that had been stalled were finally released to the public. This month, we look at the most intriguing of these: AlephStudio’s transmedia experience, The Widow in Red, a trilogy told in three parts across three different mediums: movie, book, and game. It’s film noir with an anime edge, all in glorious 3D augmented reality.

The Widow In Red is a triple release, the first of its kind. First, there is a movie, a film noir piece relating the story of Mick Johnson, a Chicago private eye with a eye for the dames and a passion for the ponies. He’s run afoul of the mob and is holed up in his office, trying to figure out where his next meal is coming from, and whether Capone’s boys will be coming for him that night, or if they’ll give him a pass. He is visited by Richard Brasingthwaite, man of society and wealth, and asked to follow his much younger and prettier wife whom he suspects is having an affair. Second is a book, which picks up the story a year later as Johnson attempts to extract himself from the trouble which occurs in the movie, Finally, the third piece is an augmented reality game (ARG), where the player dons a pair of special glasses, jacks in a pair of earbuds, and sets out in his or her local surrounds to find clues to clear Johnson’s name.

It is impossible to review this without certain base-level spoilers. You have been warned. Turn back now.

This release fascinates me on several levels. The scope and detail of the plotting across all three components is staggering. The year is supposed to be 1928, but it is not a 1928 that you’ve ever seen before. The hooch wars are in full swing, but you’ll notice something different from the get go: odd tech pervades the novel. This is film noir meets anime meets Tesla.  Electro-katanas and derringers, fedoras and ninja robots, the feeling is a sort of Noir punk, a logical extension of the Gatsbytech fad (which was an extension of Steampunk, for those keeping score at home), but polished and smooth. While at first there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance as Richard Brasingthwaite asks his samurai to wait outside when entering Johnson’s office, the transitions and melding of cultures after that is so well done that you stop questioning and simply accept the world you are shown.

Johnson, played by a slightly digitally retouched Bill Pullman, is a down on his luck private investigator who is about three days from losing his office, which is also his home since his last girlfriend kicked him out. As already mentioned this fits the noir stereotype to a T; tired, dishevelled, half in the bottle and desperate for work. Enter Richard Brasingthwaite, banker and man about society. Brasingthwaite, (Kenneth Branagh) explains that he believes his wife is having an affair and wants to have her followed. Johnson names his price, and sets about tailing the lovely Georgia Jennings-Brasingthwaite (Dakota Fanning). Other stars make cameo appearances, from James Gandolfini as Al Capone and Josh Brolin as Elliot Ness to porn starlet Ambrosia Beaujolais as Johnson’s estranged sister. It is a rich and talented cast, and one that makes the whole experience come alive for the audience.

I do not want to give away the delightful twists and turns of the case, so let me say this: as par for the course, nothing is what it seems, and our P.I. winds up in over his head and in serious trouble at the end of the film.  And here’s the genius: upon finishing the movie, the watchers are given a link to print the book to a local printer or order it online to continue the story. The book and game are sold as a package, so when the book is printed or sent to the reader, the glasses come with it (or can be picked up with a voucher from a local big-box store). You are instructed to read the book first, then play the game.

The book picks up a year after the original story, with Mick Johnson on trial for murder. The book is penned by genre veteran Jared Axelrod and rings with authenticity. The author never merely leans on cliché to make his point, there is always a fresh point of view, a descriptive twist of phrase which keeps the narrative moving at a fast clip. The Noir-punk setting comes shining through, right down to a sword duel between our hapless protagonist and a party which we will not name at this time. The prose is equal parts Dashiell Hammett, Philip K. Dick, and Harlan Ellison: hard-nosed, twisted, and unrelenting. By the time I finished the novel, I was exhausted, but I was dying to find out what happened next.

The next morning, I put on the glasses, and the world changed.

To truly appreciate the sophistication of the game, you really need to understand the history of Augmented Reality games. They’ve been around as experimental phenomena since 2000 when Bruce H. Thomas released ARQuake as a proof of concept. AR would mostly be a set of university experiments until 2008 when Wikitude released the first AR travel browser for the G1 phone. As the power of smartphones and tablets grew, so did the use of AR: by viewing the real world through the camera and using the GPS, compass, and accelerometer, the device’s camera image could be overlaid with markers, text, and any number of inventive whimsical uses. By 2011, augmented reality was making inroads in stores (being able to view clothes on your person without trying them one), on television (a common use was the first-down line during NFL games), and in games (such as the Nintendo 3DS or the iPhone game Paranormal Activity:Sanctuary). As technology advanced, so did AR. The holy grail was to miniaturize the technology and combine it with sophisticated 3D rendering to build an immersing virtual world overlay on the real world.

AlephStudio has nearly found the grail. To begin, you put on the glasses, and the world around you is transformed. A microcam is concealed in the bridge of the glasses and the the game is run via a microchip in the frame which speaks over the local 6G network to AlephStudio’s servers. You sign in and then the game begins. I was completely unprepared for the sophistication of the gaming technology. The microcam in the bridge of the glasses scans your field of view and overlays images of the game world over your surroundings. Furniture is transformed into their period counterparts. Colours are changed, patterns are altered. Looking out of windows reveals not your home town, but the streets of 1928 Noir-punk Chicago. You put in the headphones and the surround sound takes over…a knocking on ‘whichever door you are closest to’ starts the game.

So you are standing there in 1929 Chicago, which bears an uncanny similarity to wherever you are in reality, when you hear the knock. You cross through real space to open a real door; there before you is Dakota Fanning as Georgia, pointing a gun at your chest. Let me tell you, it was so real, right down the scent of her perfume (sprayed from micro-atomizer in the frames of the glasses) that my heart skipped a beat.

The wonder doesn’t stop there. The program will adapt the map of the game to wherever you are. This means that if a scene needs to take place in a bar, it will scan the metadata for your area looking for a bar of the right size, shape, and distance from your location and guide you to it. Once there, the software takes over, repainting the surroundings, inserting the cast of players which are needed for the scene. You will find clues, interrogate suspects, and even run from the cops along the way. Bioware’s TrueChoice engine governs the way the plot evolves, and the player has the freedom either to explore at will or to follow the path of the game as originally plotted. As you might expect, there are hundreds of possible endings to the game. I have only experienced five thus far, and while some were not as satisfying as others, each was a memorable experience.

All in all, the total package offers about 30 hours of entertainment when you consider the movie, book, and game together as a single unit playing straight through without exploring all the game has to offer. If the player chooses to follow the sub-plots and back alleys, that entertainment time stretches into the hundreds of hours. One of the real thrills of the game is the return of the cast from the movie, all there in front of you, in full 3D augmented reality. Each encounter would have had me on the edge of my seat if I were watching it, but I was IN THE GAME, and the excitement was truly surprising, even for a jaded hack like me.

Did I mention there is a multiplayer mode? Oh yes, friends, there is a multiplayer option. Break out the costumes and get ready for a treat. The multiplayer scenarios are either Mick Johnson’s case files or more nebulous plots that are reminiscent of the How To Host A Murder games that were popular around the turn of the century. The software within the glasses will use 6G, WiFi, or Bluetooth to pair with your friends’ glasses, drawing a shared world which is just short of having a personal holo-deck. No real world costumes? No problem; the game contains a virtual butler or fashion consultant who will fit you in virtual clothes from the AlephStuidio in-world store. Buy an outfit that you like and when you wear it, other players with the glasses will see you outfitted in your new duds. Be careful, though…virtual clothing coverage is a little buggy and the rapid movement of limbs causes the clothes to fall out of sync with the body. All I’m saying is, unless you’re using these virtual outfits in the privacy of your own home, be sure to wear some real clothing underneath. Remember: the real world still sees you as you really are.

I am aware that this review has been uncharacteristically gushing up to this point. The Widow in Red is a monumental achievement, and I do believe that it will forever alter the way we perceive fiction moving forward. That being said, there are a few problems which, considering the scope of the attempt, seem almost petty to bring up,  But let’s face it—I’m a critic. Petty is my bread and butter.

The processor in the glasses has tremendous difficulty with rapid colour shifts and patterns. So, for example, if you are moving from a beige room into a boldly coloured space , the processor cannot quite make the transition look as seamless as it should be. I experienced lag time and sound distortion as the GPU fought to keep up with the shift in background landscape and the glasses get uncomfortably warm if you play for more than two hours at a stretch.

Now…as enamoured as I am with the property, this tech is going to cause problems. This is the first game to take full advantage of real-world locations that are not open spaces like parks or party halls. People playing the game are going to get odd looks and questions from the ‘Mundanes’ surrounding them when speaking out loud to a person that only they can see and hear. Normally, this is only permissible if you mentally unstable and wandering the city streets or are in a church. I expect we’ll be seeing some interesting stories in the coming months about players being ushered out of pubs for breaking the social contract or even being hit by cars as they ignore the safety warnings that come with the game. That being said, the implications of the technology are staggering; there are already stories that contacts have been developed which allow for the same kind of visual interface. Kudos to Vernor Vinge for foreseeing this in his classic book Rainbow’s End, there’s no doubt we will see an evolution in gaming in the near future.

In closing for this month, let me say that I do recommend the whole experience. It is time-consuming, in a good way, and while the price might seem steep at first, the hours of fun you’ll have will be more than worth the initial investment. If this release is a success look for copycat games to start hitting the shelves in the next two weeks.

As always, you can find me on Qlatch. Drop by, say hello, and let me know what you thought of The Widow In Red. Until next month, here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

The infamous scene written by David S Goyer in Action Comics #900 where Superman tells the US president’s national security advisor of his decision to “quit America”.

 

The irony of Superman renouncing his American citizenship in Action Comics #900 – five days before US Seals put “boots on ground” during a secret mission in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden – has not been lost on political commentators. But the phenomenon of the nationally-identifiable superhero is still strong. 

 

 

Pavitr Prabhakar of Spider-man: India

 

Bookish Pavitr Prabhakar of Mumbai gains his spider powers from a yogi and, after the death of his Uncle Bhim, uses them to save Auntie Maya and love interest Meera Jain from demonic crime lord Nalin Oberoi in Spider-man: India.

 

 

Superman: Red Son asks what if the Man of Steel had been raised in Stalin’s Soviet Union?

 

He may not be American anymore, but in Mark Millar’s Elseworlds tale Superman: Red Son, he never was. Raised on a Ukrainian collective farm to embrace Truth, Justice and the Socialist Way in Stalin’s Russia, Superman’s 50-year link with the motherland sees his “adopted” nation overtake the USA as leader of the free world. Until President Lex Luthor, fur-capped Batman and troubled Vietnam veteran Hal Jordan, decide otherwise.

The Sentinel of Liberty went black-and-blue as Nomad in Captain America #180

 

Marvel’s flag-wearing patriot, Captain America, didn’t go so far as to quit his citizenship but he did give up the red, white and blue uniform for five issues in 1974 when he became the disillusioned Nomad after it was heavily hinted a Nixon-esque American government official was behind the terrorist Secret Empire.

 

 

Batman’s Club of Heroes, clockwise from top left: France’s Musketeer, Australia’s Dark Ranger, Italy’s Legionary, the Swedish Wingman, Native American Man-of-Bats, Argentinian El Gaucho and Man-of-Bats’ sidekick, Raven Red.

 

Batman has inspired imitators from around the globe in the form of the Club of Heroes during the 1950s, until Grant Morrison brought the band back together in 2007 for a bit of murder in the mansion in The Black Glove. Now the caped crusader is actively recruiting suitable international candidates in Batman, Inc.

 

 

The espresso and nicotine fuelled Italian Spiderman

 

Italian Spiderman can do everything a spider can’t: teleport, mind control penguins, change the size of motorcycles and cause chickens to lay eggs, or packs of his favourite cigarettes, in this spoof of superhero misappropriation.

 

 

Japanese Spider-man calls in trusty giant robot sidekick Leopardon

 

Japanese Spider-man ran for 41 episodes in 1978, but the only similarity between Peter Parker and young motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro is the outfit in this licensing deal from Marvel. Takuya stumbles upon alien spaceship Marveller from the planet Spider and gains a bracelet giving him spider-like powers – along with the ability to transform the ship into mighty robot Leopardon to aid in his battle against nemesis Professor Monster and his Iron Cross Army.

 

 

Dutch fan Hans Jensen meets his hero Spider-man after becoming Amsterdam’s answer to the web-slinger.

 

The Dutch Spider-man, aka Hans Jansen, lacked his American idol’s powers, but that didn’t stop him inventing his own web shooters which fired glue distilled from canal water in 1989.

 

Would you mess with Captain Italia?

Captain Italia is a nigh-on indestructible cyborg sold by the Japanese to an evil mastermind for Venice. However, the cyborg overcomes its evil programming.

The comic Captain Chile.

Captain Chile has done it all: defeated alien terrorist Ozamu bin Alien, helped culinary-challenged Tragactus plan his meals, curtailed the threat of violent, erotic comics pouring out of Otakuland and prevented a corrupt politician from giving away the Chilean sea.

Speedster and lightning-thrower Gundala from Indonesia.

Indonesian scientist Sancaka devised an anti-lightning serum, only to be struck by a bolt out of the blue, transporting him to Lightning Land and gaining the power to fire lighting and run at “typhoon speed” as Gundala. He fights alongside the Superman-esque Gudam and marine hero Aquanus. Gundala also sparked his own 1980’s movie.

Godfrey Ho martial arts fest Catman in Lethal Track

Indonesian scientist Sancaka devised an anti-lightning serum, only to be struck by a bolt out of the blue, transporting him to Lightning Land and gaining the power to fire lighting and run at “typhoon speed” as Gundala. He fights alongside the Superman-esque Gudam and marine hero Aquanus.  Gundala also sparked his own 1980’s movie.

After being scratched by a radioactive cat, Catman of Chinese martial arts fest Catman in Lethal Track was imbued with super strength, laser vision and even TV remote control vision.

In December of 1996, horror fans were faced with one question, “What’s your favorite scary movie?”  Total Box Office earnings of $173,046,663 revealed the answer to be Scream, directed by horror master Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

     Originally conceived under the title, “Scary Movie,” Scream tells the story of Sidney Prescott played by Neve Campbell, who lives in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, where a masked killer with a penchant for horror movie trivia is stalking her and her friends.

     By the mid-1990’s, Craven had grown weary of being known as the “Master Of Horror,” and wanted to escape the genre for awhile to test his directing abilities in a less bloody genre.  After teaming up with Eddie Murphy on the horror/comedy, A Vampire In Brooklyn, he slipped back into more familiar, bloody territory with a proposed remake of Robert Wise’s 1963 classic, The Haunting.

    During this time, other directors such as Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Machete) and Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) were approached to helm the film.  Concerns arose when Rodriguez, Boyle and other directors who read the script interpreted it as a comedy instead of what it was; a satirical horror film.  It wasn’t until production fell through on The Haunting that Craven accepted Bob Weinstein and Kevin Williamson’s offer to direct.

     Filming for Scream began on April 15 in Santa Rosa, California on a budget of $14 million.  When Williamson sold his script to Miramax, he was asked to remove many of the gorier scenes, fearing they would inhibit the salability of the script.  Once Wes stepped into the director’s chair, all the deleted violent scenes were written back into the script.

     Even though Scream provides horror hounds with plenty of the red stuff, the film was written to be more of a self-referential “whodunit.”  The characters in Scream are very aware of horror films, with the character Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) giving a very passionate speech on the “Three Rules You Must Know In Order To Successfully Survive A Horror Movie.”

     What sets the series apart from those generic and formulaic teen slashers being regurgitated by the studios around this time is its theme of a horror film within a horror film.  It references well-known horror films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street.  In fact, Drew Barrymore’s character Casey is an homage of sorts to the Marion Crane character in Psycho, in that you have a well-known actress that gets killed fifteen minutes into the movie, throwing the audience off completely.  Among the film’s many references, there are some cameos sure to excite those hard core fans including Linda Blair from The Exorcist, playing a reporter on the high school campus after the murder of Casey and her boyfriend.  Only a true horror fan would catch the more subtle references scattered here and there throughout the film including the character Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) as being named after Sam Loomis, Donald Pleasance’s character in 1978’s Halloween.  Also, when Casey’s parents arrive home to find their daughter missing, her father tells her mother to drive down to the McKenzie’s and call the police, similar to when Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, Laurie Strode in Halloween, tells the two little kids she is babysitting to go across the street to the McKenzie’s and call the police. 

     Wes Craven is known for giving up and coming actors and actresses their start in the business.  The most famous being Johnny Depp, who made his feature film debut in A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Shocker’s Peter Berg.  Craven wanted to continue this tradition until the decision was made to cast actors and actresses who already had a substantial body of work.

     Party Of Five star, Neve Campbell was given the lead role of Sidney Prescott, because of her “girl next door” looks.  Wes believed that, despite her innocent appearance, she had the ability to handle the physicality that the role demanded.  Other members of the cast include Courtney Cox (Friends), David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Rose McGowan (Encino Man), Matthew Lillard (Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies Go To College), and Skeet Ulrich (The Craft).  And who can forget the iconic, masked killer himself?  After a long search, Roger L. Jackson was picked to play the voice.

     Kevin Williamson in his script described the killer as only wearing a ghost mask of sorts.  This lack of character description left Wes Craven and executive producer Marianne Maddalena scrambling to come up with a killer that would prove to terrify audiences.  It was Marianne who came up with the concept of dressing the killer all in black and the mask that Wes found at a house while location scouting.

     As mentioned before, Scream splattered itself onto theater screens in December 1996.  It opened in 1,413 theaters, taking in $6,354,586 in its opening weekend.  It went on to take in $87 million during its initial release, and on April 11, 1997 it was re-released to theaters, where it went onto make another $16 million.  Fans considered Scream to be a breath of fresh air compared to the teen slasher films of the 1980’s and their unsuccessful sequels.  They praised Williamson’s script for its cleverness and self-referential, social commentary on the horror/teen slasher conventions audiences were so familiar with at the time.

     With the film grossing $103,046,663 domestically and $173,046,663 internationally, it wasn’t long before the studio was clamoring to cash in on the success of the first film with a sequel.

SCREAM 2:

     Scream 2 was green lit in March 1997, just one month after the re-release of Scream into theaters.  Williamson admitted that when he initially wrote the script for the first Scream, he perceived the story as being part of a trilogy.  Production for Scream 2 began in July 1997, with another December release date set for that same year.

     Wes returned once again to the director’s chair along with: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and David Arquette reprising their roles from the previous film.  Newcomers included Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jerry O’Connell (Jerry McGuire), Jada Pinkett (The Nutty Professor), and Liev Schreiber (who had a small part in the first film) returns as suspected murderer, Cotton Weary.

     Scream 2 picks up two years after the events of Scream.  Sidney and Randy have moved on with their lives and are now attending Windsor College.  True to her nature, Gale Weathers has written a bestseller titled, “The Woodsboro Murders,” which helped to free Cotton from his unjust incarceration for the supposed murder of Sidney’s mother, Maureen Prescott, three years prior.

     If Scream was a horror film within a horror film, then Scream 2 is the events of the first film made into a horror film (Stab), within a horror film.  And, since Scream gave us the rules to successfully survive a scary movie, then Scream 2 gives us (via Randy) the three essential elements that go into make a successful horror film sequel: “The body count is always bigger.  The death scenes are always much more elaborate, with more blood and gore.  Never, ever, under any circumstances assume the killer is dead.”

     When Stab hits theaters, the real life events of what occurred two years ago come back to haunt Sidney in the form of a new killer.  Once Dewey catches wind of a new Ghostface (Roger L. Jackson) stalking Sidney and her friends, he flies out of Woodsboro to protect her.  One by one the body count rises and everyone is a suspect, including Sidney’s new boyfriend, Derek played by Jerry O’Connell.

     Production suffered major setbacks when the script was leaked on the Internet, which revealed the film’s plot, including the finale and the identity of the killers.  Wes and the rest of the cast and crew were forced to throw out the parts of the script that were leaked, and continue filming with only a partial shooting script.  Williamson would go off to rewrite scenes to be shot that day, even changing the film’s finale and the identity of killers and his intended victims.  Security measures were taken so that no more information would be leaked.  The cast were not given the last scenes of the script until days before shooting, and the killer’s identity was not given until the day the final reveal was to be filmed.

     Despite these problems, Scream 2 grossed $33 million its opening weekend.  Many critics praised the film for being both funnier and scarier than its predecessor.  By the end of its theatrical run, Scream 2 had taken in a cool $101 million.

SCREAM 3:

     Fans would have to wait three years for the return of Ghostface to slash his way back onto theater screens.  Wes and the rest of the cast returned once again to close the book on one of the most successful horror film franchises since A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th.  Unfortunately, this time around, Kevin Williamson would not be able to fulfill screenwriting duties, due to his involvement on the film Teaching Mrs. Tingle, that he wrote and would soon be making his directorial debut.

     Ehren Kruger (The Ring, The Ring 2, Skeleton Key) was hired to write the script for Scream 3.  Kruger developed a script based on an outline written by Williamson, but quickly swayed far from both Wes Craven’s, Harvey Weinstein’s, and Kevin Williamson’s script.  Sidney was written as a Sigourney Weaver-type heroine, mixed with the pumped up, badass-type Sarah Connor character in Terminator 2. 

     Craven moved in and helped rewrite the script so that the characters and story were more faithful to the previous films. The change that Ehren Kruger made to the script, that made it into the finished film, was the movie’s location.  Which moved the characters from Woodsboro to Hollywood.

     Scream 3 finds Sidney Prescott living in a secluded area in California, working from home for a crisis prevention hotline.  When Cotton Weary is murdered, police detective Mark Kincaid, played by Patrick Dempsey, enlists the help of Dewey and Gale to help provide clues as to who the woman is in a picture left behind at the crime scene. The woman is later identified as Maureen Prescott – Sidney’s mother.

     Meanwhile, in Hollywood, production is underway for “Stab 3,” which fans of the series can appreciate as being the real life film franchise referencing itself as a trilogy within a trilogy (Stab 1,2,3).

     Ghostface has managed to find Sidney and informs her of the murders that have taken place.  She flies out to Hollywood to meet up with Dewey, Gale and Detective Kincaid.  The killer has begun targeting the cast members of “Stab 3,” which includes Jenny McCarthy as Sarah Darling, Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie, Matt Keesler as Tom Prinze, and Patrick Warburton as Steven Stone.  The ironic twist is that these characters are portraying the real life characters of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale.

     Though here Kruger’s script placed more emphasis on the humor and satire, rather than the violence, the studio was still nervous about the violence and red stuff in the film.  Rightly so, because the media was laying the blame on horror films around this time, following the tragic events of the Columbine shootings that occurred not long before the filming of Scream 3.

     Despite the media scrutiny, Scream 3 opened on 3,467 screens in the United States alone on February 4, 2000.  Grossing $34 million its opening weekend (just $1 million more than the previous film), Scream 3 spent two weeks in the #1 spot in the North American Box Office, eventually earning a total of $161 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run.

     Scream 3 became the highest earning entry in the famed trilogy, but received mixed reviews from critics and fans alike.  Just as some people praised Scream for revitalizing the horror genre, Scream 3 is said to have spoofed it.  Maybe it was a good thing that this was the last film in the series, as it was suffering the same fate that Freddy Kruger did in later Nightmare On Elm Street films, when he was seen as the jokester killer – like Ghostface was fast becoming.  By the time Scream 3 was made, Ghostface’s antics were more of the slapstick variety, rather than a faceless killer seen as scary.

     As the year 2000 drew to a close, so did the film series that turned the teen slasher sub-genre on its face.  Or so it seemed.

SCREAM 4:

     Ten years later, after many false starts, Bob Weinstein approached Kevin Williamson to pen the fourth installment to what is rumored to be a brand new trilogy, with Scream 5 and 6 soon to follow.

     With a budget of $40 million, Scream 4 began filming on June 28, 2010, with Wes Craven back in the director’s seat.  Cast members David Arquette and Courtney Cox returned to familiar territory as Deputy Dewey and Gale Weathers.  Sidney Prescott herself was almost played by someone else. Luckily for both the production and the fans, Neve Campbell agreed to return to the series.

     Ten years after the tragic events at Woodsboro, Sidney is now the bestselling author of a self-help book.  While finishing up her book tour, she makes a pit stop in Woodsboro, where she meets up with Dewey and Gale, who are now married.  She also is there to visit her cousin Jill, played by Emma Roberts (Nancy Drew) and her aunt Kate, played by Mary McDonnell (Dances With Wolves).  Sidney’s presence back in her old stomping grounds lures Ghostface, once again voiced by Roger L. Jackson.  He begins stalking and killing Jill’s friends.  Just as obsessed with horror films, Ghostface has now begun referencing horror movie remakes and basing his murders similar to the killings of the characters in “Stab.”  To survive and stop Ghostface’s killing spree, Sidney, Dewey, Gale and Jill must follow the rules set by horror films of the 21st-century.  Also joining the Scream family are Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Anthony Anderson (Scary Movie 3 and 4), Adam Brody (Jennifer’s Body), Anna Paquin (True Blood), and Alison Brie (Mad Men).

     Like the films in the series to come before it, Scream 4 wasn’t without its trouble and controversies.  Though Kevin Williamson did return as screenwriter, Ehren Kruger was once again brought in to perform rewrites on the script, and argued that, despite Kruger’s rewrites, it was still very much Kevin Williamson’s script and vision in terms of characters and plot.  To prevent the script and identity of the killer(s) from being leaked on the Internet, like on Scream 2 and 3, the cast and crew were only given 75-pages of the 140-page script.

     Despite the setbacks and extra security surrounding the filming of Scream 4, production wrapped on September 24, after a 42-day shoot.  Now seven months later, a whole new generation of gore hounds will be able to witness what is sure to be another groundbreaking trilogy, sure to give the horror genre the boost it so desperately now needs.

Rogers and Deering are back together again. OK, to be more precise it’s Gil Gerard and Erin Gray who have teamed-up again. Sadly, Buck and Wilma haven’t returned to our screens, but their real-life alter-egos have both appeared in a new movie, are making joint convention appearances, and join Starburst for an exclusive interview.

Let’s flash back to the distant past of… the 20th Century. It’s 1979, and hot on the heels of Battlestar Galactica, Glen A Larson unleashes Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, the weekly exploits of astronaut William ‘Buck’ Rogers. Frozen in time in 1987, Buck wakes up in the far-flung future of 2491 and joins the Earth Defence Directorate, pairing up with tough talking Colonel Wilma Deering. The most expensive show on TV at the time, Buck Rogers limped halfway through its Second Season before being cancelled. Fast forward to the 21^st Century and Gil Gerard and Erin Gray are at the SF Ball convention in Bournemouth, reminiscing the halcyon days when Buck and Wilma ruled the airwaves.

It has to be said that Erin and Gil (Gilbert C) are both looking great. Gil has shed  over 150 pounds following major weight-loss surgery, as documented in Discovery Channel’s Action Hero Makeover, while Erin looks after herself by (among other healthy activities) running Tai Chi sessions, a class of which is an unusual addition to this sci fi convention’s regular agenda of autograph sessions and photo opportunities. “We’re having a great time,” enthuses Erin. We get on together so well, and working together on film projects or at appearances like this could never really be considered work.”

With Battlestar Galactica being successfully re-imagined for TV and Flash Gordon (arguably not so successfully) a short-lived weekly TV show, isn’t it about time for Buck and Wilma (not forgetting diminutive robot Twiki) to return for a 21^st Century makeover? “Absolutely, I think it’s a wonderful franchise,” Erin agrees. ” A lot of people love it and would eagerly embrace a return, but there are problems with the people who own the rights to it. They are at a stalemate with negotiations and can’t seem to move things forwards.” Gil joins in. “I tried to deal with the copyright holders shortly after the show was cancelled because I wanted to do a feature film with the ideas that I’d had for Season Three (see separate sidebar), but it proved impossible. I think they felt like they were protecting the legacy of the creator (Philip Francis Nowlan), but I get the feeling that he personally would have wanted his character to grow and be updated for a modern audience.” 

In the absence of a revival, there are still 37 episodes to savour, and Erin guesses why the show is still being talked about over thirty years after its original transmission. “I think it’s because Buck was such a likeable and cheeky character, and you don’t see much sci fi that has that level of humour any more,” she suggests. “I guess it also got people thinking what the planet will be like in five hundred years – what will be familiar and what will be starkly different – and finally I think it’s great that the whole family could sit down and watch it together. A lot of sci fi is so dark now that the kids really shouldn’t be watching it, but our show had universal appeal.” Indeed, the adults loved Buck, many a teenage boy had pin-ups of Wilma on their bedroom wall (hey, don’t judge me!) and the kids wanted a real-life Twiki.

Aside from the broad family appeal, Buck Rogers presented something of a rarity for Seventies sci fi… a strong female role. “When I joined the show they gave me a ‘bible’ on Wilma’s background – about how the Earth had been through a Holocaust and everybody got jobs based on their abilities – man or woman,” Erin explains. “For me, my character was strong in this aspect and yet very much a virgin and inexperienced when it came to men and relationships. In fact, Gil fought for the other women in the show so that they were represented in a positive way.” Gil recalls these battles. “Wilma was the standard bearer for all these women – the best of the best. If she was the only one in power then she would have been just a token. By being the leader of others, it made her even stronger, and that’s why I pushed for female technician and pilots around her.”

Erin’s Wilma Deering proved to be a credible role model, and she has been told stories of how the character convinced many women to join the armed forces and other previously male-dominated careers. Erin herself cuts a strong authority figure and was in the final five alongside Genevieve Bujold and Kate Mulgrew when it came to the casting of Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. However, while Wilma was at her authoritative best in Season One of Buck Rogers, Season Two saw a dilution of the mix following the addition of a new sidekick for Buck, the birdman Hawk. “I became the weak female stereotype in the second season,” Erin laments. “It was really disappointing. I had seen her become stronger in terms of her ability to fight and do martial arts. They had a character that obviously the fans enjoyed and wanted to see more of, and then they just missed the boat.”

The second season of Buck Rogers not only saw a reduced role for Wilma, but a new emphasis on searching for lost colonies in the stars on the Searcher, making it more like a recycled Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Gil was not happy. “Obviously it wasn’t my decision to make those changes, and in fact I came up with an alternative for Season Three to bring things back on track again.” Gil’s idea brought Buck and Wilma back to Earth, exploring the post-holocaust planet. “Not only would it have been better creatively but economically because they wouldn’t have to spend so much on special effects,” he rationalises. ”I spent two years going through the correct channels, trying to get someone to listen to my ideas, but I was continually rebuffed. Finally I went over everyone’s head straight to the executives at Universal. I had a meeting with the president, who said ‘That’s the best idea we heard in two years. Why haven’t we heard this before? If we pick the show up for a Third Season that’s exactly the direction we’ll go in.’ It became a moot point though because we weren’t picked up.”

Of course, Wilma was not Buck’s sole female interest. He also received the attentions of the evil Princess Ardala, as played by Pamela Hensley. “Buck certainly thought Ardala was beautiful, but he didn’t trust her. He recognised that she was devious and manipulative, whereas he had complete respect for Wilma,” Gil clarifies. And what of Twiki’s occasional outbursts, such as ‘Biddi biddi, she’s foxy!’ Would it be fair to say that these politically incorrect retorts represented Buck’s inner most thoughts? “Not at all!’ Gil responds, possibly offended.” I haven’t heard that theory before. That was Twiki’s own inner monologue coming out. I always felt that Buck said exactly what was on his mind, so why would he need a surrogate? He certainly wasn’t shy about coming forward.”

Sidebar 1: Buck to the past

Instead of propelling five hundred years into the future, let’s reverse the process and go back to the past – destination 1979. With hindsight, how might Gil and Erin have done things differently? “I think that if I had to do it over again I would have gone to the ‘powers that be’ right off the bat and told them what changes needed to be made,” Gil decides. “Instead I wasted two years going through the correct channels and got nowhere. With my ideas they could have saved up to a million bucks an episode on the special effects,” he sighs. Erin shares her thoughts on what she might have changed. “I regret not standing up for my character when they changed her so drastically in Season Two,” she suggests. “Part of me gave out emotionally at the time because I really didn’t want to fight that battle. Looking back on things now it was a battle I should have fought.” So, no regrets about those slinky figure-hugging cat suits? “I thought that Wilma would have looked good in silver or grey outfits, but I accept that a lot of people liked the brightly-coloured ones,” she smiles. For the record, Erin no longer owns the original outfits, she asked for them to be burned!      

Sidebar 2: Saving the Earth… again!

Gil and Erin joined forces again for a 2007 TV movie directed by Fred Olen (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) Ray called Storm Effect. At least that’s what we thought its name was. “I think it’s called Meltdown now,” Erin corrects. “They changed the name from Storm Effect, Nuclear Hurricane or Atomic Hurrican.” Gil joins in: “Is that so? I hadn’t realised. I don’t pay attention, just so long as the cheque clears…” he laughs. “It was great fun, and the first time that we’ve worked together since Buck Rogers. Gil played my boss and got to fire me, and I got to stomp off,” Erin chuckles. “We were really naughty and frisky in the interviews we did afterwards. I really hope those things don’t air any time soon. It was at the end of a long day!” Independently of Gil, Erin has also completed work on mystical family drama Dreams Awake where she was teamed up with Tim O’Connor, who played Dr Huer in the first Season of Buck Rogers. Gil has worked with Bruce Boxleitner and Walter Koenig on monster movie Bone Eater, and dino-epic Reptisaurus. There is no truth in the suggestion that he’ll be joining up with Twiki for a remake of Robocop, or with Hawk for The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Italian director Lucio Fulci (1927 – 1996) was labelled many things throughout his career. Heralded and lambasted in equal measure fans called him, with great affection, ‘the Godfather of Gore’, whilst others dismissed him as a misogynist and undeserving of distinction.

 

Fulci, for added notoriety, held the dubious honour of having three films on the famous Director of Public Prosecutions List, drawn up during the height of the Video Nasties scare in the UK.

He’s a filmmaker with a reputation as a peddler of grotty exploitation titles, but that fails to acknowledge the larger picture. Since his death in 1996 his films have continually been discovered in the UK and some territories. largely on home entertainment formats and before that (in the 1980s and 1990s), on pirated videos. Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), particularly, is a rite of passage for many horror enthusiasts.

It’s fair to say Fulci does retain and receive admiration, especially from the gorehounds, but there’s been very little critical exploration to re-assess the films themselves. There appears a strong vein of surrealism in Fulci’s oeuvre, which goes beyond an empty stylistic device. It’s not an attempt to mark him out as a practitioner of high art either, far from it.

Fulci was inspired by French writer and actor Antonin Artaud, progenitor and executor of ‘the Theatre of Cruelty’ maxim. Are Artaud’s theories evident or traceable throughout Fulci’s films? Perhaps not in a deliberate artistic statement, but Fulci’s attack on the supposed reality of film, or its unreality, is striking.

Both artists appear to be interested in delivering ideas, however unpalatable. With Fulci being Italian it is easy to mistake these notions as the preoccupations of a Catholic brain (now there’s an unused horror movie title).

In 1969, the direct influence of Artaud was clearly pronounced when Fulci directed a screen version of Beatrice Cenci with a fragmented time frame heavily influenced by Artaud’s famous play, which ran for a mere fourteen shows back in 1935. This little seen film is available on YouTube, in original Italian, and well worth checking out as an example of the director’s openly experimental side in a non-horror setting.

Fulci began his film career in comedy working with the iconic Toto in a flop called The Thieves (1959). Although starting out initially as a screenwriter he veered into directing and made features in a variety of genres. Horror and giallo pictures claimed him for posterity and etched his name in the pantheon of genre masters, but also made four spaghetti westerns, one with Franco Nero. This side is all but forgotten now yet Massacre Time and Four of the Apocalypse are worth viewing.

He studied at the Experimental Film Centre in Rome and was taught by world cinema masters Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti. According to an interview he gave to French magazine, L’Ecran Fantastique, Fulci was admitted to the school after borderline insulting Visconti over his classic Ossessione (1943).

As he climbed the career ladder he concentrated on the burgeoning and popular giallo movie with the occasional horror, thriller and spaghetti western thrown into the mix. This genre hopping puts critics off the trail somewhat.

In 1972, he directed one of his most praised titles, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. It garnered notices and a legal inquiry due to Carlo Rambaldi’s gruesome special effects work during a scene that featured disembowelled dogs.

Although a rightly praised classic scene, it demonstrates Fulci’s use of a surrealist aesthetic too. The scene is inexplicable, violent and unforgettable. Yet apparently he wasn’t best pleased with the effects and said Mario Bava would have designed the scene much better.

Nevertheless it is a grand statement and such displays of naked horror would grow until we reach the apotheosis in the Gates of Hell trilogy: those splatter classics of such seeming incoherence many dismiss them as bad filmmaking instead of the exciting vision it proposes.

Fulci will always prove problematic given the sheer volume of work and its varying quality in the eyes of critics and some fans. He once barked at a journalist in Draculina magazine: “I’m bored with all the critics who talk of a “Trilogy”. I think my real golden time was in the early seventies, with Perversion Story, Don’t Torture A Duckling… But yes, of course, the beginning of the eighties brought me much fame.”

It’s very true Fulci’s inconsistence doesn’t help a retrospective of his work and has led critics to be selective, ignoring those titles which do not fit into their personal criteria. One day there should be a full retrospective study of his 1960s features, the action films and occasional fantasy or sci-fi flick such as Conquest (1983) and The New Gladiators (1984).

Some movies are better than others, but each to their own. Over time, fresh eyes and considerations rescue forgotten films from the doldrums. Is there any point in searching for stolen moments of greatness if there aren’t any to be gleaned? The answer is yes.

What is often called Fulci’s ‘golden age’ began with scriptwriter Dardano Sachetti. This provided the leap into infamy and allowed for plenty of invention and experiments in dream logic. It was no symbiotic relationship between writer and director. The films often had up to four contributors. Fulci and Sacchetti’s creative partnership ended in acrimony.

The steadying application and use of surreal-like techniques and strange narrative structures became more pronounced. Fulci explained his vision for horror movies in an interview with L’Ecran Fantastique.  “I wanted to make a nightmare film where horror is ubiquitous, even in apparently innocuous forms.”

The Beyond (1981) is one of the best horror pictures ever made. Fulci’s sublime work is loaded with a Lovecraftian fear factor and truly pushes our acceptance of what movies can be while retaining the gloss of a genre picture.

The popular consensus notes a decline in quality after his split with Dardano Sachetti in the early 1980s. Did Fulci peak with the Gates of Hell trilogy? Those three films taken out of context or in context represent a startling vision of cinema and confirm Fulci as a filmmaker experimenting – either deliberately or by sheer accident – and coming up with a new type of horror movie.

Nevertheless it is fair to say Fulci made some absolute stinkers and the anecdote goes the quality depended on material mixed with how desperate he was for money. Lucio was fond of the gee-gees, apparently.

The partnership with Sachetti (despite ending bitterly with later accusations of ‘idea theft’), yielded some landmark gialli and horror pictures. Then there’s the contribution of Sergio Stivaleti, the special effects legend, and cinematographers such as Sergio Salvati and musician Fabio Frizzi. These craftsmen would be employed many times and more than helped lend a hand to proceedings, they were part architects in building Fulci’s mad world. How collaborative this team were needs to be defined. Did they share distinct goals or were they simply making the best movies they could with the budget and constraints?

Sachetti and Fulci’s first collaboration was Seven Notes in Black (1977). It is an unusual giallo which incorporated a smart narrative device in which a psychic believes she’s witnessed a murder from the past without realising it’s actually a premonition – her own death! Although sluggishly paced, Seven Notes in Black’s atmosphere is another example of where Fulci and Sachetti, as writers, were headed.

The giallo gained prominence in Italy during the 1960s. A subgenre of the crime thriller, it takes its name from the Mondadori publishing outfit started in 1929, which published novels with a highly distinct yellow background.

Mass genre cinema was still churned out for wide theatrical release. Italy made use of tax breaks and incentives to offer enticing prospects to international production companies. The giallo may have been ‘made in Italy’ but its appeal and outlook were international. The protagonists were largely rich professionals who enjoyed freedom to travel, lived exotic jet-setting lifestyles and made their homes in palazzos and villas. Italian culture is replaced with international bourgeois living. The threat to this existence is usually a psychologically disturbed individual – not a supernatural being.

Fulci’s gialli brought with them a more supernatural, spiritual angle. He stamped his own authority by producing generic works yet ones invested in trying something a bit different. Not always successful, sure, but he tried.

Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964) provided a template on which to build this modern mystery crime genre. Fulci once said, rather famously, “Violence is an Italian art.” We can see such statements put to the test throughout his career. But does this cinema of excess portray more than gratuitous violence? Is it, perhaps, the rendering of a belief or ideal on screen?

We know from his work in horror he would earn the sobriquet ‘the Godfather of Gore’, but it detracts from his other attributes. Most of all, it detracts from his skills as a filmmaker by reducing the films to pictorial displays of grotesquery. Atmosphere in Fulci’s work is also heavily predominant. Providing the stage on which bloodletting and horror occurs. He needs to make us uneasy and frightened before the corporeal and spiritual mutilation of characters.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, which Fulci wrote himself, is the story of a woman haunted by a next door neighbour’s murder. Do they share some kind of Sapphic bond? The mystery (and the twist in the tale) involves somebody remembering and picking apart mental clues. Will they like what they find?

Films such as Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Seven Notes in Black offer variations on the giallo and explore psychological states with a dream logic framing. It is tempting to acknowledge how Fulci’s work cuts to the heart of the matter of how we view cinema itself. We are always aware we are watching a fantasy and make believe. There’s no attempt to ground it in any other reality other than a cinematic one. Genre films guide an audience but it can also lead them astray into dark avenues and kingdoms.

In both films, the viewer knows as much as the lead protagonists, played by Florinda Bolkan and Jennifer O’Neill. The mysteries are the propulsion of their demise. Each clue brings them closer and closer. The grim finales, ever so downbeat, are another of Fulci’s signature styles. There’s no such thing as a happy ending.

The foray into gore and the zombie genre with Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) helped Fulci gain international fame and become firmly fixed as a master of horror. Marketed in Italy as a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Zombi 2 sets its narrative against Caribbean links to voodoo. It returns the zombie to its potent historic milieu.

Opening with a gun pointed at the audience (Scorsese is praised for his use of this set up that Fulci ignored), and after the usual international co-production opener set on New York City’s waterfront (taking in all the cultural landmarks), the story moves to a Caribbean island where death and its fetid stench are evident all around. Again the sickly atmosphere conjured marks Fulci’s technical skill. It may have been promoted as a cheap exploitative Romero knock-off to pull in the audience but Zombie Flesh Eaters is a masterwork of the macabre.

Two scenes wowed audiences. The first features a stuntman dressed as a zombie attacking a shark. Again, like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’s dog scene, it’s a true ‘is that what we’re really seeing?’ moment.

The eyeball piercing is iconic and as demented as it is dated in its special effects – yet still manages to cause revulsion. The scene provided a major reason for it to be banned in the UK, too. Fulci’s majestic display of ocular mutilation is a great reminder of the director’s playing with surrealist ideas. And don’t the best horror movies attack our senses as well as our sensibilities?

Fulci here positions himself as an agent provocateur. Cinema is more than passive entertainment for the masses. It is not theatre or literature transposed on screen, either. It’s a proposition, for those willing to acknowledge the message.

The slowing down of the inevitable moment is Fulci in full attack mode. The audience’s fear and discomfort is the true effect – not what is happening on screen. Yes, the effect is theatrical in a sense, but its large-ness and extreme closeness is cinematical. A giant eye and a giant splinter of wood meeting – cuts to enhance the tension.

After Zombie Flesh Eaters, Fulci’s Gate of Hell trilogy baffled critics and audiences alike, they were relegated to the dungeons of the cult enthusiast for ever more. Yet this unholy trinity of mad horror further demonstrates the surrealist-leaning director within. The City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery and The Beyond all feature actress Catriona McColl in various roles. Taken as standard horror fare they’ll likely confound and look silly.

Fulci was no idiot. He battled budgetary and creative restrictions – even his own personal issues. Do the movies work in spite of their low budget and generic nature? Isn’t this how genre cinema throws up interesting titles?

As stated previously, The Beyond is a masterpiece of cinema (not just horror). The ending, in which two protagonists become trapped in a barren, otherworldly landscape, is a supreme vision. In the mad finale, two characters – Liza and John – travel from a hospital via the basement of a house into a smoky tunnel and straight into another world or reality. There’s absolutely no logic. Time and space have collapsed and folded. This playfulness is rather run of the mill today. Recall how Michel Gondry used it towards the end of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Yet Fulci’s clever set up is never really commented upon. A major reason is the lack of insight some critics have into horror and genre cinema. To call Fulci an artist back then might have been an absurdity too far. It might be today, too. Fulci himself explained The Beyond as: “It’s a plotless film: a house, people, and dead men coming from The Beyond. There’s no logic to it, just a succession of images.”

Explicit gore is a high point and not a distraction. It would appear like the famous Grand Guignol Fulci’s obsession with mutilation and suffering is perhaps less Catholic and more surrealist. The major obsession is with the eye. And after all didn’t Georges Bataille write The Story of the Eye to discuss its merits as a surrealist trope? And didn’t Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí announce their intentions to the film world with the slashing of an eye by a razorblade in Un Chien Andalou?

In The Beyond we get a scene in which an eye is pierced, gouged and mutilated. It is not simply a moment of grotesquery for horror thrills. One imagines if Buñuel and Dalí ever saw Zombie Flesh Eaters or The Beyond they would have approved.

Fulci’s post-Sachetti films, although the preserve of the connoisseur, are worth checking out. Dismissed at the time, the increase in derangement, sexual violence and gore is noteworthy. There are admirers who champion this later period.

Fulci directed around sixty percent of Zombi 3 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2) in the Philippines. Apart from one sequence in a desolate hotel, it is forgettable stuff. The Door to Silence, released in 1991, would be Fulci’s last time behind the camera.

Endlessly fascinating, Lucio Fulci’s vision of cinema is highly complex in places and understands the true power of dreams and nightmares. Fulci may not have set out with a grand plan or film theory, but surrealist influences seeped into his work through various channels. It is more than a stylistic pose. He understood the dreamlike aspects of cinema and set about investing them into genre pictures.

He was bound to no group of artists or school and at heart a mainstream filmmaker. Yet he was certainly much cleverer and interesting than simply being tagged a gore merchant and exploitation director.

My earliest memory from Doctor Who is of the giant black and gold Dalek Supreme chasing the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith through the jungles of Spiridon. Shortly after that, I remember an episode ending with Sarah Jane sitting alone in her living room, a giant maggot creeping up from the hall doorway behind her. Chilling stuff!

    I grew up with Lis Sladen, you see. I was too young to appreciate who the characters in Doctor Who were, and it was the monsters that I was concentrating on. By the time I was old enough to actually recognise the regulars, Sarah Jane Smith had replaced Jo Grant, and all the memories I had of that earlier character became associated with the one I knew now, the one who had replaced her. It was the Target novels that put me right, a few years later.

     In the meantime, Sarah Jane Smith had given me a few proper memories of her own: I’ve never been more scared in front of a television than I was when Sarah Jane was alone on the planet Exxilon, never more excited than when she and I together watched Davros unveil his Mark III Travel Machine, and never more shocked than when her face fell off revealing the circuitry of an android beneath. Even as an eight-year-old, I felt terribly sad when the Doctor dropped a reluctant Sarah Jane home at the end of The Hand of Fear, recognising that the end of an era had arrived.

     I was still (just about!) young enough, a year or so later, to assume that the Doctor would go back and look for Sarah Jane after Leela’s departure in The Invasion of Time. Of course, by the time Romana left, I was far too old for such fanciful notions – and that’s when Sarah Jane did come back, albeit without the Doctor’s help (except for the box he sent her in the post). This was in K9 and Company, of course. Yes, Sarah Jane Smith is the only companion to have been given her own spin-off series twice.

     For Doctor Who fans specifically, and fans of television and sci-fi in general, the terrible sad news of Sladen’s death has come as an incredible shock – and the reaction has been as great as it would be for the passing of a Doctor. The fact that it’s only a few weeks since Nicholas Courtney also passed away is also heartbreaking; it’s like the break-up of the most popular and pleasurable regular cast the programme ever had, in the most shattering way. For these two actors and characters were as much a part of the legend of the series as any of the Doctors were, having between them appeared opposite all but three of those Doctors on the screen, and spanning every decade that the series has been regularly on air. Lis Sladen’s first appearance was in 1973, and there are still a half a dozen episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures yet to be broadcast. That’s a serious legacy.

     Like many of the fans of the show who had never even met her, I still felt like I knew Elisabeth Sladen. As with many companions and Doctors, there’s an awful lot of Lis in Sarah Jane, and probably an awful lot of Sarah Jane in Lis too. Spunky but caring, daft but devoted, forthright but thoughtful; that was Sarah Jane. And that was Elisabeth Sladen too.

    When she reappeared in School Reunion in 2006, it was almost like she’d never been away; it was just that right. From that point onwards, The Sarah Jane Adventures seemed almost like a no-brainer; it might have seemed like madness to have a sixty-year-old woman as the eponymous lead of a CBBC series, and yet watching the programme, you can’t imagine a time when it wasn’t so. In my head, The Sarah Jane Adventures have been happening since October 1976, since Doctor Tom dropped her back off in South Croydon (or Aberdeen, or wherever it was). And now another generation of children have been blessed with having Sarah Jane as their heroine.

     Jon Pertwee was the first Doctor Who I ever encountered, and Tom Baker was the Doctor I grew up with. But Tom went on a little too long in the part, became a little too frivolous, and a little too serious. Thanks to Elisabeth Sladen and the magic she brought to the part, Sarah Jane Smith was my “Doctor”.

     “Some things are worth getting your heart broken for,” Sarah Jane says in School Reunion. “Everything has its time, and everything ends.” Sadly, for an untold number of fans, that time has now come for Elisabeth Sladen. She will be as missed as anyone who has ever worked on the show.

Turning 18, it’s a big deal. All the sins become legal here in the UK for the first time: buying fags, drinking booze, voting. But turning 18 is also known as “coming of age.” It’s the point some religions consider you to have reached adulthood and maturity. But one comic company has been running the strapline “suggested for mature readers” for 18 years as of March this year. So step forward, Vertigo, and receive your birthday bumps.

The mature line of comics that come out of the DC stable was, paradoxically, born out of Death. It was this spunky emo girl who started the long publishing run in March 1993 hot on the heels of the successful The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. But Death was not alone. Other DC titles that were considered a bit too grown up for the spandex crowd also transferred over to the new comics line, masterminded by executive editor Karen Berger.

Dream fails to recruit an outcast wise old advisor in The Sandman #74 Art by Jon J Muth

These were Animal Man #57, Doom Patrol #64, John Constantine: Hellblazer #63, Sandman #47, Shade, the Changing Man #33 and Swamp Thing #129. And it is no surprise that some of the writers most associated with these works – Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman and Peter Milligan – were headhunted by Berger some 30 years ago during the famed “British invasion” of American comics.

Morrison wasn’t writing any of the above titles at the time they were folded out of DC continuity. And neither was the grandfather of mature comics, Alan Moore.

He may have turned the shambling C-rater Swamp Thing into an A-lister being of godlike power, but he had stepped well away from the vegetable one at the time he was subsumed by Vertigo.

In an interview with Jonathon Ross the bearded magician said of Vertigo: “The thing I find a bit of problem is that their atmosphere, their ethos or whatever, seems to be based on the bad mood that I was in about 18 years ago. It’s not even their bad mood.”

However, he did credit some of the titles as “great”. This may be because Berger established Vertigo as DC’s mad lab of ideas from the get-go, with the imprint’s first creator-owned series, Enigma (a young man’s tale of coming out against the backdrop of metafictional super villains) launching soon after Vertigo did.

Yorick meets a familiar face in Y: The Last Man #60 Art by Pia Guerra

The contractual agreements between creators and Vertigo have come under criticism. But the “Bergerverse”, has always been considered a separate dimension where good stories are told and crossovers heavily frowned upon. Though last summer it was announced all character born and bred in the DC universe, from Animal Man to Swamp Thing, were summoned home to the roosting ground.

Some crossover oddities have slipped through the cracks. Morrison respectfully appropriated the new Dream from The Sandman into his acclaimed run on JLA. And more recently Gaiman consented to Death appearing for a narrative-driven heart-to-heart cameo with mortal Superman baddie Lex Luthor in Action Comics.

A conspiracy theorist starts to go mad when the visage of JFK starts talking to him in Shade, the Changing Man #2 Art by Chris Bachalo

Gaiman remembers the early 90s as a time when comic fans snapped up foil-wrapped, limited edition first runs in packs of 25 in the vain hope their worth would skyrocket like shares in the future. In the foreword to The Vertigo Encyclopedia he consigns these speculator books to the tip and credits Vertigo’s success to Berger and co’s desire to publish books they themselves would enjoy reading.

That’s not to say Vertigo titles weren’t immune to looking distinctive on the comic shop shelf. Most will remember the vertical strip down the staple-side of all its titles’ covers. The line has also been credited to kick-starting the boom in trade paperbacks, possibly because titles – apart from a certain chain-smoking English magician among the launch titles – had a finite lifespan and tended to end around the 70 to 75 issue mark, thus making them easier to collect into bound volumes.

But the transition from monthly issues to trade paperbacks for Vertigo’s starting line-up has not been a quick one. While The Sandman trade paperbacks charted the rise and fall and rise again of the dream king in the late 1990s, it took a lengthy 15 years for Morrison’s 1988-1990 eco-fixated Animal Man run to be fully collected.

King Mob remembers the good old days in The Invisibles volume 3 #1 Art by Frank Quitely

Meanwhile, the initial arc of Morrison’s Doom Patrol – a surreal band of accident survivors with less-than respectable superpowers in 1989 – only took three years to be collected … and then nothing. Fear of a legal challenge from the Charles Atlas body building company over the Flex Mentallo character arguably delayed publication. Mentallo, a parody of Atlas’ notion of turning beach-bound weaklings into mighty men, appeared prominently in later story arcs, making collection without his presence impossible. But when the suit was dismissed in 2000 the Crawling from the Wreckage paperback was republished, closely followed by five other volumes collecting Morrison’s run between 2004 and 2008.

Milligan’s 1990 breakthrough Shade, The Changing Man – a stranded inter-dimensional alien battling the mental neuroses of America while possessing the body of a serial killer – took 13 years for the first six issues to be bound together in 2003, with a reprint in 2009 paving the way for his American Scream storyline to be curtailed inside three trade paperbacks.

Animal Man has the secret of superhero immortality explained to him in Animal Man #26 Art by Chas Troug

John Constantine: Hellblazer currently stands at a bookshelf-bowing 32 trade paperbacks – not including spin-offs, specials and uncollected material – while The Sandman is contained in ten books … or four telephone directory Absolute editions. And don’t forget several characters from the Sandman-verse like Lucifer and denizens of The Dreaming enjoyed their own spin-off titles, numbering around the 70 issue mark, too.

And with Vertigo’s family tree roots entrenched in the fertile ground of Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing run, respectable comic buyers are sure to have the six volumes containing this on their bookshelves. But despite critical praise of the 1984 to 1987 series, the trade paperback hiatus kicked in when the first seven issues were put together in the same year Moore left the title. The final, long-awaited Reunion volume was released in 2003 – 16 years after the series concluded.

Swampy was also the first Vertigo character to be adapted for the big screen. Well, he wasn’t Vertigo-owned at the time in 1982 when Wes Craven adapted him. But he certainly was when the 1989 sequel The Return of the Swamp Thing came out.

That dizzy Vertigo-wait kicked in then until 2005 when Keanu Reeves pulled on the Silk Cut chuffing, trench coat-wearing persona of Sting-influenced Scouser John Constantine. Except this time he’s a suited-and-booted Los Angelite with a terminal lung cancer from Ennis’ Dangerous Habits storyline. Ironically, the comic was renamed Hellblazer to avoid confusion with Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and the movie adaptation was renamed Constantine to avoid the same legal landmine.

Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner enjoyed celluloid praise when David Cronenberg adapted A History of Violence in the same year. Another title subsumed by Vertigo and turned into a big-budget blockbuster was V for Vendetta. Creator Moore continued to vent his own vendetta against DC by demanding his name be removed from the project, which film critic Sean Burns said “It’s not hard to see why”.

A face pack-wearing Christopher Chance confronts a mystery assassin in the Human Target miniseries Art by Edvin Biuković

Darren Aronofsky, once tipped to direct Batman Begins, instead released The Fountain, later turned into his own Vertigo graphic novel. The production was troubled after Brad Pitt withdrew his considerable clout from the title, prompting the director to say: “I knew it was a hard film to make and I said at least if Hollywood fucks me over at least I’ll make a comic book out of it.” Some critics booed the hard film at the Venice Film Festival while others gave a standing ovation.

Last year the caper-driven antics of Andy Diggle and Jock’s The Losers reboot hit the summer cinema screen. The timing was not good, with the similarly caper-driven but bigger budgeted A-Team coming out at the same time. But something good came out of it: a pair of hefty omnibus-size trade paperbacks released to tie into the film’s expected success.

Finally, former Vertigo cowboy Jonah Hex, back in the DC stable since 2005, moseyed into cinemas in 2010 to ugly-face up to nemesis John Malkovich. He rode off into the sunset, saddled with a pair of Golden Raspberry nominations.

On the smaller screen, one of Vertigo’s lesser-known darlings has had two shots at TV. The Human Target, the story of a master assassin-cum-identity thief who adopts the personas of people in the firing line, was first aired in 1992 and again last year. The revival could be credited to Milligan, who wrote two blistering miniseries on the character, opening the door to an on-going series which sadly ended after 21 episodes.

Yet one of Vertigo’s mightiest players, Preacher, failed to get face time with the Lord under the helm of Daredevil and Ghost Rider director Mark Steven Johnson. Not even the word of God could convince HBO execs to air the love triangle of a lapsed punch-drunk reverend, his hitwoman girlfriend and scene-stealing Irish vampire buddy.

The vampire Cassidy on the disadvantages of being immortal in Preacher #26

Conversely, the small screen has seen an influx of writers from that medium coming over to the printed form instead. After rethinking his pitch for a TV show about a band of kooky bug exterminators versus an immortal Egyptian evil, Simon Oliver found a more receptive audience at Vertigo. Ironically, this led to the comic being optioned for a TV series, where it sits in limbo.

Aging grizzled Scottish detective Rebus may be known to fans in equal parts as the TV character played by John Hannah and the star of 17 “Tartan noir” books that claimed 10 per cent of the crime novel market. Creator Ian Rankin has now penned a Hellblazer hardback graphic novel as part of Vertigo’s newest sub-imprint devoted to crime.

Happy 40^th birthday, John Constantine, back in Hellblazer #63, 1993

The sub-imprint move echoes earlier ones by a younger Vertigo in the mid-1990s with its city-themed Vertigo Pop! titles focusing on locales like Bangkok, London and Tokyo. The poor-selling science fiction line Helix collapsed, but the popular future journalist Transmetropolitan series by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson was brought under the shelter of the Vertigo umbrella. There was also the cinematic Vertigo Vérité attempt to break away from the supernatural themes dominant in the imprint; the creator-owned Vertigo Voices collection of miniseries and Vertigo Visions, an attempt to resuscitate new life into dusty characters like The Geek, The Phantom Stranger, Doctor Occult and teen president Prez.

If Marvel is dubbed The House of Ideas, then Vertigo could rightfully claim the moniker of Mad House of Ideas, with current titles including American Vampire that tells bloodsucker stories against locations like LA and the Wild West, with input from horror maestro Stephen King; the brainy iZombie recasting of golden oldie monsters, including a were-terrier; the unstoppable storybook reimagining of the immortal Fables, John Constantine’s arcane backstabbing, reservation savagery of Scalped, warzone hostility of DMZ and the magically mature Harry Potter-esque The Unwritten.

New logos and new sidebars for Vertigo titles Animal Man and Shade, the Changing Man

With more than 200 titles born out of Vertigo over nearly two decades, there has been a fair share of successful children. The world is a lot darker and interesting with works like the Machiavellian 100 Bullets, offbeat Air, frustrated American Virgin, voluminous Books of Magic, rebellious The Invisibles, and engendered species of Y: The Last Man.

There has been copious binge drinking, careless sex between demons and angels, language so foul Richard Pryor would cringe, enough Marlboros smoked that the stubs lain end to end could connect Hell to Heaven – and that’s just Preacher. John Constantine’s decades-long career is all that to the power of 23 in the business. But the English magician, like Judge Dredd, is not immune to the ravages of time and allegedly turned 58 on May 10^th 2011.

Perhaps that’s why he is the only one of the debut titles still going 18 years later. Like his fans, he ages in real-time, too. Ages, but unlike his suggested audience, never matures. Belated happy birthday, John. Keep up the bad mood. And happy birthday, too Vertigo.