Random Happenstance

I was going to blog an actual horror comic, from a series we had seen a few times before, but looking it up the issue in-hand was the last issue; so that has to wait for the end of the year! So, we'll try another issue of this! From 1988, Time Twisters #5, cover by Bil Maher.

The credit box for "Bad Maxwell!" has "J. Roberts" on art, but it's obviously Brendan McCarthy, on the first of four shorts this issue from Peter Milligan. Maxwell Mills was experimenting with improving the teleporter--mainly, in keeping just any yahoo with a teleporter from popping into your house--by keying it to his own molecular structure. Instead, he goes to a post-apocalyptic alternate earth, where a lone band of survivors was surrounded by horrible "waste-mutants!" Maxwell swindles the survivors out of their gold and leaves, knowing they wouldn't be able to follow unless they matched his molecular pattern. Like a mutant Maxwell Mills! Who shouldn't be able to match that, but hey, we only had four pages.

"Extra! Extra!" features a future where the computer-generated newspaper the World doesn't report what happened yesterday, but what was going to happen today. Computer genius J.B. Ropey is one of the few people in the world that could maybe affect the World, which is why today's headline was about his upcoming death: can he avoid it? Maybe for four pages! (Written by Peter Milligan, art by Jose Casanovas.) "Slashman, Kolwalski, and Rat" follows a three-person hit squad: but the main hitter may not be who you would expect. (Written by Steve Moore, art by Mike White.)

Milligan again for "But is it Art?" wherein an art thief and his trainee figure the most well-protected painting in a gallery would be the most valuable, right? Unless there was another reason for it to be locked up...(Art by Eric Bradbury.) And one more Milligan, in "The Snikker Snack!" A murderous smuggler loses a shape-changing snikker on his ship, but figures he can seal it off and the client can find it later. Unless the snikker makes a bad choice to hide as...(Art by Jeff Anderson.)

"The Collector" is a brief air-fighter number set in the Vietnam War (written by Kelvin Gosnell, art by Ian Kennedy) then in "The Mousetrap" a lunatic with a shotgun claims to be stopping an alien invasion, aided and abetted by mice; and like many lunatics in Future-Shocks he might be right! (Written by Alan Hebden, art by Massimo Belardinelli; as was the final story.)

Finally, in "Bad Vibrations" a galactic survey vessel tries to figure out what killed the colonists on a distant world. The captain is a Native American, which is mildly noteworthy; also, this is like the second 2000 AD story I've seen with plot points bearing a passing resemblance to M.Night Shyamalan's the Happening. What a twist!