The Ultimate Game

 Since this was originally posted on the old Black Tower Comics blog The Ultimate Game has been completed. The lack of a scanner has stalled publication though.

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  I looked at the bulky A4 folder crammed full of a couple hundred pages and I really considered ditching the whole Ultimate Game.

In case you have never read this blog before or any of the posts pertaining to the Invasion Earth Trilogy or how it all started in 1987 and went through various incarnations until it was pooled together as such.....the first project was known as the Ultimate Game and sadly many of those pages were never used because they would not fit into the Invasion Earth Trilogy but back in the 1980s-1990s the pages did the rounds of Fleetway offices and Gil Page (then Managing Editor) supported the project but wanted to include a few of the old established adventure heroes (which led off on a side route to the Looking Glass project).

I wanted to finally get the Ultimate Game used but these were dated 1986-1995. "I'll just redraw the pages!" my mind said rather enthusiastically while another shouted out "You crazy **** are you ******* insane?!" I'm a Gemini so that's how my mind works. It could be schizophrenia...no. I'm telling myself it isn't that. Maybe.

Before I killed the Black Tower Face Book page some initial redraws were posted there but when I looked at the bulk of pages that were left to redraw I knew two things: the blow bleed at the back of my eyes (a gift from Type II diabetes) and my increasing advanced arthritic hands would never allow it. So throw the project out. "NO! You **** dumb **** -look at the pages!" said my mind....and by now I'm getting a little sick of the constant abuse I get from it.

So I looked at the pages and despite the age there is nothing that wrong with them. A few tweaks here and there but the style was the style of that time and as the action is going back and forth in time and space it works.

Which means some tidying up but the project could still be published this year -I'm thinking October at the moment. Will it look like a couple of artists have worked on the book? No, I think it still clearly shows my art style and at the time the work was meant to be for a colour book so maybe the work will look a lot cleaner!

The book will also fill in some character backgrounds since, let's face it, Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes, The Cross Earths Caper and The Green Skies were crammed full of characters.  The Ultimate Game will also allow the opportunity to show what happened to Marvo and especially The Thinker to have both recovering from...you'll see!

Here is the twist. In all the Black Tower strips since the 1990s it is taken as a given that these events took place. If you can find any of the original Black Tower Adventures (vol, 1) it will be a miracle since even I do not have a full set. But did it all really happen? At oone point heroes found themselves in Iron Age Britain while others were caught up in a "white-out" -an anomaly in time and space. Things then continued as though these events did not take place. No one mentioned them. In the updating "someone" is attempting to mend major disruptions in space-time and things that did happen will now...not happen. 

I know what you are thinking but you can get back to picking your nose in a minute.  It takes the old story but makes changes so the question has to be who is doing this -has the power to do do- and why?

Well, if you are that interested you'll need to wait and find out...maybe I'll give the odd teaser here and there. Who knows?