@terryhooper.bsky.social
The above account replaces the one I used to have on X before it turned fascist.
Monday, 24 February 2025
Sunday, 23 February 2025
Saturday, 22 February 2025
He Stings Crime -Captain Hornet
The HORNET no.475,14th October,1972, saw the first appearance of ‘CAPTAIN HORNET’ in his rugby-style shirt,flying helmet and goggles,riding boots and jodpers.
When the good Captain wasn’t looking for trouble while patrolling in his Hoverer, he was in his secret mobile HQ -a lab disguised as a van of "Hornet Removals"!
The Captain carried a side-arm [a stun-gun] and the Hoverer was also equipped various wonderful pieces of gear to catch crooks with.
Although the strip’s artist is credited as being Ortiz,1974 strips had a far more British feel to them. Apart from annuals the character made around 146 appearances in the title and was a cover star of the 1970s!
Whether a bank raid or hijack of a bullion van, masked raiders or even a Frankenstein monster jewel thief you can bet Captain Hornet was on the case. For New Hornet we saw the Captain's Hoverer blown up by crooks and he was far from happy. Sadly, Thomson cancelled the idea and so the first strip, drawn by the incredible John Erasmus, has never seen print.
Friday, 21 February 2025
The Black Sapper: Criminal, Resistance Fighter and Crime Smasher
The Hotspur comic version of the Black Sapper was unlike the original was an arch villain, The Black Sapper appeared in text stories with illustrations -these are taken from the weekly boys paper, The Rover, 1931.
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The Hotspur creative team were (artists as I cannot find writer(s) names) master comickers Jack Glass; Terry Patrick; Keith Shone.
The Black Sapper started as a criminal in his early adventures but in the Hotspur stories he fought on the side of law and order. He made use of his marvellous drilling machine "the Worm" (in the original series it was called "The Earthworm"), which could burrow through the earth. Although the Sapper was the " crew" occasionally it did carry a second person. In the Hotspur series there is mentions that the worm was designed by Professor Jordan and his son, Johnny and that it is atomic-powered. (Hotspur issue 619). The machine was also lightweight, being made with metal that 'was half the weight of aluminium, but tough enough to act as a heat shield for a moon capsule'. (Hotspur issue 611).
The Sapper's uniform remained the same in both the early and later series. Although the later version of the worm had up- to -date equipment, such as an outside camera so the Sapper could see what was happening above ground on a television screen which kind of makes sense as you don't want to end up inside a nuclear reactor, army artillery range or in someones bathroom.
In the first series drawn by Patrick, Britain has been invaded by an eastern race the Khansus and The Black Sapper fights along side the British resistance in the fight back against the invaders (hmm. I'm sure Bill Savage might have come in handy). A later series would see the Sapper on the trail of a gang of international crooks led by the mysterious and sinister Octopus.
The series drawn by Shone sees the Sapper having broken up the international gang of crooks in the last series, hunting down its scattered leaders. A complication arose when the Sapper was blinded by an explosion and he enlisted the aid of a young orphan boy Jeff, who was to act as his "eyes".
I believe that this was the last Black Sapper adventure but he had a legendary career from 1931 to the 1980s.
Oddly, as with Spring-heeled Jack, my first knowledge of the character came from my grand dad, Bill who had memories of the master5 crook from his youth!
Sadly, D.C. Thomson has never taken advantage of the old characters it has because they could still be made viable.
According to the legend:"In the police records of Scotland Yard,no name occupies more space than the Black Sapper." The "BLACK SAPPER" had invented a diamond hard drilling machine with a name to strike terror into the hearts of even the bravest of men...the, uh, "Earth-Worm"!
Marot was the mechanic who worked with the "SAPPER" and he was with the mastermind when he first robbed the Bank of England on 24th August,1929, in ROVER no. 384 ,a text story.
The criminal genius was thwarted by Commander Breeze of the Yard [of course]. The "SAPPER" later disappeared and managed to keep his head low until his dramatic re-appearance in picture-strip form -once again coming up against Breeze of the Yard! Mind you, they were now in the BEEZER no.196, 17th October, 1959! Over a decade later the character returned for a 1971-1973 run in the HOTSPUR, as well as appearing in the HOTSPUR ANNUAL 1973 pitting his abilities against "THE MYSTERY MAN FROM THE FLAMES."
And you’ve guessed it, yes, the "BLACK SAPPER" had returned as a champion of law and order starting with the 1971 run. Jack Glass was the artist who also drew "THE AMAZING MR X", [DANDY 1944], "BOOMERANG BURKE" [DANDY,1941], "BUCK WILSON" [DANDY,1937-
And you’ve guessed it, yes, the "BLACK SAPPER" had returned as a champion of law and order starting with the 1971 run. Jack Glass was the artist who also drew "THE AMAZING MR X", [DANDY 1944], "BOOMERANG BURKE" [DANDY,1941], "BUCK WILSON" [DANDY,1937-
Well, there you go. I keep so much rubbish on discs that I was bound to forget something but that is as complete a history of the British Golden, Silver and Bronze ages character as you will find anywhere!
Let's Throw Some Stuff Against The Wall And See What Sticks
Stan Lee stated more than once that if the actual threat of death does not exist for a character what is the point? Where are the heroics and "death defying acts" and apparent willingness to sacrifice his/her life if that threat does not exist?
Continuity in comics died with Crisis on Infinite Earths from DC comics. They got bitten by the greed bug and found that "crossover" added to a title increased sales and that was in the 1980s and people are still chasing each crossover -basically the sky looking pinky-red WAS the crossover. Marvel saw how that worked so they joined in.
How many reboots have the DC and Marvel universes had since the 1980s? Each time the characters become less interesting and you know that at some point the next crisis will occur and then the characters will change again.
The Avengers hardly features a full team any more and a story what would have fitted into one issue up to the early 1990s now gets spread over 3-4 issues and I don't think that there is one character any more that can get readers invested. Mini series such as Uncanny Avengers (and others) are all dead enders ending on issue 5 and you sit back and realise you spent money following a series that went nowhere. There was no end point to the story except for the occasional "look out for ---"
With The Fantastic Four I have to say I am just hanging on hoping for better. I have followed the Avengers since the 1960s and FF and even X-Men since that time (I gave up on X-Men altogether).
TV shows and movies should not be changing the comics since the people watching those rarely buy a comic and jumping on to every trend going thinking it will bring in more sales does not work. I think that the Black Panther movies such as Wakanda Forever and what turned out to be "Gay Pride Namor" -not my naming and what they did to characters such as Adam Warlock shows that movies have no idea about comics just how to exploit characters and let's not forget the amount of racism the Black Panther movies were allowed to get away with.
Comics should be fun and escapism and not trash booklets to accompany movies -such as the announcement of Dr Doom in the MCU meaning Marvel Comics is ramming Dr Doom into every little crevice they can without the aid of baby oil.
The aim of a comic creator ought to be to produce a comic that sells and makes them a living and anything extra is just that. Creator after creator jumping into comics since the late 1990s all say the same thing; they aim for the lucrative TV or movie deal for their character. I've met 12 such people who described their creations as "shit hot" and heading for the big screen ("TV is nothing these days") and where are they now? Not working in comics.
Fantasy should always remain on the page and not in what you like to think reality is. I've signed contracts with companies who went against those contracts and even openly allowed internet piracy of books I worked on because they got what they wanted and, as with most publishers, they knew that I was too far away to pay them a visit and too poor to afford US lawyers.
How many Spidermen are there now? How many Robins? How many Batmen? How many Hulks? How many creators have comic companies ripped off, never paid and even blocked from getting other work (and here is a true sign of the "comic creator community") and how many comic writers and artists have stabbed fellow creators in the back, libelled them and told outright provable lies about but have never met their "targets"?
The concept of "comic book paranoia" is far from fantasy.
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Thursday, 20 February 2025
Thaddeus Twatt Book II -The Jungle Planet
A4
B&W
27pp
6.00
https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/thaddeus-twatt-book-ii/paperback/product-1ggqrg42.html
Following their escape from the planet Friggia, Twatt and Tomas find what appears to be a jungle planet –complete with rather odd life forms.
However, as Professor Twatt casually strolls around the Jungle Planet he finds a mine complex using slave labourers —then he sees the crystal-like flying saucer and realises that the impossible has happened….
The Crystallids are here!
But what are the Crystallids and what is Twatt’s connection to them. Some of the secrets of Professor Twatt’s earlier life could be exposed by a chance encounter with a Crystallid prisoner —a man who knows Twatt...the question is: will Twatt and Tomas live ?
The complete first story arc from Black Tower Adventure in one book.
The complete first story arc from Black Tower Adventure in one book.
Wednesday, 19 February 2025
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Dervish Ropey -The Totem Pole
Paperback,
A4
B&W
95 pages
| Price: £10.00 (excl. VAT) |
Prints in 3-5 business days
What can you possibly say about John Erasmus? He is a very under-rated artistic genius. And Dervish Ropey? One of the great action/adventure characters to emerge from the UK in the last 25 years apart from Denizen Ark (which also happens to be an Erasmus creation).
John Erasmus's other great 1980s character was the adventurer and explorer Dervish Ropey. In this adventure, along with his pet companion Freeto,, Dervish is drawn to an adventure with twists, dangers and consequences that could be fatal. Will Dervish survive? You can be sure of one thing ~a great yarn and great art from one of the under rated comic artists in the UK.
Join Dervish on his latest adventure and kick yourself if you never got a copy of The Maximin Sword!
Tom Elmes Sci Fi and Horror: Descent and True Stories
In the 1980s Tom Elmes was earning himself the title “King of the Zine Nasty” -classic, somewhat gorey, stories such as “The Man Who Ate Himself To Death” are still enough to make you go “URGH!” after all these years.
With DESCENT Elmes returned to his comic roots having spent some years involved in animation. In this 104 page classic only one prisoner aboard a space craft awakes from stasis alive. All the others are dead..well, the living dead! Can the lone surviving prisoner and the guards survive the zombie onslaught? Who knows -but we can tell you this is the most zombie fun you’ll get outside of the Resident Evil movies!!
Below are a few selected pages all (c)2020 T. Elmes/BTCG
Paperback
A4
B&W
104 Pages
Price: £10.00 (excl. VAT)
Prints in 3-5 business days
Tom Elmes,legendary “King of the Zine Nasties” is back!
One of the most under-rated British comic creators returns with True Stories –a continuation of his 1980s comic. If you wondered what happened after that final shocking panel -the waiting is over!
Over 50+ pages of new art and a 1990 interview with the man himself-the only one ever.
Paperback
A4
60pp
B&W
List Price: £8.00(excl. VAT)
Prints in 3-5 business days
A self portrait from "Back in the day!" (c)2020 Tom Elmes
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