TOTALLY EPIC

Brats Bizarre (1994) #1-4
by Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, Anthony Adhikary and others

This is it! The final “Heavy Hitters” Epic comics, and the final regular thing published by Epic Comics (in its original incarnation). (Sort of.)

Man, there’s a lot of people involved in making the first issue of this series…

But, wow, the artwork is really deranged. It’s fascinating in its fuzziness and how it extends super-hero art tropes into pornographic sheen. I guess that’s the joke, and this book isn’t the first one to pull this gag (to put it mildly). Bratpack (!) etc did some of the same stuff, but this time… it’s British? Mills and Skinner were both 2000AD veterans, I think…

So the first issue is pretty hackneyed story-wise, but the way it commits to this art style makes it pretty readable, anyway. (Oh, yeah, the story is about an evil gummint (?) corp that breeds super-heroes, and the Brats are rebels, fighting (eventually) against the corp. The normal stuff.)

With the second issue, Adhikary takes over the pencilling completely, and the artwork changes drastically. Now the faces aren’t delightfully bizarre any more, but just… kinda… inept. I mean, look at her mouth and chin in the lower left panel up there.

*gasp* How dastardly!

The action scenes aren’t very exciting.

This series has never been reprinted or collected.

Aha! Brats Bizarre was started in the Toxic! anthology?

Heh heh:

Mighten later moved onto Mills & Skinner’s superhero satire, “Brats Bizarre”, kind of like “Marshal Law” meets “X-Men”- just without the savage wit.

Carl Potts tried to make a TV series out of this:

BRATS BIZARRE (AND OTHER CARL POTTS PROJECTS)

Former comic scribe and editor Carl Potts tells us that he’s working to develop a number of comic book properties as movies or TV shows. “We’ve got a variety of pitches out and we’re getting ready to do some more,” Potts told us. “I’m working with a management company in L.A.”

Most of the properties are from his days as editor of Marvel’s Epic comic line. One such project is Brats Bizarre. The 4 issue comic was written by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner and illustrated by Duke Mighten. Mills and Mighten teamed more recently on Batman: The Book of Shadows. “It’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High meets X-Men,” Potts said.

It did not happen.

Pinhead (1993) #1-6
by D G Chichester, Dario Carrasco, Enrique Villagran and others

Hm… Marvel didn’t seem to have much faith in the branding of this series:

The first issue says “Marvel” prominently and then uses the old Epic logo, while the subsequent issued use the new, “edgy” Epic logo only.

Anyway, my first thought upon opening this book was “nooo! not another Chichester book! nooo…” Chichester has perhaps not written the absolutely worst of the worst Epic books, but he’s consistently tedious. He started off working for Epic as an editor, so perhaps that lead the other editors at Epic to say “yeah, whateves” which whatever new boring plot he came up with?

I have no idea.

His stuff is so overwritten and humourless. Now, humour may not be what you’d expect to find in an Hellraiser book (except inadvertently), but these are new levels of turgid prose.

And unfortunately, Chichester brings back his own super-duper lame Cenobite creations, like The Old Lady With The Glasses (scary) and The Vietnam Vet With The Gun Who Just Never Shuts Up (so scary).

Carrasco’s artwork (it’s spelled variously over the issues, but that’s the spelling used in most of them, I think) is OK, especially when inked by Villagran. There’s a lot of blood, viscera and torture on the pages, and it looks pretty yucky. Which is what you’re going for, right? The storytelling is pretty clear, but there’s often amateurish word balloon placement which leads the eyes astray.

But don’t worry, he comes up with a new bunch of lame Cenobites, like… The Guy With A Flask, The Guy With Weights Hanging From His Chest, Knife Lady and Guy With No Legs.

You see, this is a time-travel Hellraiser story, so Pinhead goes back in time to visit older incarnations of himself to… save Hell from a do-gooder. It’s not a bad concept, really.

The execution is, though. In each time period (i.e., issue) we meet up with a new blue-skinned guy with things poking out of his skull. So here we have… urr… I don’t know… cocktail forks?

Uhm… little arrows?

And, of course, the viking version uses little cocktail swords. Makes sense.

In the final two issues, they thankfully fill up some pages with pin-ups instead of using all the pages for the tedious story.

Bone spurs in the stone age!

The series is perhaps more episodic than it should have been — there’s little sense of progression over the issues. The do-gooder collects one magical item per issue, and then tries to use them in the final issue — fine. That’s a very common structure. But without anything more, it can get really repetetive. It gets really repetetive.

*phew* After this, I never have to read any Marvel Clive Barker books again! Whoho!

For some reason or other, this series is pretty expensive to buy now:

So I guess that people liked it? Or is it the cover art?

This person read the second issue:

It took me the entirety of the rambling issue two to piece together exactly what was happening and what had come before. I don’t dare throw you into the water without floaties, though, because this book could sink many people’s interest before you find the right stroke to stay afloat.

Don’t read that blog, though, because it would take more time reading that recap of the plot than reading the issue. I don’t think they much liked it?