Tyranny Rex - Deus Ex Machina

[Colin YNWA]

It wasn't long ago that I came on here praising Firekind to the high heavens and having read that I was really looking forward to the next John Smith story I remembered being pretty good, his Tyranny Rex epic. Well I've just read it and it didn't disappoint, it didn't disappoint at all. Fantastic stuff.

Ok so the art suffered from the numerous changes and however good the replacements were nothing was going to top the Mark Buckingham art on the first 4 or so parts. I'd say this is the best stuff I've ever seen from him. Just beautiful, with a wonderful sense of design. The art after that was always going to be disappointing. That didn't however detract from a brillant story. I was worried at the start of the second 'book' that the change in location and Tyranny herself, was accompanied by a change in writing style that lacked the refinement of the first book. As the story progressed however and the depth to the prose returned. Its simply exquisite. All the more wonderful as even though it was so much more complex and rewarding than the previous Tyranny Rex stories (from which I guess I should exclude Soft Bodies which baffles me to this day!) it was such a fitting end to her tail (excuse the pun) and themes that were started in the early stories saw rebirth in this modrn creation myth.

I'll not try to compare it to Firekind, or decide between the two, the mere fact that I'm thinking about it tells you how good I think it was.

Beautiful.

[I, Cosh]

I don't remember too much about Tyranny Rex beyond that I enjoyed it.

It seems a real shame to me that John Smith never managed to plough a furrow for himself in the Yankee comics the way his contemporaries Milligan and Morrison did. I just got hold of a pile of old Crisises and his New Statesmen is absolutely brilliant. All the attention in the letters pages is on the blatant issue-of-the-week right-on-ness of Third World War, while JS has written a cracking story with interesting characters and a wealth of the slightly subtler social and political satire which we associate with Dredd and most decent sci-fi. It seemed like there was a lot of scope for more stories set in that world and that also seemed to be the tone of some the editorial pieces, so I'd be interested to if John ever had plans for a follow up or if there wasn't the demand for it.

Anyway, I know that was written a few years before the period you're reading, but my point was partly that John Smith sustained a long period of great writing from Indigo Prime through New Statesmen and Cinnabar to Firekind, Devlin Waugh and beyond without ever seeming to get that leg up the others got.

We really don't see enough of him in the Prog these days either.

[Eldritch]

Totally agree, Cosh. Really enjoyed all those J Smith stories you mentioned. Story for story - and character for character - his 2K work is far more impressive than Grant Morrison, for example, who started so well with Zenith and declined to the nadir of Inferno.

[The Monarch]

John smith is my all time fave tooth writer he really is