Main Menu

Earthside 8 has surfaced...

Started by Grant Goggans, 18 August, 2010, 11:04:45 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Grant Goggans

Well, here's something incredibly neat.  Our fellow earthlet Giles Johnson has written me to ask about a curiosity in his collection: the Earthside 8 dummy.





The cover art by Dave Gibbons previously appeared, without the lettering, in Thrill-Power Overload, but this is what it could have looked like on newsagent shelves.  The strips are:

Tracer by Dave Stone and Paul Peart, later printed in the Dec 1993 Winter Special
The Burning Man by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, later printed in the 1994 Yearbook (8/93)
Alternity by Mark Eyles, unpublished
Mr Elephant Head by Roger Langridge, unpublished
Canned Heat by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil, later printed in the Dec 1993 Winter Special
Dinosty by Pat Mills and Clint Langley, later printed in prog 873

Johnson says that he doesn't recall how this prize came into his collection, but says that he worked at Stateside Comics for a time, and that it might have made its way into the shop via its well-connected owner.

I'm surprised by how much it looks like any given prog from 1992.  It doesn't look like another comic at all, just something that the comic's design team banged together on their lunch hour.  This is the first time we've ever seen the proposed editors for the comic, E-Teen and The Programme Controller.  Not quite up to the standards of Big E and Ghastly McNasty, are they?

TPO isn't clear whether the subsequently-proposed follow-up dummy, Alternity, ever made it to the print stage.  That's the one that could have included the awful-sounding Mark Millar strip about the teen president.

flintlockjaw

We need to see more scans of the rest of the dummy!

Looks fab!

Emperor

I'd love to see a CBR of that (for historical/scholarly/archival reasons) but surely what would be the best idea would be 2000AD getting their hands on this, doing a top quality scan and clean-up and giving it away as a Megazine supplement. Granted Burning Man has just been reprinted and some of the others have since seen daylight but still it would still be great to have.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

SmallBlueThing

Yes, add my shout to the call for this being reprinted somewhere. Either as a meg supplement (perhaps with the prog #0 dummy, or the remaining pages thereof, and anything that may exist from the scrapped proto-meg dummies.
SBT
.

SmallBlueThing

Argh, i realise that post makes little grammatical sense. My cat demanded attention and i lost my train of thought due to the stink of her arse!
SBT
.

The Corinthian

IIC, Tharg offered Earthside-8 ashcans to readers of the 1993 Tooth Winter Special, so maybe that's where this came from?

JOE SOAP

I advocate scanning the whole thing and putting it up as a cbr at a file site.

jamesedwards

What was the hook behind this, exactly? I can't imagine there was much of a niche to fill that wasn't already being filled by 2000ad.

JOE SOAP

Quote from: jamesedwards on 19 August, 2010, 01:05:45 AM
What was the hook behind this, exactly? I can't imagine there was much of a niche to fill that wasn't already being filled by 2000ad.


It was for younger readers because 2000AD was moving more towards young adults.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Garageman on 19 August, 2010, 01:08:58 AM
Quote from: jamesedwards on 19 August, 2010, 01:05:45 AM
What was the hook behind this, exactly? I can't imagine there was much of a niche to fill that wasn't already being filled by 2000ad.


It was for younger readers because 2000AD was moving more towards young adults.

Funnily enough the kind of thing some people have been advocating here recently.

I'd love to have a nosey at this out of curisity. Good to see Jamie Hewlett trying to get the little 'uns into the Fannies!

Noisybast

Seriously, though "E-Teen"? Sounds like grown-ups trying a little too hard to be hip with the youngsters, to me.

I'd still be interested in seeing the rest of the comic, though.
Dan Dare will return for a new adventure soon, Earthlets!

Bolt-01

I'd be well interested in getting my hands on this.

ming

Thanks for sharing that, Grant.  Earthside 8 piqued my curiosity ever since I read about it in TPO (knowledge of it had completely passed my by otherwise).

jamesedwards

Quote from: Garageman on 19 August, 2010, 01:08:58 AM
Quote from: jamesedwards on 19 August, 2010, 01:05:45 AM
What was the hook behind this, exactly? I can't imagine there was much of a niche to fill that wasn't already being filled by 2000ad.


It was for younger readers because 2000AD was moving more towards young adults.

I've read most of the reprinted stuff... if that was the intention they really, really messed up because it was tonally identical to the majority of 2000ad strips at the time.

TordelBack

Quote from: jamesedwards on 19 August, 2010, 10:41:13 AM
... if that was the intention they really, really messed up because it was tonally identical to the majority of 2000ad strips at the time.

That fact that this never went beyond a dummy sort-of suggests that they knew this too.  It's not like they pushed on for a dozen issues before realising it wasn't up to scratch.