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Blackhawk...
Once a proud Roman Centurion -- Now a gladiator in a Savage Alien Frying-Pan!

Crap! That was supposed to be "HENturion"!

Blackhawk...
Once a proud Roman Centurion -- Now a gladiator in a Savage Alien Frying-Pan!

The Meggkon *



*This is actually how a guy I know pronounces "Mekon"... Not me, though. I pronounce it "Mekon". Anyway, there you go. And the image is in jape-egg format.

- Mike

Well done, Simon - and to everyone who participated. Definitely the most enjoyable compo yet!

- Mike

My votes...
1. IndigoPrime - blew me away!
2. Pete Wells - brilliantly funny
3. CraveNoir - beautiful work (I'm jealous!).

HM: Buttonman 01 - it's daft, but it made me laugh out loud!

Excellent work all around - these comps really do bring out the best in us!

-- Mike

Oh man... Dave, you have to stop letting that kid of yours near pencils - he's putting the rest of us to shame!

This is going to be a tough competition to call. If anyone's undecided, I guess it would probably be best to just vote for my pic. Cos, y'know... I want to win.

-- Mike

Dear Vzzbux,

Congratulations! You have won a runner-up prize in our competition - an Ultimate Hoth Battle Pack from TRU!

Best,
www.SomeFakeCompetition.com

Aw damn it! I spend ages on this one and just as I'm about to post I decide to read the other shorts just in case... Should have read them first! Sorry if it seems like I'm nicking your idea, Shark, but I promise you it's just a coincidence!

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The Wages of Sin

Edmund Proctor had been on the run for less than five minutes and already he was thinking of turning himself in.

Judges'll grant me immunity. I can tell them how it started.

But it was too late. He knew that. It had been too late from the moment the spy had approached him.

Five minutes ago Proctor had climbed out of a cab outside his laboratory. Four lawmasters had been parked outside.

Proctor had walked around the side of the building. He'd started to run.

Proctor knew that it was his own fault. He'd been careless with the money. The spy had warned him: "Don't change your life-style. The judges watch out for that. Spend more than you should and they will come knocking."

Proctor had only been half-listening – the rest of his attention had been on the half-million credits, inside the briefcase the spy had opened on Proctor's desk.

"Half now," the spy said, "and the rest if the sample works."

"It'll work." He looked up at the well-toned, dark-haired man long enough to pass over the small plasteen-encased vial, then returned his attention to the money.

The virus had worked, of course. Edmund Proctor hadn't become the Big Meg's foremost molecular biologist without knowing his stuff.

Proctor ran. Three blocks away from the lab now. Slow down. Take it easy. Nothing more suspicious than someone running when they don't have to.

He forced himself to walk.

A month after the first meeting, the spy had returned with a second briefcase.

As Proctor eagerly counted the money, the spy asked, "What else have you got?"

"That wasn't enough?"

"Your sample works, but now I want something a little more subtle. Something that won't turn people into monsters. Not on the surface, anyway."

Proctor considered this. "I might have something for you. Though I should warn you it's got a slow burn – takes time for the effects to be noticed. It hugely magnifies the subject's paranoia and arrogance. It can cause severe hallucinations, delusions of godhood, solipsism—"

"I'll take it."

Proctor pursed his lips. "Won't be cheap. I'll have to by-pass a dozen levels of security."

The man leaned forward, palms on Proctor's desk. "One hundred million credits. Cash, gold, diamonds, or I can set you up with an off-shore bank account, whatever suits."

Proctor's mouth had suddenly dried. "Bank account would be good."

The man handed him a scrap of paper. "Memorise this number and password. There's fifty million in the account already. You get the rest if the sample works."

Proctor nodded dumbly.

"When?"

"Tomorrow morning."

That had been yesterday. For a few hours, Edmund Proctor had been a multi-millionaire. Now he was sweating, glancing over his shoulder, trying to walk fast and look casual at the same time.

This morning, in the taxi, it had all changed.

In his pocket was a small plasteen block containing two millilitres of a clear liquid.

This morning, Edmund Proctor had realised that the man was not just an industrial spy. This wasn't about one bio-weapons company hoping to get a leap ahead of the competition.

This was about the destruction of an entire city.

The TV in the taxi had shown him everything: Mega-City Two in flames, its citizens rampaging, ferocious, blood-thirsty... One of them – a once-pretty young woman – threw herself at the camera, her eyes red, hands clawed, teeth bared. Proctor had seen this before. Once, in the lab. The test subject had only stopped fighting when a guard managed to jab an electro-probe into the back of the man's neck.

The TV report said that the Chief Judge had promised that Mega-City One would send aid, a team travelling overland across the Cursed Earth, carrying a vaccine.

Proctor rounded a corner, spotted two judges on foot-patrol. He turned left into a narrow, quiet alleyway.

Then a voice behind him said, "The judges didn't go to your laboratory to arrest you, Proctor."

He turned around to see the spy staring down at him.

"They were looking for your advice on the plague in Mega-City Two. Or, rather, how to prevent it from spreading here."

Proctor slumped back against a wall as relief washed through him.

"By now, though, they'll have discovered that you took a taxi to the lab and ran away as soon as you saw their bikes." The tall man held out his hand, palm up. "You've got it?"

The knot in Proctor's stomach tightened. "You... you set the virus loose in Mega-City Two! Millions of people are dead – or worse."

"That was the point. Now hand over the vial or I'll just kill you and take it from you."

His hand trembling, Proctor dropped the plasteen block into the spy's open palm. "You're going to do the same thing here, aren't you?"

"No. Mega-City Two was an experiment, but the outcome wasn't what we wanted. There's no cure for 2T(fru)T. But my people will test this one, we'll develop a cure." He paused. "I can't let you live, Proctor. East-Meg One thanks you for your part in its upcoming invasion, but your story ends here."

Proctor tried to squirm away. "No, Orlok, please! I'll give you back all the money – I'll do anything!"

"This will be painless. Just close your eyes."

"You don't know that the sample even works!"

"True. But I'll know within the week. A one-man test should be sufficient. I have arranged a... cultural meeting... this morning with one of your city's most senior judges. I'll test the sample on him. Close your eyes, Proctor."

Proctor slowly sank to his knees. "But the virus might not work on Judge Dredd! He's a clone, genetically almost perfect. He's too strong-willed... Let me live and I'll find someone more suitable!"

"Dredd?" The soviet judge raised an eyebrow. "Never heard of him. My meeting is with Deputy Chief Judge Cal."

Edmund Proctor closed his eyes for the last time. Strong hands tightened around his throat.
------------------------------------------------------
(990 words)

-- Mike

Well, I really enjoyed that!

[spoiler:237j36fj]However, I'm bitterly disappointed that the show didn't end with a certain narrative passage...

"There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens..."

Now, that would have been a really, really cool way to wrap it all up![/spoiler:237j36fj]

-- Mike

Judge Fear!

Hmm... To me, it looks more like that favourite of semi-literate eBayers, Judge Dread.

... Anyway, everyone knows that THIS is the real Stainless Steel Matt!

it's the Stainless Steel Mat of course!

Damn! I was sure it was "Strontium Door"!

Mike Carroll, amazing work and I have to ask - how long did that take??  

Thanks Fester!

Hard to say how long it took... I've been building the bits of pieces of Dredd's uniform for years now... For this pic, I probably spent about an hour working on the boots and gloves (the two parts of the uniform that I kept putting off) and another hour tweaking bits here and there.

Alpha was a different matter: I already had the badge and helmet, so all I had to do was everything else (plus rebuild the helmet from scratch because the old one wasn't working). Probably about six or seven hours over the past few days.

The faces were the hardest part: I wanted them to look like Alpha and Dredd without being too cartoonish, which was pretty tricky.

In total, I guess I spent about twenty hours on the image - but a huge chunk of that time was spent waiting for the renderer to do its thing (the final image took 41 minutes to render!).

-- Mike

[hell's]

Here's a little piece I like to call "Who the hell's gonna mess with us?"

Thanks Kerrin... But the floor is CGI too: I decided I needed a change from rendering everything with outer space backgrounds!

-- Mike