The Atomic Society (of Justice)....

Having completed his chapter, Zone of Destruction, for Evil Hollywood Over Subterrania in March, Production 'Brawbot' Rob Miller returned to his work on The Atomic Society of Justice and, noting how awful the pages were - you'll know if you happen to own this comic - redrew the bulk of them, in some instances just hardening up the spot blacks and in others replacing whole panels. It's what good ol' Agent Johnny'd call an "academic exercise", being no stranger to "doctoring" earlier artwork himself....

Just recently Rob stumbled across the second of his two Radioactive Pin-Ups and wondered if it was the final version or, as in the case of the first, had actually been completely redrawn prior to publication. It hadn't! So here's the work in progress, the new version sketched out heavily on top of the (thankfully completely obscured) original. It's very likely these 9 "refreshed" pages will debut here as we count down to the launch of Evil Hollywood sometime next year and will eventually be reprinted as we collect all the Evil Wee Comics titles into a chunky book thereafter....

The Amazing Mr. X....

Production 'Brawbot' Rob Miller has, on occasion, some time to himself to work on his own pages and this proved to be the case once again with this year's Dundee Comics Prize, where he managed to knock out the requested mock cover and 2-3 page strip of their Mr. X reboot.

Their pitch was pretty simple, allowing creators the opportunity to re-interpret the character - the first home-grown British superhero, long since near-forgotten, who appeared in 14 installments in the Dandy between 1944 and 1945 - for the 21^st century.

As ever Rob came a close 14th (or so) and was fortunate enough that his piece - with its sly nods to some of DC Thomson's familiar-ish characters - be invited to join 13 other creative teams in the Universe and DC Thomson publication, The Amazing Mr. X.

....and it is! The winning strip - which the judges felt "undercuts the tone of the usual superhero story with a playful satire on the mythology of the superhero" - is by Steve Marchant with one runner-up being provided by the team of Darren O'Toole and A. Kaviraj  and the other by Gavin Boyle. Another entry worth noting is that of Barry Thomson, one of my fellow Studionauts at Hope Street.

Above is Enrique Ardito's cover for the finished book - taken from his entry - described as being "of interest to devoted Dandy fans as well as no doubt proving to be something of a curiosity to students of old British comics." by Downthetubes. The cover price for this 76 page, US size, spine bound collection is an entirely reasonable £8.00 and copies can be ordered from universecomic - at - gmail - dot - com.

Brawview! Unfamiliar new faces....

Well it wouldn't be doing, ahead of Braw!'s arrival, to keep the new characters under wraps. So here's the new faces who'll be making an appearance within the pages....

Ah, Dominoes, our new 'teen geenyus' who'll be entertaining us with his mannered and considered exploits....

So this'll be Mandi Dingo then, all set to take us on the ride of her life, thanks to the mystery guest star from 'The only way is Weegie'....

So here's Bovro who's little more than just a guy hanging about doing what guys do. No harm in that, ay....

And finally we have The Ballad of Peely Wally, a cautionary tale of (all) sorts....

Brawview! Familiar old faces....

Ahead of Braw's imminent arrival (courtesy of UK Comics) it's about time to reintroduce those old faces set to appear in this forthcoming issue (it has been nearly 2 years after all)....

If it's not Luvvable'lex, who'll be appearing in his longest story yet, 'Blues 'n' Rhythm' a slightly larger riff on his appearance in ImagiNation: Stories of Scotland's Future, featuring a few new characters in themselves....

You can't keep a good man down (or deid!) as no Rob Miller comic would be complete without Big Moff taking a starring role. Amazingly he's been resurrected since his untimely death in Khaki Shorts #28, prompted by us all to keep the franchise alive....

Hmm, bit of a transition here as SuperScott did indeed feature in Khaki Shorts, but in this incarnation (originally submitted for the Dundee Comics Prize, fact fans!) he just so happens to look exactly like the much missed Jonathan The Cape (most likely Paul Gravett's favourite comic character ever, em, not!)....