After the ABC Universe, the ALBION Universe!

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Is this severely misguided? I know I'm excited about seeing people like Alan Moore take on Robot Archie, The Steel Claw, The Hurricane and The Spider, but I suspect I'm hugely in a minority.

Americans, feel free to tell me I'm completely wrong and you want to read 60s Brit hero strips as well. (Hey, some of you buy Jack Staff, so I could be wrong)

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 13 May 2005 13:45 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure I haven't heard of any of these people/robots/spiders, but if it's Alan Moore (and people like him), I'm equally sure I'll enjoy it anyway!

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 13 May 2005 13:51 (twenty years ago)

I'm British and to be honest I don't give half an arse about them, after my time. It's possible Alan Moore has something interesting to say about Britain and superheroes but I'm not sure what he hasn't already said in Miracleman or V (unless it's what Grant M said in Zenith).

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 13 May 2005 13:54 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, BEFORE my time I meant!

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 13 May 2005 13:54 (twenty years ago)

Robot Archie Andrews? by Alan Moore? I'd buy that.

― Huk-L, Friday, 13 May 2005 13:55 (twenty years ago)

ROBOT ARCHIE BUNKER!

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 13 May 2005 13:58 (twenty years ago)

Don't put him on the cover and Conde Nast will be none the wiser.

― Huk-L, Friday, 13 May 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

I have great fondness for Robot Archie, The Spider, & The Steel Claw, reading them in reprints in the mid to late 70s when I was just a curate. They would do well from a 1963 style treatment (though just reprinting old strips of theirs would do even better) but not so well from a smart-arse League style pastichey thing. They're all good characters, though, particularly Robot Archie and The Spider, who seem to be primarily motivated by vanity.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 13 May 2005 22:06 (twenty years ago)

is robot archie "acieeed!" robot archie from zenith? for some reason i was under the impression moore had invented a bunch of those guys but i don't know why.

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 13 May 2005 23:44 (twenty years ago)

it all sounds a bit too Libertines for my liking...

― Andrew J L, Saturday, 14 May 2005 13:51 (twenty years ago)

is robot archie "acieeed!" robot archie from zenith?

that is indeed Robot Archie, though he wasn't into Acid House back in the 1970s.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, 14 May 2005 21:22 (twenty years ago)

was he onto more of a parlafunkadelicment thing

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 14 May 2005 23:06 (twenty years ago)

can someone explain what this means for the americans in the audience?

― kenchen, Tuesday, 17 May 2005 16:16 (twenty years ago)

Snuck a look at the preview ashcan at bristol. Cast list includes Grimly Feendish, Faceache and that guy with the tapeworms from odhams.

Grimly Feendish is actually quite scary.

Tom OTM: When I had a lot less nouse about these things than i do now, I thought my dream story would be a team-up of MACH 1, Visible Man, Angel, Wolfie Smith etc, all dressed in turtlenecks.

― Vic Fluro, Wednesday, 18 May 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

Robot Archie Shepp!

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 17:27 (twenty years ago)

can someone explain what this means for the americans in the audience?

the characters are from British adventure comics of the 1960s. I know them from reprints in the 1970s. "Albion" is some new title in which Alan Moore gives them The Treatment.

I was interested to read somewhere today that someone is going to be bringing out reprints of original strips featuring The Spider and The Steel Claw.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Sunday, 29 May 2005 19:43 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

and now issue one is out!

I was kind of disappointed by it... it was all meta-plot nonsense, with a distinct lack of Spider mentalism or Robot Archie arrogance.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 1 July 2005 09:53 (twenty years ago)

It did have Faceache in it, though.

― Vic Fluro, Friday, 1 July 2005 10:18 (twenty years ago)

As I said on the Shipping thread, I think Jack Staff is far better at it.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 1 July 2005 10:54 (twenty years ago)

yeah... although the Jack Staff I've read has been a bit too meta for my liking. There's too much recycling in mass culture, can't comics writers come up with new characters and ideas anymore?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 1 July 2005 11:20 (twenty years ago)

can someone explain what this means for the americans in the audience?
the characters are from British adventure comics of the 1960s. I know them from reprints in the 1970s. "Albion" is some new title in which Alan Moore gives them The Treatment.

There's a bit more to it than this. It isn't the first time the characters have been re-used as lovable Grant M populated his alternate Earths with them from Zenith Book 2 onwards. The ones Morrison used were back-catalogue characters from the Fleetway/IPC stable of comics - as Zenith was being printed in 2000AD which, at the time, was owned by Fleetway/IPC there weren't any copyright issues.

Having just read the first issue I find that there's an interesting nod to Grant's Acid Anarchist Archie in that Moore has the Robot Archie held in a facsimile of a cafe/bar/nightclub that actually does exist in Manchester - the putative 'home' of acid house.

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Friday, 1 July 2005 12:35 (twenty years ago)

speed speed ecstasy

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 1 July 2005 15:04 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Read this last night. I really enjoyed it I have to say. I'm thinking away about it now and I'm sure I'll have more to add later but I did like the idea of reclaiming these old characters, the idea of how important the props were, how people can resign themselves to confinement (most of the time) etc etc.

― kv_nol, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 10:00 (nineteen years ago)

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