By John Wagner, Alan Grant & José Ortiz (Rebellion)
ISBN:978-1-78108-653-7 (TPB)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Eerie Seasonal Sensation… 9/10
It’s time for another shamble down memory lane for us oldsters whilst, perhaps, offering a fresh, untrodden path for younger fans of the fantastic in search of a typically quirky British comics experience.
This stunning paperback (and eBook) package is another knockout nostalgia-punch from Rebellion Studios’ superb and ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, collecting the opening episodes of seminal shocker The Thirteenth Floor.
The strip debuted in the first issue of Scream and ran the distance – spanning all 15 issues from 24th March – 30th June 1984. It then survived the comic’s premature cancelation and subsequent merger, continuing for a good long while in Eagle & Scream – with the remaining stories here taking us from 1st September 1984 to 13th April 1985.
Although arguably the most popular – and certainly most lavishly illustrated – of Scream‘s fearsome features, The Thirteenth Floor is actually the third strip to be gathered, having been preceded by Monster in 2016 and The Dracula File in 2017. We’ll get to those in the fullness of time…
This book carries out its terrorising in stark, shocking monochrome but does include at the end a gallery of full-colour wraparound covers by series artist José Ortiz, and then-newcomer Brett Ewins, plus introductory contextual notes from editor Ian Rimmer and a darkly dry history lesson from co-author Alan Grant. With regular writing partner John Wagner, he wrote all the electronically eldritch episodes as enigmatic “Ian Hollandâ€.
Grant maintains the strip derived in part from his own time of residence on the 11th floor of a similar tower block, and, having done my own time in a south London multi-story edifice, I can imagine why the sojourn was so memorable for him…
The series benefitted tremendously from the diligent mastery of its sole illustrator Рsublime Jos̩ Ortiz Moya Рa veteran creator with a truly international pedigree. He was born on September 1st 1932 in Cartagena in the Spanish region of Murcia and started professional illustration early, after winning a comics competition in national comic Chicos.
Whilst working on comics digest books and strips like as Sigur el Vikingo, he gradually transitioned to the better-paying British market to draw newspaper strip Carolynn Baker for the Daily Express in 1962. He also worked for many kids’ comics here before making a wise move to America in 1974, to become a mainstay of Warren Publishing on horror magazines Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.
In the early 1980s Ortiz returned to Spain, joining Leopold Sánchez, Manfred Sommer and Jordi Bernet in short-lived super-group cooperative Metropol even as he worked with Antonio Segura on a number of long-lasting strips such as post-apocalyptic action-thriller Hombre.
Metropol’s failure brought him back to British comics where he limned The Tower King and The House of Daemon for Eagle, Rogue Trooper and other strips for 2000AD and this macabre masterpiece…
Ortiz continued to excel, eventually settling in the Italian comics biz, with significant contributions to Tex Willer, Ken Parker and Magico Vento. He died in Valencia on December 23rd 2013.
Because of the episodic nature of the material, originally delivered in sharp, spartan 4-page bursts (eventually dropping to a standard 3), I’m foregoing my usual self-indulgent and laborious waffle and leaving you with a précis of the theme and major landmarks…
A little way into the future (as seen from dystopian yet still partially civilised Britain in 1984), a council tower block is equipped with an experimental computer system to supervise all the building systems and services whilst monitors the welfare and wellbeing of tenants. Maxwell Tower (just one of the names we creative contributors waggishly called the offices of IPC’s comics division at the time) looms into the rather bleak urban night.
Within, however, novel computer-controlled systems assure everyone lives happy lives. The servers also manifest a congenial personality offering advice and a bit of company. Dubbed “Max†by tenants, it – like $%*£!! Alexa today – increasingly inserts itself into every aspect of their lives through its constantly active monitoring systems. For their own good, naturally…
Because humans are fallible and a bit silly, the builders and architects fancifully never designated a 13th floor. Cognizant of human superstition, they designed the block to arbitrarily transit straight from 12 to 14. A human onsite controller/concierge/handyman lives in the penthouse. His name is Jerry and everything is just hunky-dory… until one day it isn’t…
The troubles apparently begin when a mother and son move in. They are trying to make a new start after losing the family breadwinner, but are plagued by a particularly persistent and violent debt-collector. After Mr. Kemp threatens the bereaved Henderson family, he stalks into an elevator and is later found on the ground floor, having suffered an agonising and fatal heart attack. The police write it off as an accident or misadventure, but they don’t know the truth.
Over-protective Max is far more powerful than anyone suspects and can turn his lifts into a terrifyingly realistic arena of terror, judgement and retribution at will. He calls it his “Thirteenth Floorâ€â€¦
Over the weeks and months that follow, Max detects outrages and injustices and subjects assorted vandals, hooligans, burglars, bailiffs, lawyers, conmen, extortionists, shoddy plumbers, shady workmen, and even a family of problem tenants preying on their own neighbours, to the varied and impossibly realistic terrors of the damned.
Equally vexatious to the monitoring machine is the useless bureaucrat from its own housing department who treats people like subhuman trash. Max devises a very special hell for him after his lazy blunders temporarily make one of Max’s families homeless…
Sometimes these experiences are enough to modify behaviour and ensure silence, but too often the end result is simply another death. It happens so often that Max is reluctantly forced to brainwash husky tenant Bert Runch into acting as his agent: a mindless servant hypnotically conditioned to act as Max’s arms and legs, excising incriminating evidence – or bodies – before forgetting what he’s done.
Sadly, veteran policeman Sergeant Ingram suspects something is amiss and doggedly persists in returning to Maxwell Tower over and over again, ultimately forcing the coddling computer into precipitate action…
Moreover, as Max’s actions grow increasingly bold, even Jerry starts to suspect something is wrong. When he checks the hardware and finds a cracked Integrated Function Module, Jerry calls in council computer experts and Max has to act quickly to preserve his newfound intellectual autonomy. This triggers a cascade of uncontrollable events with Max taking ever-crazier risks, resulting in the tower being stormed by an army of police determined to shut down the AI murder machine…
And that’s where this moody masterpiece pauses with a great big To Be Continued, but there’s a second volume coming soon…
These strip shockers are amongst the most memorable and enjoyable exploits in British comics: smart, scary and rendered with stunning imagination and skill. Don’t believe for a moment that the seemingly limited set-up restricts the visual impact. The eerie punitive illusions of The Thirteenth Floor incorporate every possible monster from zombies and dinosaur to hell itself and history’s greatest villains, whilst the settings range from desert islands to the infinities of time and space. This a superb example of sophisticated suspense, leavened with positively cathartic social commentary that is impossible to dismiss.
© 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.