By Daniel Whiston, Dave Thomson & various (Markosia)
ISBN: 978-1-916968-30-1 (TPB/Digital edition)
If you grew up British in the last 50 years reading home-produced action/adventure comics, you were primarily consuming either war or science fiction tales – preferably both. 2000AD launched in February 1977 and rapidly reshaped the minds of generations of readers. It has done so ever since, affecting and inspiring hundreds of creators.
Very much in the mould of that anarchic, subversive and wickedly cynical weekly came a small press fanzine phenomenon which spawned its own home-grown stars. This titanic tome happily revisits one of the most appallingly appealing and inexplicably endearing of those players: a devious, irredeemably self-serving chancer (like so many traditional British comics rogues ranging from Charlie Peace and Grimly Feendish to The Spider) who finds the fate of humanity unhappily and inappropriately piled on his shifty, unwilling and mostly uncaring shoulders…
Neroy Sphinx first began intermittently appearing in Indie comics icon FutureQuake – specifically and sporadically between #4-20 from 2005 to 2012. In his previous compilation (Neroy Sphinx: Back in the Game and still readily available through back issue venues and internet retailers large and small) the criminal trickster was dragooned into becoming the saviour of Humanity and unlikely nemesis of encroaching dark cosmic gods: a fate even he could not weasel out of.
Sphinx is a born rogue failed politician and inveterate manipulator, whom readers of a certain age might liken to Minder’s Arthur Daley in space. However, the imaginatively inventive rapscallion is graced with a steely inner core allowing him to scheme ruthlessly and casually expend strangers, bystanders, friends and acquaintances like confetti. Many cosmic buses have had Sphinx’s associates cheerily thrown under them, but at least now he’s doing his nefarious thing for a good cause….
Written throughout by Daniel Whiston, and illustrated by Dave Thomson, the culmination of his quixotic escapades are gathered in this bombastic monochrome tome, set long after the collapse of EarthFed and reopening of an Arterial Wormhole that once connected Human space systems to a wider intergalactic civilisation. Sadly it also allowed access to predatory alien gods from Space Hell…
Recruited by ultra-psionic former ally Clarence Griffin as the lynchpin of a decades-long survival plan, Sphinx (his memories selectively edited) resumes his unwanted burden after ‘Down Among the Damned Men’, where Griffin sacrifices another innocent to the great vision he’s seen. As monstrous horrors ravage creation and creep closer to total domination, Griffin and artificial lifeform/hired muscle Fenris track down the AWOL schemer for ‘The Train Job’ and the “recovery” of a certain cosmic artefact Neroy stashed away years previously. He says all he needs now is their help in securing the billions in bullion on board to buy a spaceship…
A clash with surviving members of old enemies the Dubblz clan heaps even higher the pile of collateral casualties when the would-be saviours go ‘Junkyard Shopping’ but at least finally get them off-world, but as their eventual destination is recently invaded Cassiopia System and the much-diminished Dubblz are still on their tails, the ‘Misguided Pursuits’ they indulge in only succeeds in obtaining the artefact by lumbering them with another useless hanger-on. Ensign Eudora Carver is the sole survivor of a human ship caught by the invaders, and has a potent connection to the arcane star sceptre they were hunting…
Now ‘Keep it Clean’ finds her and her extremely disturbing rescuers landing on the “ancient sublime citadel of the Gr’tk” and attacked by a legion of greedy alien hangers-on occupying a celestial shanty town and keen to keep these new rivals away from the cast-off gifts of the primal beings…
As the voyagers explore the cosmic citadel and unpick the sordid truths of eons of cosmic history and legend, their mission to repel invasion and damnation goes from bad to worse in succeeding chapters ‘Cat and Mouse and Cheddar Too’ and ‘The Fiddle Game’. Here they try ‘Pushing the Limits’ of inter-species relations while seeking a way to end Hell-being encroachment, but progress stalls after they raid a vault in ‘Good Thing, Small Package’.
Another friend is sacrificed in ‘Temptation Game’ before their last chance to ‘Bring it All Down’ delivers victory of a kind and a new start in epilogue ‘Ice Baby’…
With an Introduction by comics writer/novelist Michael Carroll, and a handy potted chronology of human development and our rogue’s rap sheet courtesy of ‘The Story So Far…’ (spanning 2344 when Griffin dragooned the con man into public service up until 2360 when the saga at last commences to conclude) this much-anticipated sequel is another ambitious, gloriously engaging and exceedingly well-executed space-opera romp with a broad scope and a deft touch to delight lovers of edgily light-hearted fantastic fiction.
™ & © 2024 Daniel Whiston, Dave Thomson & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.