By Brett Ewins, Peter Milligan and friends (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-070-2
In the mid 1980s a creative explosion in British comics saw many groundbreaking new titles and a darkly cynical cultural flowering and renaissance in established titles. Many emergent writers and artists achieved prominence and a goodly few were promptly poached by America, forming what was called a “British Invasionâ€.
One team that crossed the pond in 1985 was Pete Milligan & Brett Ewins – already firm favourites with 2000AD readers – and for Eclipse Comics they created a darkly nihilistic post-punk private eye in alternative anthology Strange Days.
A year later the stylishly murderous maniac returned in Johnny Nemo Magazine for further far-future mayhem. He then dropped out of sight until Ewins co-opted the P.I.’s caseload and added some original exploits for the first year of indie British start-up Deadline Magazine – a seminal publishing landmark combining comics, pop culture, style, music and fashion he had created with fellow artist Steve Dillon.
Gloriously free of specious character development, Johnny Nemo remained who he always was: a murderous, devious, occasionally self-loathing London lad making a living from his only gifts.
He’s an over-sexed, avaricious, nosy, introverted, philosophical, existentialist thug. He’s also a problem-solver for hire and he lives in the future, which is not so different from now…
Following a fondly reminiscent ‘Introduction by Peter Milligan’ and ‘You’re Bastards. All of You. You’re All Bastards.’ – a heartfelt missive from the moody merc himself as seen in the 2002 collection Johnny Nemo: Existentialist Hitman of the Future – this sturdily resplendent hardcover compilation commences with ‘The Good, the Bad and the Nemo’ wherein the toughest ‘tec in 2991’s New London town is commissioned to investigate Father Burgess’ Orphanage.
The old institution – which once had the displeasure of young Johnny’s company after his parents’ last nervous breakdowns – is run by nuns and they’ve started exploding for no good reason. A seasoned riddle-solver, Johnny knows just who to smack around and soon discovers the incredible reason for the campaign of carnage before smoking out the habitual assassin…
Having made a lot of enemies, Nemo is always prepared for assassination attempts but nothing like the TeleInfo mind-mine which implants thousands of years of rational meanderings and philosophical cant in his usually indecision-free bonce. The measures taken to free-up his brain long enough to terminate his insidious attacker in ‘Cogito, Ergo Buggered’ are both shocking and shockingly effective…
Punishing puns and hyper-absurdism inform the strange case of ‘The White Quiffs of Dover’ after Nemo is hired to ferry a box containing the left testicle of Bing Crosby to an occultist. The potent eldritch artefact is also highly prized by a cult of albino Teddy Boys who will stop at nothing to obtain the treasured totem and unleash the uncanny crooner’s diabolical transmutative force.
However neither they nor the satanic singer pent inside the box have reckoned on Johnny’s innate ability to fight dirty…
Chronologically adrift, the 3 chapters of ‘The Orb of Harmony’ were first seen in the aforementioned Strange Days (from November 1984 to April 1985) and introduced Nemo and his robot secretary/sex-toy/therapist Kalina in a time-twisting tale which saw the enquiry agent hired by the government to recover an alien artefact before its loss sparked an interplanetary incident and intergalactic war.
It wasn’t hard to find the culprits in the jingoistically xenophobic League of Adam, but as they had already disposed of the Orb, the solution and return to status quo (involving the conquest of Earth, an invasion by Sirian slugmen and vast amounts of bloody violence) took a lot of planning and quite a bit of time…
From 1988 ‘The Immaculate Misconception’ is still a marvellously outrageous and controversial yarn as notoriously shag-happy Nemo is hired to protect the virginity of haughty alien hottie Princess Dania.
The demure deb is getting married in the morning and needs to be virgo intacta – something she is determined to avoid at all costs. Set on one last party she is nonetheless stuck with Johnny but calmly convinced that her looks and otherworldly pheromone arsenal will result in some serious, wedding-ending deflowering: if not from Nemo then one of his friends or enemies…
Of course Princess Da has neglected to mention the inescapable biological consequences of a night of illicit bliss with her…
Steve Dillon illustrated the clever case of murder-for-hire which saw media mogul Merdock Ridley contract Johnny to end his mega-rich life. Instantly suspicious, the lethally likely lad did some checking and discovered the job was a ploy on the gazillionaire’s part to cheat his trophy wife Fatima.
However since the trick involved freezing the assets along with the stiff (both to be revived at some time in the future) Nemo and ‘Lady Lucre’ put their heads – and sundry other body parts – together and came up with another option…
Whilst most of this book is in stark black-&-white, the three tales from Johnny Nemo Magazine are re-presented in strident full colour and ‘New London Pride’ (issue #3, February 1986 by Milligan, Ewins & Dillon) sees the hardboiled gumshoe troubled by uncharacteristic bad dreams. To gain a firm grip on himself he decides to go walkabout in the very dangerous gutters of miles-high New London City and vent some spleen against the vile and arrogant skinheads who infest the depths…
‘The Spice of Death’ – an all-Ewins art-fest – was a 2-part tale from Johnny Nemo Magazine #1 and 2 (September and November 1985) which detailed an old-fashioned tale of revenge as grieving Liza Creeture hired the man and his guns to find the killers of her brother.
The trail led to a bunch of rich-kids who hunted the poor for sport, desert metropolis Cairo and a gang of death-junkies who got high on extracted psychic auras of people who died in agony…
As the case proceeded and the bodies piled up, even Nemo began to smell a rat and suspect a cunning trap was in play…
Moving back into monochrome ‘The Hand of God’ then sees the independent trader blackmailed by bent coppers Flask and Stuff into taking out the returned messiah Jesus Christ, leading to the strangest confrontation in future history. However the Son of God is a wily sod and has a trick or two up his sleeve…
This turbulent, irreverent tome terminates with a stunning jam session as ‘New Tales of New London’ offers strip sessions by Rufus Dayglo, Ewins, Jock and Ashley Wood illustrating a sordid shift as Johnny – deflated by recent election results – indulges in introspection and tries out a few alternate personalities in ‘The Make Over’.
Still and all, whether a frou-frou interior designer, a sports hooligan, a laid-back loafer or a depressed down-and out, Johnny Nemo is still a man you don’t want to tick off…
Raucous, vulgar, excessively violent, politically incorrect and powerfully socially conscious, this superbly entertaining catalogue of chronal contretemps and spatial sorties is as potent and powerful as ever and today’s generation of toadies and Brit-fops should make certain they read, absorb and react accordingly…
Johnny Nemo is ™ and © 2014 Peter Milligan & Brett Ewins. All rights reserved.
