{"id":5766,"date":"2010-11-05T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T06:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=5766"},"modified":"2010-11-01T10:56:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T10:56:21","slug":"dr-watchstop-adventures-in-time-and-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2010\/11\/05\/dr-watchstop-adventures-in-time-and-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Watchstop: Adventures in Time and Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Ken Macklin<\/strong> (Eclipse Books)
\nISBN: 0-913035-85-8<\/p>\n

Before becoming a successful games artist for LucasArts graphic adventure games (I don’t actually grok push-button fun but I gather that Maniac Mansion<\/em>, Loom<\/em>, the second and third Monkey Island<\/em> contraptions and the character Bubsy the bobcat<\/em> number among his electronic hits) Ken Macklin was an underground\/small press creator who delighted in cleverly whimsical and witty funny animal strips during the late 1970s in indy publications such as Quack!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Married to equally talented anthropomorphic raconteur Lela Dowling, he assisted and contributed to her marvelously manic Weasel Patrol<\/em> tales, which were published in the lost and long-lamented sci-fi anthology Fusion<\/strong> whilst producing his own diabolically wonderful one-shot space opera romp Contractors<\/strong> and the stimulating vignettes gathered here.<\/p>\n

As well as a talented designer and illustrator Macklin is a gifted painter and slyly devious writer and in 1982 he began selling brief, luxurious mini-epics starring an astonishingly brilliant but outrageous innocent multi-discipline savant named Dr. Watchstop<\/strong> to Epic Illustrated<\/strong> and Fusion<\/strong>: high quality graphic fantasy magazines aimed at older readers.<\/p>\n

In an era where science fiction was synonymous with and indistinguishable from cops and cowboys with blasters, Watchstop’s antics were contemplative, slapstick, wickedly ironic, eyes wide-open wonderments that only saw the ridiculous side of technology and the future cosmos\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Still readily available this oversized compilation gathers all those marvelously intellectual, winningly funny spoofs and japes, opening in glorious painted colour with ‘Dr. Watchstop Faces the Future’ <\/em>(Epic<\/strong> #10 February 1982), possibly the last word in time paradox tales, followed by an amoebic dalliance ‘One Cell at a Time’<\/em> before demonstrating the downside of ancient alien artifacts in ‘Time Bomb’<\/em> (Epic<\/strong> #14 and #17 respectively).<\/p>\n

If possible Macklin’s art is even better as monochrome tonal washes, as perfectly illustrated in the hilarious ‘Unique Specimen’ <\/em>(Fusion<\/strong> #1, January 1987), life-through-a-lens fable ‘Modern Culture’<\/em> (Fusion<\/strong> #3) and natural history segments ‘Right Stuff’ <\/em>(Fusion<\/strong> #7) and ‘Bugs’<\/em> (Fusion<\/strong> #5).<\/p>\n

‘Relic’<\/em> (Fusion<\/strong> #2) is pure Future Shock whilst full-colour ‘The Single Electron Proof’<\/em> from Epic<\/strong> #21(September 1983, and with the timely assistance of Toren Smith) will stretch the higher mathematics prodigies amongst us with a little metaphysical tomfoolery.<\/p>\n

Epic<\/strong> #29 provided a first home for ‘In Search of Ancient Myths’<\/em>, #33 both ‘Reaching Out’<\/em> and ‘Beating the Heat’<\/em> whilst the last colour cosmic conundrum ‘Wasting Time’<\/em> debuted in #34. The remainder of this collection features more black and white antics from Fusion<\/strong>, beginning with the vaudevillian ‘Gone Fishing’<\/em> (#4), moving adroitly into ‘Xlerg’s Fossil Emporium’<\/em> (#8) and anarchically culminating in a riotous Weasel Patrol collaboration enigmatically entitled ‘The Weasels Fill In’<\/em> from Fusion<\/strong> #9 (May 1988)<\/p>\n

Sheer artistic ability and incisive comedy for smart people is never going to be out of style and this stellar compilation will be a constant joy for any fan smart enough to unearth it.
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1989 Ken Macklin, and where appropriate Raymond E. Feist, Toren Smith, Lela Dowling and LX Ltd. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ken Macklin (Eclipse Books) ISBN: 0-913035-85-8 Before becoming a successful games artist for LucasArts graphic adventure games (I don’t actually grok push-button fun but I gather that Maniac Mansion, Loom, the second and third Monkey Island contraptions and the character Bubsy the bobcat number among his electronic hits) Ken Macklin was an underground\/small press … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Dr. Watchstop: Adventures in Time and Space”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[113,105,111,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-mature-reading","category-satirepolitics","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-1v0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}