The stories are listed in below in a sort of chronological order, but most do not follow on from each other and some, because of the multiversal existence of Charlotte Corday, encompass similar storylines but told in different ways…
Multiverse-spanning, time-hopping Charlotte Corday’s many lives include a steampunk space explorer and a French detective getting involved in all sorts of arcane exploits in 1950s London, which could best be described as “Brighton Rock meets Quatermass and the Pit“.
On occasion, she has been accompanied by a ghostly assistant – a reincarnation of her father, who looks like a mule! – a character that had its origins in a strip Keith created for IPC’s Revolver many years ago.
Inspired by the great British comics artists of the past such as Frank Hampson, Don Lawrence and Joe Colquhoun, Keith Page has worked full-time in comics and illustration for almost 30 years. Subjects have ranged from television-related material such as Thunderbirds, science fiction, and war stories of all periods for Commando.
Many stories are now presented for free on Tapas or Facebook
London Calling
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page
First published by Timebomb Comics | Available to read for free on the Official Charlotte Corday Facebook Page
London Calling places a confused Charlotte in 1950s London in which not everything is quite as it should be. During World War Two, the French experimented with giving their troops vampire blood to try to make them impervious to bombs and bullets but post-war this backfired with an outbreak of vampirism in the country. To prevent the vampires taking over Paris the city was taken out of time using captured Nazi technology and now, as it tries to return, it is causing ripples in the fabric of time that are affecting Charlotte Corday in her undercover mission in London.
There, befriended by a charming vampire called Luca and while looking for another French agent, she gets caught up in a raid on a vampire club by the Metropolitan Police’s V-Squad and is arrested suspected of being a vampire herself.
The whole plot is book ended by a different Charlotte recovering her children from a flooded London and telling them the story of the book to pass the time.
• Read London Calling for free on Facebook
• Buy the TimeBomb Comics edition London Calling from amazon.co.uk
• Buy the TimeBomb Comics London Calling from amazon.com
• SciFi Pulse: Stephen Walsh discusses the inspiration behind The Iron Moon and London Calling
Back in 2014, we were astonished to see London Calling listed on embeds from Amazon on the Charlotte Corday website at an eye watering price. It looked like someone had been tampering with the time fields again… At that time, you could buy it for £7 direct from the publisher!
Squadron of the Screaming Damned
Published by Timebomb Comics
The follow up to London Calling. Charlotte Corday is back as the mysterious secret agent whose missions are so top secret even she doesn’t know what they are and opens with a Word War Two German U-boat surfacing in Charlotte’s bathtub, as Page and Walsh give us another fabulous dose of the weird and wonderful that made London Calling such a hit.
• Find Squadron of the Screaming Damned on AmazonUK
The Iron Moon
Published by Print Media (print) and ROK Comics (digital edition, no longer available)
Not currently available
Described as ‘Rorke’s Drift in Space’, The Iron Moon is a fast-paced steampunk-inspired adventure starring no-nonsense adventuress Charlotte Corday and is now available worldwide for iPad from the Apple iTunes store.
In the story, the twentieth century is just around the corner and Queen Victoria is hale and hearty as she heads into the second century of her reign. The British Empire stretches from the white cliffs of Dover to the red skies of Mars. Go-getting men and women of the imperial dominions flock to the colours, eager to make reputations and fortunes in the wilds of high space.
Take lieutenant Charlotte Corday, for instance. Born in what used to be known as France, she has risen to prominence through the ranks of the Royal Space Navy and now finds herself up to her neck in her greatest escapade yet. Watch as she travels to the mysterious Iron Moon! Marvel as she grapples with a conspiracy that may see the galaxy plunged into war! Goggle as she meets new and strange races, both mechanical and biological! Ponder how she manages to put away so many cups of tea! And prepare to have your brain scrambled as she scoops us up and carries us to the very limits of this universe… and into the next!
• Find out more about The Iron Moon – the digital edition
Buzz-Bomb Follies of 1569
50 pages – Black and White – Not currently available
In which we learn of Queen Elisabeth the First’s enthusiasm for the Wild West, how Charlotte helped to foil the Vampiroid invasion; and how the London Bus Pirates once menaced the streets
Seven Dials
49 pages – Black and White – Not currently available
In which Charlotte plays two roles in the true stories of Spring Heel’d Jack and Alice in Wonderland. And how Charles Dickens was involved in the construction of the first Tube line.
Plunger’s Last Case
101 pages – Black and White – Not currently available
In which Charlotte appears somewhat bewildered in the 1970’s. The usual sort of thing, including a secret government plot, a huge floating city and the Great God Fantog. Plunger’s last case is a pretty spectacular one.
“This is written by Stephen Walsh and is based on an actual event, notes Keith, “and was inspired by a mixture of A Clockwork Orange, The Quatermass Conclusion and Captain Scarlet!
“It also features some new characters: a youthful writer and someone inspired by Steve Strange. I have a brief appearance as a young artist visiting ‘Matt Pills’.”
Starfall on Cydonia (aka “Cat Corday of the RSF”)
Unpublished
A full colour adventure set in space, crammed with affectionate nods to SF comic heroes such as Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke.
Starfall on Cydonia, aka Cat Corday of the RSF, is a 72-page, completed story set on Mars – a Dan Dare type sequel inspired by Quatermass and the Pit, with hardware inspired by the Von Braun study Das Marsprojekt.”
Keith completed work on the project in 2017.
In 2015, Keith worked up a number of dummy images to get himself in the mood for the project, utilising work by by one of the British Interplanetary Society’s most visionary early members, Ralph Andrew Smith.
The BIS web site notes that Ralph Smith said that he designed his first spaceship at the age of twelve, in 1917. Although the drawing no longer exists, he left an extensive collection of line drawings and pictures covering most spheres of astronautics. Surprisingly, he did not paint astronautical pictures for his own satisfaction, and rarely painted anything else. Occasionally he might make a pen-and-ink landscape, or copy detail from an old master, and sometimes he did a picture to give to a friend; but in the main the 100 or so paintings and diagrams were prompted by requests or commissions.
Before World War Two he was principally engaged in architectural decoration. He was responsible for the interior décor of several famous London hotels and metropolitan and provincial super-cinemas – affording good grounding for such pictures as his colour painting of the interior of Lunar City. His picture of the construction of the Space Station in orbit won an award by The Perspectivist magazine.
• British Interplanetary Society Online Art Gallery
• The British Interplanetary Space Society Space Station, co-designed by R. A. Smith in 1948 with Harry Ross
Charlotte Corday – Witchcraft Street
Available to read for free on Tapas
By Keith Page
Opening before World War Two and featuring a young Charlotte Corday and, later, her older self, this story features Charlotte’s father in more than one guise, and sets out many of the themes seen in longform stories such as Squadron of the Screaming Damned.
• Witchcraft Street – Some Notes on Le Bureau Fantôme
The Hampstead Horror
Not currently available – partly published digitally by ROK Comics
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
A short strip first published on the ROK Comics mobile comics platform; only three episode were published, but the story runs to 15 overall
Paint it Black
Not currently available
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page
Written by Stephen Walsh and set entirely in London’s Soho, it’s a story like no other!
Published by Time Bomb Comics in 2015, the story plunges readers once again into the yellow be-fogged sprawl of 1950s Soho, where, as ever, Something is Afoot. Charlotte takes a back seat and puts her feet up in the saloon bar of the Old Gallows Tree as we embark upon a very particular quest with her pal, Paraffin Jack McNab.
Join Jack and the girls and boys of V-Cars as they get up to their necks (see what we did there? – editor) in an epidemic of neck-biting and general vampiric carry-on that threatens to sink Old London Tahn good and proper. Additionally, the doors of time itself will be kicked open and left hanging carelessly on their hinges as Jack finds himself adrift and askew in a veritable cavalcade of Londons past, present and future. But there’s always time for a drink, of course, especially with such old and new chums as Thomas deQuincey, Francis Bacon and Tony Hancock. Old Samuel Beckett shows up, too, in a flashback to Jack’s war service and a glimpse into just what started the Only Man What Can Save London along his fateful course.
Longer than the Charlotte corday books, Paint It Black will also pleasantly startle with the realisation that it will be told, for the first time, in full colour. Our artist, Mr Keith Page, has out-done himself in this regard, and is presently recovering from the amount of research he selflessly undertook in the hostelries of Soho in order to get the job done. The fog, this time, is yellow. The beer is copper-brown. The blood is red. Our writer, Mr Stephen Walsh, can barely remember the chance encounter in the Golden Crocodile club with the man claiming to be the real Paraffin Jack that set the telling of this thrilling tale in motion, although he has a distinct impression of the number of empty glasses that filled the table afterwards.
So roll on April, when the whole long and short of it shall be published (between hard covers). Join us as battle is joined against That Which Would Overwhelm The Whole Bleedin’ Lot Of Us, as cities burn, as friendships are tested and as London finds its least likely champion in the shape of Paraffin Jack McNab.
And if you happen to bump into him in the meantime, remind him that he owes us a fiver.
V-Cars
Not currently available
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page
Charlotte Corday of the Süreté
• Available to read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
Published in part on the part on the ROK Comics mobile platform in 2008, this story takes place after “Witchcraft Street” and features Charlotte’s father as a ghostly, invisible talking mule, helping her investigate a bizarre time twisting mystery!
Blasted Trubshaw and the Time Before This
Not yet published – completed
By Keith Page
A full length graphic novel that features some of the story themes that also feature in The Fulcanelli Conundrum.
Creator Keith Page tells us the story sees ancient aliens clash with 1950s rocket scientists!
“With the followup to Witchcraft Street I wanted to do something recognisably different whilst featuring some of the main characters in a new way,” he says. “The larger episode size size allowed more space for artwork with grey wash to create atmosphere.
“Much of what you will read is factual blended with a little artistic licence,” he continues. “The idea of a prehistoric technical civilisation goes back to the nineteenth century theosophists like occultist and spirit medium Madame Blavatsky.This theme was revived in the late 1940s with a little-known book entitled The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain closely followed by others sometimes of a more fanciful nature.
“This was Comyns Beaumont‘s third book, The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, dealing with a British and Scandinavian Atlantis which suffered a series of catastrophes from cometary impact, flood and war scattering the British Atlanteans to give rise to the great civilisations of accepted ancient history.
“There is a surprisingly large amount of evidence for some form of prehistoric flight with gigantic sky-visible earthworks, many being discovered only after the [re]invention of the aeroplane.
“These may be found in the British Isles, the Americas and the Pacific islands among others. Also there are worldwide legends of men taking to the skies at an early period.
“The ruins of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey (perhaps the world’s first temple) do indeed date back to 10,000 BC,” Keith continues.
“Many sites around the world show the ability to shape, move and build with enormous pieces of stone.
“There is evidence of ancient machine -tooling of stone in South America and Egyptian artefacts.
“There really are alchemical carvings indicating atomic explosions and radiation poisoning to be found on the facade of Notre Dame de Paris,” he adds.
“I’ve photographed them myself.
“Stargazy on Zummerdown was a strange little BBC gem shown many years ago.It seemed to fit the general theme somehow.
“In the 23rd century, Britain (now called Albion) is made up of two distinct communities – the Aggros (farm workers) and the Toonies (industrial workers). They meet at Zummerdown for the annual midsummer festival of Stargazy.
“Finally, The Time Before This was a little-known novella by Nicholas Monsarrat, published many years ago which featured the apparent discovery of an unrecorded civilisation in Canada.”
Further Reading
• Lost Civilisations of the Andes
A two-part article by David Pratt, published in 2011
• Göbekli Tepe – Probably the First Great Stonework of the Humankind
Göbekli Tepe (“Potbelly Hill”) is an archaeological site in Turkey – approximately 12 km northeast of Urfa (Şanlıurfa), where massive, mostly T-shaped monolithic pillars arranged in circles were discovered by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt in the middle of the 1990s. Some of the stones have been skilfully carved. Many of the reliefs depict various kinds of animals. The oldest of the circles date back to 10 000 – 9000 B.C. There are about 20 of them – as it`s presently known (circa 200 pillars).
Gothick
• Available to read for free on Tapastic
By Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
Charlotte Corday meets Mary Shelley, and takes on the real creator of the monster that inspired Frankenstein…
Wonderbirds
By Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
• Read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
Who are the people behind the mysterious international rescue organisation? Charlotte investigates…
Keith Page has told many a story of Charlotte Corday, his time-hopping, dimension jumping adventurer for several years, but his newspaper-styled tale, “Wonderbirds at Your Service“, is surely one of his best yet.
Running over almost 70 newspaper-format episodes, published free to read on Facebook and Tapas, “Wonderbirds at Your Service” starts, somewhat curiously, with a conversation between Doctor John Dee and William Shakespeare, moving to a rather dark piece on the Thunderbirds theme – with a twist!
Also written on occasion by screenwriter Stephen Walsh and drawn by Keith Page, Charlotte Corday’s many lives include a steampunk space explorer and a French detective of some sort getting involved in all sorts of arcane exploits in 1950′s London which could best be described as “Brighton Rock meets Quatermass and the Pit“.
On occasion, she has been accompanied by a human-sized “Muffin the Mule” entity which had its origins in a strip Keith did for IPC’s Revolver many years ago.
No puppets were harmed in the making of this comic strip
Charlotte Corday – The Fulcanelli Conundrum
• Available to read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
By Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
A multiverse-spanning mystery that may make your head spin… a story that is in part a sequel to “Witchcraft Street” for lead character Charlotte Corday – but at the same time a prequel for a major character she encounters in pre-war Paris.
Shockwave Riders
• Available to read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
By Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
In “Shockwave Riders” Earth is under attack! But from who?
Keith promises a few twists and turns with this one, with plenty of great SF tech, too!
The Wild, Wild East… End
• Available to read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
By Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
London, 1888… and something sinister is stalking the East End! Time-travelling, multiverse-hopping adventuress embroiled in a mystery in Victorian London, and enlists old friend Wild Bill Hickok to investigate…
Race of Giants
• Available to read online on Tapas for free as one of “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday”
By Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman
There are many stories of Charlotte Corday… and here’s a tale by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page that might be one of her strangest yet!
Down by the Riverside
• Available to read online on Tapas for free
A very special photo story starring Charlotte Corday (played by Caroline Panetta), as she reminisces about past adventures and friends, formatted by John Freeman
TEXT STORIES
Charlotte Corday – Warp Wizard
Available to read here on downththetubes
An illustrated story written by Stephen Walsh with art by Keith Page
Scrapbook Finds: Cutty Glyph Column, October 3rd 1959
A strange account of goings on in Soho, as told by Cutty Glyph, discovered by Stehen Walsh, illustrated by Keith Page. Read it here
The Ballad of Jankers Johnston
A space shanty as told by Stephen Walsh, illustrated by Keith Page. Read it here
The Adventures of Charlotte Corday relaunched on Tapas
“The Adventures of Charlotte Corday” feature on the digital comics platform Tapas, consolidating many of the previously-published stories on the platform into one “umbrella” presentation.
It’s hoped this will make it easier for fans of the multiverse-spanning Charlotte Corday created by Keith Page, often aided by Stephen Walsh, to find her continuing adventures on the web comics platform.
Free to read, “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday” presentation on Tapas includes the stories “Charlotte Corday of the Süréte” (following on from “Witchcraft Street“, currently still available to read separately), “Wonderbirds”, (Keith’s inspired Thunderbirdshomage), “The Fulcanelli Conumdrum”, “Shockwave Riders”, “The Wild, Wild… East End“, and the representation of the graphic novel, “London Calling”.
This new strand also features the opening episodes of the latest Charlotte Corday story, “Race of Giants“, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, lettered by John Freeman, which sees the multiverse-spanning adventuress take part in a race across what remains of a Europe ravaged by nine years of World War One on that Earth – followed by alien invasion!
• Check out “The Adventures of Charlotte Corday” for free here on Tapas
Charlotte Corday is © 2023 Stephen Walsh & Keith Page. Please ask for permission before using images and copy posted on this site. Thank you.