This week’s great Internet find…

By John Freeman on March 14, 2007

I just found this on the Internet thing: a ‘lost’ Marvel UK Warheads strip, Loose Cannons, by Dan (Sinister Dexter) Abnett and Mark (Durham Red) Harrison

Edited by Jacqui Papp, the project – guest starring Death’s Head II and Dark Angel – wasn’t one I was involved in, despite being editor of the main Warheads book back in 1993 — I’m pretty sure work had started on it before I left MUK, but I had enough to do on other titles.

Although almost completed — Mark has restored all the pages he painted, lettered some that hadn’t been lettered, including some final roughs on #4 — Loose Cannons was never published because of the MUK Implosion and subsequent buyout by Panini which brought its US format titles for the US market to an end in 1993, after I left the company.

I had thought for years that the strip was probably the most prominent victim of what I’m told was a mass dumping of artwork when MUK/Panini moved to Tunbridge Wells so I’m really pleased to see Mark has recreated it.

Story-wise, its all out action from start to finish and Dan really goes to town on the villainous aspect of the amoral Mys-TECH board members featured: the sinsister cabal that backed the Warheads exploration of the universe(s) through technomagically-created wormholes to who knows where and who knows when. (before you ask, Warheads, developed by Paul Neary, predates the Stargate movie – he in turn was inspired by Frederick Pohl’s Gateway saga).

Mark Harrison’s work is simply terrific – he did several covers for Overkill, the weekly MUK title I edited which had a limited origination budget for new strips in addition to the simultaneous printing of the material being generated for the US format books such as Death’s Head II, Warheads and others.

Included on site are a slew of designs for the book and the whole package leaves me feeling someone, somewhere, should be thinking about putting this out as a collection. Fab stuff.

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.