Firstly, some sad news – it seems comic artist Brett Ewins (Rogue Trooper, Bad Company, Judge Dredd, Deadline etc) has been seriously injured after an incident involving the police.
Reports the Ealing Gazette:
Brett Ewins…received serious head injuries after stabbing a police officer on Saturday morning at his home in Cowper Road. An investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is underway.
Police were called to Cowper Road after receiving calls about a man who had been shouting through the night. Officers arrived to find Mr Ewins holding a knife before they were attacked.
During the ensuing struggle, one of the officers received minor stab wounds and the 56-year-old sustained a head injury. Both were taken to hospital.
The officer was released from hospital but Mr Ewins remains in a serious condition at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. The Met informed the IPCC of the incident immediately…
(Tip o’ the titfer: Tony Ingram on the Comics UK forums.)
For me, Brett Ewins’ style represented a shift away from the more staid, traditional styles I was familiar with in the various UK titles of IPC and DC Thomson, and towards something more exciting, more anarchic, more… Well, just more, really. Plus his propensity for gurt big orthopedic boot treads was as instantly recognisable a trademark as Carlos Ezquerra’s cut-and-and-keep-style serrated outlines: much imitated, rarely bettered.
So regardless of the circumstances, I hope Brett makes a full and speedy recovery.
Of course, one of the big name strips Brett first made an impression on was 2000AD‘s future war story, Rogue Trooper. Whilst recently digging through some old cuttings files (a big hoarder, filer and lister I am, and long has it been that way – only after several years of ‘Mr Trebus’ jibes did I relent and dump the twelve foot high pile of unsorted newspaper clippings that I realised I would never really get through), I discovered some interesting notes I had put together when a wiry youth.
Okay, I was neither a wiry youth, and nor will many people find them interesting, but anyhow, they are notes I made whilst reading through Rogue Trooper stories in my 2000AD collection, including the monthly ‘Best Of’ title, annuals, specials, and Dez Skinn‘s Quality reprints. Essentially it’s a glossary of terms used in the Rogue Trooper universe – military slang, characters, plot points and so on. There’s even a bit on the rebooted Rogue ‘Friday’, which Dave Gibbons and Will Simpson had just made a start on when I originally put together these notes.
I post them up here as low resolution jpegs, and as a hi-res PDF; apologies for my barely legible script. The right-hand column indicates reference points: ‘QC’ = the Quality Comics reprints; ‘WS’ = 2000AD Winter Special; ‘SF’ = 2000AD Sci-Fi Special; numbers in brackets refer to The Best Of 2000AD Monthly appearances. All other references should be from weekly Progs, or clearly marked 2000AD annuals.
Oh, and the image at the top of this post is a scan of a quick doodle I made around the same time, which pulls together some of the great Nort/Souther emblems used in Rogue Trooper.
Bristle's Blog from the BunKRS 