COMIC REVIEW - COMBAT COLIN 2!

Title: COMBAT COLIN 2

Format: AMERICAN COMIC SIZED. COLOUR COVERS B/W INTERIORS

Length: 40 pages

Price: £3.50

Publisher: LEW STRINGER COMICS

Creators: PLOTTED, SCRIPTED, PENCILLED, INKED, LETTERED & COLOURED BY LEW STRINGER

Available from: http://lewstringer.com/page7.htm

Review:

Colin and his sidekick (Semi-Automatic Steve) are back for a second issue! This time it’s reprinting many of the half-page comic strips from when ‘Action Force’ (in which the strip started) merged with UK Marvel’s ‘Transformers’ weekly from 1988 and 1989.

Lew manages the reduced size of the strip well by mixing in more simple self-contained stories with longer episodic adventures. I’m always impressed by a creator’s ability to tell stories in very small spaces and some of these strips are only five panels long. But I’m glad to be able to read the strips altogether like this as some are so brief as to not allow you time to blink while reading them!

It is the invention in these strips that makes me smile the most. Colin’s Combat Kilt is a particular stroke of genius, along with such concepts as the Crusher Tank and Propellor Hat!

This issue sees the introduction of some new on-going characters such as Professor Madprof! I’m unsure which university he lectures at (to get his Professorship), but perhaps that will come up in a later strip!

As the strips progress you can see an evolution in Lew’s writing style on Colin’s tales, with an increased use of puns in the final panels of many strips. And anyone who know my own writing will know how much I love this kind of word-play!

I never read these strips at the time as I wasn’t a Transformers fan. However, I later worked in a comic shop and UK’s ‘Transformer’ comic back-issues were a huge seller. There was a larger amount of UK originated material in these Marvel UK comics because the demand for strips for a weekly comic far out-paced the speed with which Marvel USA was producing the source-pages. It was clear that many people had not kept their collections and were now keen to relive their youth by re-buying these issues. So I’m sure that many of you reading this will get a warm glow of nostalgia from rereading these bonkers comic strips.

I’m a little behind with this review as ‘Combat Colin’ 3 has just been released, but copies of issues 1 and 2 are still available. Retired to the Combat Shed and get reading!

John A. Short