The Ultimate Game

  I looked at the bulky A4 folder crammed full of a couple hundred pages and I really considered ditching the whole Ultimate Game.

In case you have never read this blog before or any of the posts pertaining to the Invasion Earth Trilogy or how it all started in 1987 and went through various incarnations until it was pooled together as such.....the first project was known as the Ultimate Game and sadly many of those pages were never used because they would not fit into the Invasion Earth Trilogy but back in the 1980s-1990s the pages did the rounds of Fleetway offices and Gil Page (then Managing Editor) supported the project but wanted to include a few of the old established adventure heroes (which led off on a side route to the Looking Glass project).

I wanted to finally get the Ultimate Game used but these were dated 1986-1995. "I'll just redraw the pages!" my mind said rather enthusiastically while another shouted out "You crazy **** are you ******* insane?!" I'm a Gemini so that's how my mind works. It could be schizophrenia...no. I'm telling myself it isn't that. Maybe.

Before I killed the Black Tower Face Book page some initial redraws were posted there but when I looked at the bulk of pages that were left to redraw I knew two things: the blow bleed at the back of my eyes (a gift from Type II diabetes) and my increasing advanced arthritic hands would never allow it. So throw the project out. "NO! You **** dumb **** -look at the pages!" said my mind....and by now I'm getting a little sick of the constant abuse I get from it.

So I looked at the pages and despite the age there is nothing that wrong with them. A few tweaks here and there but the style was the style of that time and as the action is going back and forth in time and space it works.

Which means some tidying up but the project could still be published this year -I'm thinking October at the moment. Will it look like a couple of artists have worked on the book? No, I think it still clearly shows my art style and at the time the work was meant to be for a colour book so maybe the work will look a lot cleaner!

The book will also fill in some character backgrounds since, let's face it, Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes, The Cross Earths Caper and The Green Skies were crammed full of characters.  The Ultimate Game will also allow the opportunity to show what happened to Marvo and especially The Thinker to have both recovering from...you'll see!

Here is the twist. In all the Black Tower strips since the 1990s it is taken as a given that these events took place. If you can find any of the original Black Tower Adventures (vol, 1) it will be a miracle since even I do not have a full set. But did it all really happen? At oone point heroes found themselves in Iron Age Britain while others were caught up in a "white-out" -an anomaly in time and space. Things then continued as though these events did not take place. No one mentioned them. In the updating "someone" is attempting to mend major disruptions in space-time and things that did happen will now...not happen. 

I know what you are thinking but you can get back to picking your nose in a minute.  It takes the old story but makes changes so the question has to be who is doing this -has the power to do do- and why?

Well, if you are that interested you'll need to wait and find out...maybe I'll give the odd teaser here and there. Who knows?

D-Gruppe: Death Comes From The Hand Of A Friend

On seeing this post over on Comic Bits online Mr Dilworth remarked: "What?"

Ahh, bless him he has a short memory. You see I had everything plotted in my mind and a few notes and discussed them in correspondence with Mr Dilworth as well as Andrew (Fantomex) Hope. Back in 1986!

The original ending I had in mind I had thought about when I created the yteam in the 1960s in Dalborn, Germany.  However, I did not have the skills or knowledge back then to work out how I was going to work it all out.

Later, when I was discussing this with Messrs Dilworth and Hope I had worked it out.  Unfortunately things got in the way as Bastei were bought up by Egmont and the project was cancelled. Task Force Germany was to have appeared and then things developed. 

As it is Task Force Germany did appear over the years and last time it was in The Green Skies. Between that and the earlier The Trial story (Black Tower Super Heroes nos. 3-7) leader of D-Gruppe, Kopfmann and several other members vanished while pursuing a UFO in Return of the God: Twilight of the Super Heroes. That in itself was to have led to D-Gruppe -Lost In Space which I was touting around on the old blog back in...2000 (so I am a little behind in things).

It's all going to be very dramatic and.....will it actually happen though? I have other projects to finish and so I have no fixed date and it just may be that D-Gruppe in space and Days of Darkness combine.  Who knows? Not me!

Tales of Terror III....the one with my friends on the front cover

 

Wanna see the rest?

A4
B&W
62pp
£6.00
https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/tales-of-terror-iii/paperback/product-16qnwmd7.html

Each year Black Tower likes to bring you a little bit of extra horror/ghostly goodness in Tales of Terror. 

In the third volume there are contributions by Ben R. Dilworth -Krakos and Merriwether. While Paul Ashley Brown brings us the tales of The Worlds Best Mom and revisits his fear of trees! 

Darron Northall and Danny Jenkins bring us the horrific tale of Bud and Lou Go To Hell while George McQueens The Bat deals out justice and Art Wetherell's one pager is designed to make men wince! 

And Terry Hooper-Scharf finally includes issue 1 of The Paranormals to make this a true horror/ghost fest book!

Ace Hart the Atomic Man #3

 

20pp
A4
B&W
Text and comic strip
£5.95
https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/ace-hart-no-3-july-2020/paperback/product-669g9z.html


Ace Hart -The Atom Powered Man. One of the UKs first post war super heroes is guided through more action and stories by Ben R Dilworth in this third issue. 

And behind that powerful Atomipower cover you'll find stories including: 

What Is It Good For? 

Stone Cold Killer Box ....

and the story behind the cover -UP Stream!

Ace Hart The Atomic Man #2

 

A4
B&W
20pp
Text and comic strips
£5.95
https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/ace-hart-no-2-june-2020/paperback/product-5667wp.html

Ace Hart -the Atomic Man! One of the UK's first post war sauper heroes is back with his second issue and guided by the creative wizardry of Ben R. Dilworth -all behind the new Atomipower covers!

With titles such as Space Pirates, The Trap, After the Bomb, Unseen and Colonize how can you go wrong? I'm excited and I just edited the book (to be faior I have had a lot of coffee so I could be hyper). 

The British Golden Age of Comics is in safe hands!

Ace Hart -The Atomic Man!

 

A4
B&W
20pp
Text and comic strip
£5.95
https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/ace-hart-no-1-june-2020/paperback/product-mmqe22.html


Ace Hart The Atomic Man -one of Britain's first and greatest super heroes is back in his own limited series created and produced by Ben R. Dilworth.  With an Atomipower cover designed to irradiate your eye-balls

1970, After The Bomb, Arride, 42 and Princess.

All stories complete so if you just want to try one issue you can!

That's Comics!

 Someone asked if they could read The Return of the Gods:Twilight of the Super Heroes , The Cross Earths Caper and The Green Skies seperately or whether they all had to be read together. I thought I had answered that question before but...

The books are designed so that you can read each one (Green Skies is a three parter so you need to read all three) one and they are self contained. Return has a definite "end" so you can read the book and that's it.  The same applies to Cross Earth while The Green Skies ties everything together and is epic in itself.  All three arcs make up a complete saga.

Some comments:

"I read Return of Gods (sic) and at the end I just sat there and aliens invading, the giant robot, gods and all the other stuff had my mind reeling. this is what comics should be like and if this was in a weekly comic I'd be buying it!"

"Read Rturn(sic) and I thought I'd give the Cross Earths a go. You certainly like twisting plots! After Return I understand why the two characters wanted nothing to do with Zom!"

"I've now read The Green Skies. The plot twists and turns and the number of characters almost mess my head up. I think I get why you divided everything up into chapters now.  I can read a chapter, go away and think about it and realise things that I never noticed -I checked and yeah its all there.  Go to the next chapter and the same thing. I would love to see the scripts for this series they must be voluminous!"

Right. Firstly, Return started out as something that would have been in a Fleetway comic -the story I've told before. I'm glad no one has said "its in black and white -why not colour?"  But had Fleetway gone ahead there were two short-listed colourists so you would have gotten  a colour comic. But as an Independent publisher a colour book would be 3-4 times the cover price.

Above: Dean Willets art pencilled and coloured by Hooper for the initial Return that never got to be published. (c) 2021 BTC&C 

Taking Zom from his one off very brief -almost cameo- in a 1940s comic and m,aking him the catalyst for what is going on while appearing to be just a bystander was not intentional. Read the next paragraph. It's only in The Green Skies (if you read it) that you realise Zom was involved more than you might think in Cross Earths and the characters were right to "Beware of Zom!"

Now, scripts. That's how I earned my meagre comics living. Writing for Fleetway, Egmont and Marvel UK.  I only write scripts for other people and those are written starting with a blank sheet of paper and a vague idea in my head. No complicated notes or thumb nails (why bother -just do it). When it comes to Return, Cross Earths or Green Skies there is no script or plot. Well, there were notes for Green Skies (GS) but I basically threw them out rather like I did notes for Return. 

While I was working on GS I stopped as I wanted to check something completely different in the Krakos Sands of Terror book (reference to a god) and on turning a page found Krakos briefly confronting The Many Eyed One -the dark evil...read the book. Anyway, I looked and realised that I could notremember writing or drawing that scene but as I tend to clear any project out of my head once it is done I wasn't too shocked.  However, as often happens, I then found a stack of books toppling and Journey of the ID fell and opened up...and I saw the cameo of The Many Eyed One...I then realised elements from this book were in GS and they all tied in (which is why a redesigned Journey of the ID is included in GS).

Other elements go back to the original Cosmic Fulcrum, Ultimate Game and Invasion Earth 1987 stories.  I have no idea how the mind works these things out and never sit down to think about it -it just happens and that's it. I did try to work it out one day, with the help of someone, and had Part I of GS been scripted there would have been over 300 pages of script with notes to tie this or that in further along. I left it at that because I thought it was pointless but the other person eventually worked out that I would have had some 1000+ pages of script and notes for Parts I-III and my guess is that typing that lot up would have taken years in itself and my slow blled diabetic eyes and arthritic hands would have stopped working by page 200!

To put that number of pages into perspective. In the late 1980s (there is a photo of the scene somewhere) I worked and lived in a two berth caravan. On the desk is an old cast iron typewriter and next to it two reams of recycled copier paper that I typed scripts on. The two reams seen are in fact scripts for 4, 6 and 12 issue series as well as others scripts for publishers. A ream is hidden under thetable and that was full of typeed projects and scripts for radio and other non comic work. So in total about 1,500+ pages. I wore out type writers (I was typing from 0800-0200 hrs at times) which is why I got the cast iron one.  That number of pages is in the medium figure range that was worked out for a GS script. 

As I have a couple thpousand A3 pages of art that are hard to store plus lots of A4 work imagine the problem I'd have with 1,000-1,700 pages of script and storing them! And what purpose wpould that many pages serve other than to be burner fodder?

No script, plot twists and so many characters is the reason why I have someone proof read a book before publishing!

Also I had to design the look of the book -covers etc as well as putting them together and there were some 10 rejected covers for Part I, 3 for Part II and Part III had 6 rejected covers. Taking this all in now it is not surprising that my hand did not want to work for weeks after and that my eye sight became blurry (oddly, my mother always claimed something else would do that to me).

That's comics!