51: Gammarauder Rage

When I started this blog, there were so many titles I was looking forward to re-reading and sinking my literary teeth into. And on the flip side, there's Gammarauders...

In the late 1980's, TSR struck a licensing deal with DC to produce comics based on their table top role playing games. The majority of these were unsurprisingly Dungeons & Dragons based. Gammarauders was the outlier, a tongue in cheek retro-futuristic game where folks talk in hip future jargon and ride giant cyborg battle animals called bioborgs. Imagine Fallout meets Pokémon, if you dare. Tailgunner Jo editor Barbara Kesel was also overseeing the TSR line, so presumably she was the one who offered Peter Gillis this whimsical nonsense.

Gammarauders #1-4 (1989)

Pencils: Martin King, Gordon Purcell
Inks: Dave Cooper

The opening story introduces the main character Jok Tadsworth, a hapless bequiffed wannabe hero with an Elvis fixation and an Aussie accented kangaroo bioborg named Hoag (Paul Hogan reference?). He reminds me of a proto version of Guybrush Threepwood, or Fry from Futurama. The supporting cast are basic Archie archetypes; the femme fatale, the boorish jock, the loquacious nerd, and a jealous rival. Character development isn't required for this level of knockabout licensed fun. The story is semi-incomprehensible, but I'll give it a shot: in this sparsely populated future where the golden age (20th century) is a mashed up long forgotten memory, factions vie for control, fighting each other with ridiculously large talking animal cyborgs. An unexplained force called the Slugnoids are conquering Gammarauders territory. Turns out the Slugnoids are fleeing from a giant plant monster called Rosebud (a second Citizen Kane reference from PBG, plus the plant creature reminds me of the organism from New Defenders). What passes for the story gets wrapped up rather swiftly in this bewildering four parter.

One of the better early pages.

It doesn't help that any potential in these issues is sucked dry by King's basic, awkward and often confusingly laid out cartoony pencils. Purcell's fill in on #4 in contrast is a breath of fresh air. His pencils are unremarkable, but the cast now look more like people rather than Sonic video game characters, and it's easier to follow what's going on. As Gillis succinctly put it:

"The artist (who submitted fabulous samples) submitted actual pages that were far more manga-derived, hyper-stylized, badly laid out and late... I'll just say that if I had been working with the excellent Gordon Purcell on the book from the beginning, we might have actually had a hit."

Gammarauders #5-8 (1989)

Pencils: Martin King, Gordon Purcell
Inks: Dave Cooper, Gordon Purcell

The second story arc focuses on the fallout from the first, with the main guys going freelance and leaving the Gammarauders and Slugnoids to their pointless battles. Jok ends up on a foreshadowed quest to uncover 3 lost relics, starting with a fiery Excalibur. He's aided in his quest by new love interest Allisdau, who seems a better match than his previous object of affection, the disinterested and slightly repulsed Natasha. It's predictably knockabout stuff, that's hard to feign much interest in. My favourite part of these issues (well, possibly the whole of Gammarauders) is Gillis' text piece at the back of #5, 'explaining' how this messed up future world came to be, which begins:

"A long time ago there was the Golden Age. The Golden Age was everything and everything in the Golden Age was golden. There were Golden Age T.V. shows, Golden Age funny-books, Golden Age stars, Golden Age automobile design, Golden Age nuclear reactors, Golden Age foods, and Golden Age appliances. Everyone was happy in the Golden Age because everything was perfect. The Democrats were happy because society was good. The Republicans were happy because capitalism really worked. The Communists were happy because capitalism didn't work. The Commiehunters were happy because Communism didn't work. The big companies were happy because there were big profits in nuclear power. The environmentalists were happy because the big companies were polluting so they had something to protest about. The military men were happy because they had hot and cold wars.

In fact, everyone was happy and everything was perfect. It was so perfect that they blew it all up and ended the Golden Age before anyone had a chance to become unhappy."

Purcell's art is some improvement.

Gammarauders #9-10 (1989)

Pencils: Martin King, Gordon Purcell
Inks: Alan Kupperberg, Gordon Purcell

Peter Gillis was thwarted in his plans a few years prior to make Shatter the US President, and here his similar storyline about Jok taking power is curtailed halfway through this four issue story by abrupt cancellation. Allisdau manipulates Jok into Congress, but a betrayal leads to the apparent (but not really) death of Natasha. A grief stricken Jok goes on a giant kangaroo rampage, attacking friend and foe alike.

New editor Elliot Maggin (who took over from Kesel halfway through the run) handed Gillis two text pages in the back to explain how this four parter should've ended, alongside illustrations from Kupperberg. Essentially, Jok strikes it rich and powerful and lives happily ever after with Allisdau. Or something along those lines.

Gammarauders has the unfortunate distinction of being the only TSR title to get cancelled by DC due to low sales, after a mere ten issues. The rest of the line lasted another couple of years, until TSR began to publish a few of their own comics, at which point DC got shirty and pulled the plug on the whole line.

I was going to review Gammarauders over two posts, but can't muster enough to say about it. Peter Gillis made the best of this double poison chalice of niche licensed oddity and less than complementary art. By all accounts he had a real blast writing it, although he may have been having more fun than some of the readers.

52: Starfox Adventures