Continuing my read through of the 80s video game tie-in Atari Force, this third issue finally makes us care about the two characters who seem to be the protagonists: Dart and Blackjak. It doesn’t make us give a damn about the hot-headed Tempest, aka Christopher Champion, however, who really does come across as a bit of a dick. He seems like he may well have been considered the lead character at one point, particularly given the fact that his code name ties in with an actual Atari game; yet perhaps the creators realised just how unlikeable he is and gave him more of a supporting role. Elsewher ..read more

The first issue of Atari Force was an incoherent mess, stuffed with too many characters, as well as a lack of exposition and no consistent or compelling world building at all. Does the second issue improve on things? Well, the story itself absolutely does not, no; it still feels like a random mess of different characters who may as well be in completely different stories, or even different universes altogether. In fact, given that there’s talk of the multiverse and different realities in one scene, that could have been a definite possibility. There’s the sense that the creators are trying too ..read more

With my current hyper focus being on Atari, I dug out my old collection of Atari Force comics from the 80s. Not that I had them back then of course; I have the entire run (just 20 issues, plus 1 Special), which I acquired mostly from a local comic shop when they were closing down, for a ridiculously cheap price. And of course, when better to check them out than now, when Atari seem to have finally awoken after years of mismanagement and ridiculous cheapening of their own brand? Atari Force (or perhaps that should be A.T.A.R.I. Force, given that the first word is an acronym) is a very odd comi ..read more

Image Credit: Retroplace Popeye is that rarest of classic cartoons, in that, in pop culture terms, it seems to have completely vanished from mainstream consciousness over the last few generations. The character was created in 1929, appearing in the King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre. Though the comic was already a decade old at that point, Popeye soon became the lead character, and made the jump to animation in 1933. I grew up watching Popeye cartoons from a variety of eras, perhaps most prominently The All-New Popeye Hour, which ran from 1978-1983. We won’t talk about the awful, short ..read more

Image Credit: Mobygames By 1989, the Atari 2600 was looking seriously long in the tooth; even Nintendo’s NES, which dominated US stores and homes, was preparing to welcome it’s successor in the form of the SNES, and Sega’s Master System, which ruled the roost in Europe, had already been superceded by the Mega Drive/Genesis in some territories. Yet there were still millions of Atari consoles in the wild; it stands to reason that even a small percentage of owners of the console weren’t bothered about upgrading to expensive new technology, and instead just wanted the odd game or two to play on th ..read more

Issue number 7 of Quantum sees the bi-monthly Brit sci-fi anthology comic celebrating its first anniversary. Though I’d seen the first issue of Quantum in my local WH Smith when it came out, the 2023 Portsmouth Comic Con was just a few weeks away and I figured it’d be cool to say hello to the publishers, Time Bomb Comics, and pick a copy up in person instead of getting it in-store. Which I did, of course, and I’ve eagerly devoured every issue since, as close to its release day as possible. I’ve even featured in its pages more than once, thanks to those very lovely people at Time Bomb Comics ..read more

Image Credit: Mobygames Happy Alien Day everyone! Yes, it’s that day of the year which coincidentally matches up with the name of the planet in Aliens (at least if you’re using the American method of date notation), LV-426. Any excuse to celebrate the Alien movies though, right? It may surprise you to learn that the very first officially licensed game based on an Alien movie was released all the way back in 1982, on the Atari 2600. It is likely to surprise you even more that this game, which of course is based on a very tense, haunted-house-in-space movie featuring a single, deadly antagonist ..read more

Image Credit: Mobygames It feels weirdly subversive these days to play Mario Bros., a Nintendo game, on Atari hardware. Though most Atari 2600 games don’t have a title screen, Mario Bros. does; this adds to that weird feeling of playing it, as it features the names Atari and Nintendo on the same screen. It’s always been a bit of an oddity, seeing as Nintendo’s 8-bit NES would arrive just a few years later and absolutely dominate the video game landscape in America, following the video game crash that Atari had a big hand in causing. Image Credit: Mobygames For many owners of the Atari 2600, ne ..read more

Image Credit: Image Comics It’s definitely fair to say that the Gillman, the titular Creature From The Black Lagoon himself, is my favourite of the Universal Monsters, hands down. I first became obsessed with the Gillman back in 1993, when a Creature From The Black Lagoon pinball machine was installed in the glorious alley of up to date, exciting new tables at Fun Land, in London’s Trocadero centre. I spent an awful lot of time and money playing that machine, which kickstarted my fascination with the creature. That same year, it was clear that the Gillman was swimming his way back into pop cul ..read more

The universe is dying, and the dwindling populations of the last seven species to still exist are all aboard the Ark-like Terminus, racing through space to avoid the catastrophic ‘Big Rip’. Tensions are high among the different lifeforms aboard the Terminus, however, and things are barely held together by the young idealistic human, President Lamarr. There’s a rumour that supplies are going to run out, and Lamarr has to choose whether or not to send a party out to find more; a decision which is likely to prove fateful, not just for Lamarr herself, but for numerous passengers onboard the Termi ..read more