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- Play It Again, Sam
Robo-Hunter
- Play it again Sam
by Alan
Grant, John Wagner and Ian Gibson
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What to Expect:
The continuing adventures of Sam Slade (that's S.L.A.Y.E.D to you...) and
his bumbling companions as the Robo-hunter goes up against robo cults, football
teams and a whole nation of wannabe musical stars...
Review by Gavin
Hanly
28th January 06
At heart, Robo-Hunter
is basically a farce. It may well have started out as an action/ adventure series,
but even as things progressed through the very first tale, the classic Verdus,
things start to turn to chaos pretty damned quickly. It's perhaps this element
among many others that makes these early tales of Sam Slade so enjoyable. In this
latest collection of classic Slade tales, this farcical nature of the series is
very much to the fore, with the titular robo-hunter bouncing from one highly unlikely
scheme to the next.
The “Play
it Again, Sam” collection is comprised of 4 tales, the Filby Case, The Killing
of Kidd, Football Crazy and concluding with the main event and “comic opera.”
The tales themselves are of varying quality – but it has to be said, they’re
clearly much better than the more recent Samantha Slade stories running in the
weekly. There is a strong supporting cast, and while Hoagy is as astoundingly
dumb as usual (at least for most of the volume...) stogie himself isn't quite
as idiotic as he has become in the latest tales. However, the adventures of Slade's
grand-daughter are showing certain signs of improvement, and appear to be building
up towards the same kind of set up that Sam has here. Through the simple act of
having a robo-hunter agency, the tales are almost limitless, given that you never
know who's going to walk through the door...
Take The Filby
Case, for instance. This is the tale of Hoagie being used to infiltrate a robo
cult while searching for a missing robot with certain "powers", while
Slade is simultaneously been told to stay on the case by one group and stay away
from it by another. And that's just half of it. The whole thing is a classic farcical
set up – with things gradually going from bad to worse – and helped
none by Hoagy’s extraordinary incompetence. Plus there's a great array of
supporting characters in this story alone, particularly the members of special
branch who's "out of the way, lad" comments and insistence that Sam
stays out of the Filby case are consistently amusing.
This is followed
up by the return of Kidd who, now a popular soap star while still being as obnoxious
as ever, hires Slade to protect him from an ever increasing number of attempts
on his life. Again, this tale ramps up the bizarre nature of Brit Cit, with pretty
much everyone involved having a damned good reason to take out Kidd. Any story
where one of the main characters gives his own mother the body of a monkey because
he's too cheap to get her a proper body transplant has got to be doing something
right.
Things go slightly
off the boil in Football Crazy – namely because of some appalling stereotypes.
Looking at the caricatures of the Japanese spectators is like watching a car crash
unfold in front of you. It’s hard to believe that comics readers ever found
this acceptable, but I can only suppose it was quite a different time 20 years
ago. But still, lines like “That’s a rie, me no confessee!”
followed by Kidd’s “shut it, nip!” and the "blakee Pentax"
refrain can only lead to a wide eyed reaction these days. Some of the other stereotypes
in this section also steer a little close to the mark, but it is saved by the
satirical representation of football. The presence of the three Brian’s
as commentators, and Bev, Kev, Trev, Trev and Trev as the English players certainly
help here. A decent enough tale and one that makes way for the main event.
I can’t remember
if the “comic opera” idea was ever tried before, but it’s thing
of wonder here. In Play it Again Sam, the Prime Minister Iron Aggie declares National
Song Year, encouraging the people to engage in song whenever possible. This is
the cue for a 16 part musical, where each episode has members of the cast breaking
out into song, with the handy note “sung to the tune of…” to
get us into the mood. It’s surprisingly effective from the very start, with
tunes like Whistle While You Work, The Teddy Bear’s Picnic and “Summer
Holiday” all given new lease of life by some fantastic lyrics that always
manage to fit in well with the story. It falls down on occasion – for the
life of me I can’t remember how “Sh-boom” or “Save the
Last Dance for Me” go, and I’ve actively tried to forget “Green
Door” – but that is by far outweighed by the amount of times it works.
Given the number of songs Grant & Wagner tackle for this tale, it’s
an amazing achievement – and that’s combined with decent plotline
for the songs to bounce off of (even if the denouement is a little anti-climactic).
And what about
the art? Well, the first collection, Verdus, which was marred by the terrible
decision to resize the artwork, but this isn’t sullied in that manner. The
reproduction of Gibson’s art is flawless and these tales haven’t looked
this good in decades. This is also among some of Gibson’s best work. In
fact, he particularly excels in the Football Crazy section when given a wide variety
of satirical robots to tackle. His latter day painted style is among the best
in the business,
but it’d be interesting to see him tackle some black & white artwork
again from time to time.
As with many of
the Rebellion collections, it’s sorely missing some extra material –
a short interview with Grant & Wagner to round things up and give some background
would be a fairly straightforward piece to put together – and I'm hoping
we’ll see more of this sort of material in the future.
In the meantime,
this is another classic collection of Robo Hunter thrillpower and comes highly
recommended to anyone wanting to relive some of 2000AD's glory days.
We caught up
with Alan Grant for a few words about Robo-Hunter
What do you
remember of the process of writing the "Comic Opera"?
Virtually nothing.
John Wagner and I used to write so much material, it was hard at the time to keep
it all separate in our minds. Now, years later, everything is a blur.
How did you
come to choose the songs in the story, and how difficult was it to rewrite the
lyrics?
Neither John nor I are very up on song lyrics. We made a long list of songs whose
lyrics we knew at least in part, and took it from there. The list included many
older songs - I guess lyrics stick more easily in the head when you're a kid.
I don't remember
us having much difficulty rewriting lyrics. The only time John and I ever had
difficulty working together was when we weren't doing comedy. When it came to
humour, we were both precisely on the same wavelength.
Were there any
songs you would have likes to include, but didn't?
Probably, but I don't remember what they might have been, and all our notes (if
we bothered making any notes) will have been long since destroyed.
I think John and
I could have made a career in songwriting - of a certain type, anyhow. The kind
of novelty humour hits enjoyed by folk like Benny Hill and the Barron Knights.
What can we expect from the next tale of Samantha Slade?
Good question. Short answer is I don't know, though I'm working on it now. Problem
is I quit smoking 3 weeks ago and my brain hasn't yet re-wired itself to function
without nicotine. I'm a regular poker player, and have a hankering to involve
Samantha and chums with a casino. But who knows, senor..?
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