MONSTER Massive Attic
released OUT NOW! Publisher rebellion
Writers alan Moore, John Wagner, alan Grant Artists Heinzl, Jesus redondo
Tune out the hype: this isn’t some long-lost masterwork by the mighty Alan Moore, finally disinterred from the dusty bowels of Scream! comic. In fact the Northampton magus only wrote the opening instalment before Judge Dredd’s Wagner and Grant took charge.
So it’s no proto-Watchmen, then – but it is the last gasp of a peculiarly British strand of comic storytelling, one that piled Dickensian misery on blind ballerinas and one-legged footballers, and wallowed in shadow and insurmountable despair. Inky gothic, let’s call it. Monster positively drips with it.
Moore sets up the mystery: a young boy, a violent father, something awful in a locked attic room. Then we go behind the door: the room holds Uncle Terry, a drooling, pop-eyed Quasimodo with an essentially good heart beneath the boils and the talons. Boy and beast go on the run, corpses and misunderstandings piling up around them as they mix with thugs, flee from cops and, in one gloriously lurid moment, fight a shark. A shark!
Redondo’s art has a macabre charm – it’s almost sticky with darkness, impossible to imagine in colour – and there’s just enough liquorice-black comedy to keep the bleakness at bay. Nick Setchfield
Spanish artist Jesus Redondo was a 2000 AD regular, drawing everything from MACH 1 to Nemesis The Warlock.