Future Schlock: Branded #1 - Millsverse Comics

FUTURE SCHLOCK: BRANDED No. 1, July 2020

Published digitally as a free story for subscribers to the “Spacewarp” newsletter, and masterfully evocating all the atmosphere of “Tharg’s Future Shocks” from the British weekly “2000 A.D.”, Pat Mills’ marvellous script for this six-page periodical undoubtedly must have seemed like manna from heaven for any reader fortunate enough to receive the download. Indeed, just as soon as the alien narrator Schlock politely introduces himself to the audience with the promise of a short tale about Earth 3563, where “their planet is in big trouble”, those bibliophiles who remember the godfather of British comics’ early days creating IPC Magazines’ renowned sci-fi anthology title will immediately be transported back to the late Seventies when a certain alien from the planet Quaxxann was the comic’s extra-terrestrial editor.

Homages aside however, “Future Schlock: Branded” easily stands upon its own merits as a distinctly disturbing vision of the future, where the modern-day obsession of companies to utilise every opportunity possible to market their wares has been taken to the nth degree so that even a pioneering space exploration mission has been funded simply so the manned expedition can be exploited as a huge advertising campaign; ““Mars… Jupiter… Saturn… I’m just watching the worlds go by… Drinking Kalma Kola… Without a care in the Solar System. Wanna stay cool. Too? Drink Kalma Kola.”

This all-too believable concept really makes for an enthralling tale, as the seemingly endless necessity for the spaceship’s sole astronaut Steve to act in front of the computer-controlled camera ‘six times a day’, soon begins to wear a little thin upon the “serious” scientist’s nerves. Mills does a very good job of quickly putting across the frustrated cosmonaut’s inherent desire to genuinely contribute to the enterprise rather than just make television adverts, and like all good authors actually manages to fool the audience into thinking the spaceman has convinced Stella of his need to physically participate in some ship repairs before pulling the rug from beneath the audience’s feet at the shocking conclusion to this yarn.

Ably assisting Pat in this publication’s storytelling is the prodigious artwork of Cliff Cumber, whose detailed pencilling looks very good in just black and white. In fact, a lot of this comic’s emotion, such as Steve’s frenzied rant about eating one too many genetically modified apples and subsequent horror at the computer’s solution to him becoming “the ultimate product placement”, stems from the Englishman’s ability to imbue the increasingly disgruntled rocketeer with some wonderfully dynamic facial expressions.

Story: Pat Mills, Art: Cliff Cumber, and Lettering: Ken Reynolds