Webcomic Weekly: ‘Charlotte Corday’ And A Multiversal Madness Awaits

by Richard Bruton

Welcome to Webcomic Weekly, where I show you some of the delights of comics online in their myriad forms. That’s the webcomic bit, the weekly bit sometimes slips just a tad… this week the multiversal, time-traveling exploits of the mysterious Charlotte Corday…

Charlotte Corday is a multiverse-spanning adventuress created and drawn by Keith Page and written by Stephen Walsh. It’s intriguing, fascinating stuff, taking place across multiple publications, both print and digital, that Page and Walsh describe as “Brighton Rock meets Quatermass and the Pit.”

I first came across the world of Charlotte Corday back in 2010 with the graphic novel London Calling, something I described back at the time as “a surreal story of psychic spies chasing vampires in post war 50s London through a filter of The Goons, Monty Python and even, with the off-kilter look at a very familiar time using a host of fantasy and genre ideas,” which should give you some idea of what to expect.

Charlotte Corday – London Calling Promotional Art

Since then, there have been multiple Charlotte Corday adventures, in print and in digital, with the digital adventures taking full advantage of the possibilities of the medium.

Corday is positioned as something of a time-traveling Jerry Cornelius type, multiple versions adrift in time, each iteration not really aware of the others – or possibly not. For example, in London Calling, Charlotte may be an agent of the French Secret Service, or maybe not – the accent does keep slipping and it might all be simply a story spun out whilst Charlotte and her charges are adrift in a flooded London of the future. Conversely, The Iron Moon has Corday in a steampunk Victoriana tale of Dan Dare-ish space exploration where Corday is an officer in Victoria’s Royal Space Navy.

Between them, Walsh and Page spin out things, layering on the weirdness and surreality, in a series of strips that, thanks to Page’s quite lovely artwork has a look and a feel of a very traditional, classic British adventure comic.

The whole of Charlotte Corday is accessible through the website, where you’ll find a list of all of the projects thus far, and there are many of them. But just to give you a taste of what to expect…

London Calling (First published by Timebomb Comics -Available to read for free on the Official Charlotte Corday Facebook Page)

London Calling places a confused Charlotte in 1950s London in which not everything is quite as it should be. During World War Two, the French experimented with giving their troops vampire blood to try to make them impervious to bombs and bullets but post-war this backfired with an outbreak of vampirism in the country. To prevent the vampires taking over Paris the city was taken out of time using captured Nazi technology and now, as it tries to return, it is causing ripples in the fabric of time that are affecting Charlotte Corday in her undercover mission in London.

Squadron of the Screaming Damned

Charlotte Corday is back as the mysterious secret agent whose missions are so top secret even she doesn’t know what they are and opens with a Word War Two German U-boat surfacing in Charlotte’s bathtub.

The Iron Moon

Steampunk-inspired adventure finds Corday in Queen Victoria’s reign, where the British Empire now extends to the surface of Mars. Corday’s part of Victoria’s Royal Space Navy on a crash course to the mysterious Iron Moon.

Buzz-Bomb Follies of 1569

Corday’s back in the time of Elizabeth I, we discover the Queen’s enthusiasm for the Wild West, learn how Charlotte helped to foil the Vampiroid invasion, and how the London Bus Pirates once menaced the streets.

Seven Dials

In which Charlotte plays two roles in the true stories of Spring Heel’d Jack and Alice in Wonderland. And how Charles Dickens was involved in the construction of the first Tube line.

Plunger’s Last Case

In which Charlotte appears somewhat bewildered in the 1970’s. The usual sort of thing, including a secret government plot, a huge floating city and the Great God Fantog. Plunger’s last case is a pretty spectacular one. Based on actual events and inspired by a mixture of A Clockwork Orange, The Quatermass Conclusion and Captain Scarlet.

Starfall on Cydonia

A full colour adventure set in space, crammed with affectionate nods to SF comic heroes such as Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke

Witchcraft Street

Available to read for free on both the Charlotte Corday web site and at Tapas.

Opening before World War Two and featuring a young Charlotte Corday and, later, her older self, this story features Charlotte’s father in more than one guise, and sets out many of the themes seen in longform stories such as Squadron of the Screaming Damned.