Mary Poppins Gone Wrong: ‘Pandora Perfect’ Gets Her First Collection

Hold on tight to your jewellery folks – Pandora Perfect, criminal mastermind, occasional babysitter, and all-round bad ‘un is out of jail and heading your way in this first collection by Roger Langridge and Brett Parson…

 

Supercalifragilis-Twisted-and-Explosive – that’s the perfect description of Pandora Perfect you’ll find on the back of this first collection of the creation that first appeared in 2000 AD‘s all-ages Regened Progs and then moved into the main Prog.

Mary Poppins gone wrong, a con-artist with a bag of tricks – that’s how Langridge explains Pandora Perfect, and it’s every bit as wonderfully daft as you really want it to be.

And if you’re under the impression that a madcap comedy is a strange fit for 2000 AD, well I think you need to remember that the comic’s always had a history of mixing up all that hard-edged sci-fi with a dash of out-and-out clever/silly comedy, whether that’s DR & Quinch, Hewligan’s Haircut, the more recent Survival Geeks, or even going right back to the very early days and Kevin O’Neill’s Bonjo.

So yes, Pandora absolutely fits in to 2000 AD‘s long history of comedy strips, whether that’s in the regular Prog or the Regened Progs.

 

From the off, it’s a collection packed full of ridiculousness, whether that’s babysitting a couple of errant kids just so she can get the ankle bracelet off before it explodes in the opener, attempting to steal a valuable specimen from an animal collector in ‘Night of the Guffwarbler‘, or the fun of ‘Feed The Bird‘ where they find themselves having to deal with a very big bird indeed after stealing growth pills for poultry.

Those three are all single-parters, but in the middle of the book we have the one longer Pandora Perfect adventure (so far), ‘Mystery Moon‘, where Pandora and GORT, after looting the Imperial Plunder Museum, head to the Moonsausage Factory, where all the meat loves being farmed and the boss happens to be an old friend (of sorts), to buy themselves new identities. But to do this, they’re off on another heist to get hold of the Wonga diamond.

 

Yep, it’s all magnificently madcap stuff, Langridge writing perfect little adventures and Parson capturing it all with expressive cartooning to make every single caper a delight.

It’s lightweight stuff done perfectly well, a great idea given flight by two clever and talented creators, full of ridiculousness and wild flights of fancy. It’s another perfect example of how the whole 2000 AD Regened idea is working, getting excellent creators to create all-ages material that’s smart enough to transcend age, making them equally enjoyable to children and adults alike.

 

PANDORA PERFECT VOLUME 1 – by Roger Langridge and Brett Parson, letters by Simon Bowland

Published by 2000 AD/Rebellion on 23rd March 2023

Originally serialised in 2000 AD Progs 2196, 2233, 2250-2255, 2280

Now, enjoy the practically perfect in every way Pandora Perfect... well, perfect apart from the thievery, the jail-breaking, the jewellery heists, the pickpocketing, the mischief, the breaking and entering, and the general naughtiness that is…