Preview: ‘Smash!: The Broxteth Devil’ — Classic Brit Hero Weirdos In A Cross Time Heist Romp

A time-spanning super-heist with the finest and strangest classic Brit character? Don’t mind if we do…

Collecting the three issues of Smash! from last year (plus a hell of a lot of back-up strips from the 2020 Smash! Special), The Broxteth Devil has a virtual who’s who of the weird and the wonderful of classic Brit comics, all coming together in a decades-spanning time heist masterminding by The Spider on the page and Paul Grist off it, who knows a thing or two about making this sort of thing work.

In fact, you could argue it’s the second time Grist’s done this in his career. After all, his Jack Staff series from 2000 to 2011 was another collection of great comics featuring plenty of very recognisable comic creations from the past from the UK (and America). It’s just this time he gets to play with the real things. And, oh, as I always do when I mention Grist’s name here, I implore you, go get Jack Staff and his just as good, finest crime comic there’s ever been, Kane.

So yes, you’re in safe hands with the writer for sure, bringing together a great cast of the sorts of quirky and downright bizarre heroes of classic Brit comics across the decades. And to give each time we visit its own distinctive look, four artists all giving their stylistic best to things: Tom Foster, Anna Morozova, Jimmy Broxton, and V.V. Glass.

It all begins in Victorian London with Janus Stark trapping a demon in a stone idol, only to have arch-criminal and the ‘King of Crooks’, The Spider, set his sights on it 60 years later with Jane Bond and The Steel Claw on his trail…

But this heist, as all great comic heists do, goes very wrong, leading to The Spider finding himself in 1985 and at the mercy of the prototype sociopathic AI, Max, when the King of Crooks finds himself on The Thirteenth Floor, complete with Robot Archie and Tina Kelly, daughter of Tim Kelly, of another classically weird Brit series, Kelly’s Eye, looking into things…

And then we get Act III, bang up to date, with a modern-day Spider butting heads with the only ego in comics to match his own, Cursitor Doom. Throw in Adam Eterno and Tina Kelly’s Eye of Zoltec and that long-imprisoned demon finally breaking free of the stone idol for a final showdown that’s every bit as over the top as you’d want…

C’mon, that’s just a hell of a lot of fun right there. It’s just the sort of ridiculous, done for the sheer sake of it sort of high-paced romp of a heist tale that modern comics are way too straight laced and up themselves to even consider.

It could have been just a nostalgia fest, but with Grist writing it, Smash! becomes so much more than that — a hell of a lot of fun, loads of character, dialogue done perfectly to highlight all the wonderful ridiculousness of it all. Yep, all this using those old characters that could only come from Britain, where we preferred our heroes to be as strange as we could imagine them rather than actually heroic and square of jaw like you American readers.

And no ‘hero’ typifies this more than The Spider, always dubious of character at best, an arch-villain with a megalomaniacal streak, an ego without measure, and all the best gadgets you could imagine.

.Smash! is Grist’s love letter to the character, the wonderful connection of all the stages of the tale, and he had this to say about the series and the character…

“The Spider is, without doubt, my favourite British comic character. There are others that are more famous, more heroic, or just longer running, but it’s the Spider that’s been living rent-free in my head since I first came across him in the pages of a ‘Summer Special’ whilst on a caravan holiday with my family many summers ago.

‘So to be asked to write a bunch of stories of his battles with his more ‘heroic’ contemporaries wasn’t something I was going to turn down! At least I could finally get him to earn his keep!

‘But don’t worry, it doesn’t require the reader to have read years of British comics in order to appreciate it. But I hope that it will give you, the reader, a flavour of the range, variety and, quite frankly, the sheer bonkersness of British comics over the years!”

And he’s right about all that. Although it’s never the nostalgia fest it could have been in lesser hands, those who know the characters will love what’s done with them here. And for those of you coming to them afresh: enjoy. This is just the sort of comics experience you don’t get anymore, a super romp, a time heist, a positively heady adventure of heroes of an age gone by — just the sort of thing to really brighten up our today.

Of course, that’s not all, as there’s the entire contents of the Smash! 2020 Special as well. Seven short tales featuring The Spider — a great Rob Williams and John McCrea piece — Thunderbolt the Avenger, Johnny Future, The Steel Claw, Cursitor Doom, Mytek the Mighty, and The House of Dolmann.

.SMASH! THE BROXTETH DEVIL

Main story – The Broxteth Devil – Written by Paul Grist. Art by Tom Foster, Anna Morozova, Jimmy Broxton, and V.V. Glass.

Supplementary material – written by Rob Williams, Helen O’Hara, Anita Break, Charlie Higson, Maura McHugh, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and Simon Furman. Art by John McCrea, Valentina Pinti, Charlie Adlard, Andreas Butzbach, Anand Radhakrishnan, and Chris Weston.

Colours by Mike Spicer, Jim Boswell, Gary Caldwell, and Deeganto Joardar. Letters by Simon Bowland, Osvaldo Sanchez, SG, A Cult, Jim Campbell.

Published by 2000 AD and The Treasury Of British Comics on 11 September 2024

Now, a little preview of it all… with something to tempt you from each stage of things…