Preview: ‘The Sludge’ – More Inspired Lunacy From The Wonderful World Of ’60s Brit Comics

by Richard Bruton

Another Treasury of British Comics colume bringing us a glimpse into the wonderfully weird world of British Comics of the ’60s, where the Sludge wobbles its way across Canada, possessing all it touches…

Oh yes, I’ve said before how strange ’60s Brit comics were, absolutely deranged at times, as likely to feature villains and monsters in their pages as they were heroes.

And so… here we have The Sludge, the product, of course, of nuclear weapons testing – oh so many things those days were – it was “a strange and terrible living jelly-like substance” that came from the seas near Canada. Something to do with the nuke’s radioactive fallout coming into contact with the sulphurous vapours of an undersea volcano, somehow causing a mass of gulf weed to change into a human-shaped mass of stuff that shambles out of the sea.

Ridiculous? Of course. But the ridiculousness is all part of the charm of this one. It’s your classic of its kind really, every couple of pages, a set-up and then action, all leading to the cliffhanger second page end – they did things fast and furious back then, two pages a week, three pages later on, all designed to pack as much in as possible. Each encounter with the Sludge taking over something else, be it ships, cars, trains, whatever is at hand, just pushing things onwards, ever onwards, with the Sludge getting bigger and bigger.

Canadian newspapermen Bill Hanley and Rick Slade are tracking the Sludge’s progress, looking for a way to defeat it, which they eventually do, of course. But even then, a small piece of the Sludge survives, to take on Canada once more in the aptly named second colour tale from the Lion Annual of 1967.

After this, it’s time for more strangeness as the Sludge crops up in Robot Archie, with the metallic hero faces down the muck monster not once but twice.

Like I say, it’s ridiculous, but it’s also a fine example of just how strange Brit comics could be back then, eschewing the superheroics of the American comics and going for something far weirder and off-beat. Add into that the artwork, packed onto the page, yet always moving the story along so well. It’s silly, it’s slight, but it’s actually a lot of fun and a perfect example of why the Treasury of British Comics are doing such great work keeping things like this out there.