Time is moving at weird rates at the moment (last week feels like it was a year ago while March was yesterday) so October may well seen a little further ahead than you’re currently planning…
But we are happy to give you an early look at the eagerly-anticipated second volume of The Thirteenth Floor, which will be out in time for Hallowe’en.
Privatisation has never been so deadly – the homicidal computer Max returns in a new collection of The Thirteenth Floor, featuring never-before-reprinted classic horror comics!
Max is being packed off to the private sector in the second volume of The Thirteenth Floor – one of the most iconic comics of the 1980s – which will hit shelves and digital devices on 15 October.
Perhaps the most fondly remembered of all the strips to originate in the short-lived British horror weekly Scream!, The Thirteenth Floor was created by John Wagner and Alan Grant, with spookily atmospheric art from José Ortiz.
The series featured Max, an artificial intelligence created to be superintendent of council tower block Maxwell Tower. Max was determined to make sure that all of his tenants were safe and happy – even if it meant murder!
Whether they were loutish hooligans or nosey inspectors, Max would send humans he didn’t like to his thirteenth floor – a kind of nightmarish virtual world where their worst dreams became a fitting punishment, whether it was zombies, giant cockroaches, medieval executioners, or sharks!
But, after being exposed as a homicidal killer, Max the computer has been shut down and removed from Maxwell Tower – but the unscrupulous council has sold the computer to fancy Oxford Street department store, Pringles.
Now, Max has a new hunting ground and a whole host of potential ‘victims’, including shop-lifters, obnoxious customers and even secret agents!
Originally beginning in Scream!, The Thirteenth Floor enjoyed a long run in the relaunched Eagle when the two titles merged in 1985.
While the early episodes in Scream! had acted as a mini-morality plays, as Max’s body count began at rise the strip quickly developed into something more than a ‘monster of the week’ strip. Wagner and Grant, aided by Ortiz’s masterful linework, gleefully tortured authority figures and ne’er-do-wells alike. The shift to the varied environment of a department store gave the creative team’s imaginations free rein to lampoon the latest fads and fashions, while making sure their readers saw every gruesome detail!
This new collection features the stories from Eagle from 20th April 1985 to 22nd January 1986, with additional tales from the Scream! 1982 Holiday Special and the Eagle Holiday Special from 1986, most of which are being reprinted for the first time and have been remastered by Rebellion’s experienced reprographics team to provide maximum scares in time for Hallowe’en!
About Author
