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Attention all
Time Wardens, it's Starlord's time travel story. Initially set
in the week before the first issue went on sale, Timequake was
one of Starlord's best strips, a fine effort from Jack Adrian
which ran for only thirteen weeks before being shifted
sideways to make room for the inferior Holocaust.
The premise was
that of a time war, waging between various stages of human
civilisation and the evil Droon. Harl Vinda, a time commander
from the 38th century, and his team of time troopers need the
help of tramp steamer captain James Blocker, if they are to
defeat the Droon's latest scheme. Blocker, a thick-headed,
working class bruiser from the same mould as Bill Savage, had
inadvertently aided the Doon in destroying London, New York
and Moscow by taking part in a chain of events that result in
a nuclear conflict. The knock-on effect meant mankind would
never colonise the stars, leaving the Droon as rulers of the
galaxy. Blocker was taken out of London only seconds before
the bombs struck, finding himself at the team's base, hidden
85 million years in the past, in the Cretaceous Era. Vinda
introduced his team, 32nd century princess Suzi Cho, a
shape-shifter, which came in handy in many situations,
Quexalcholmec, Aztec and Spock look-alike, and Marcus Geladius,
a Roman centurion from the 9th century. Each had been brought
in to the time war for their own reasons. Our London boy
obviously had problems taking all this at face value, giving
rise to many complaints that his brain hurt, but eventually
confronted his alternate timeline self and defeated that
particular Droon plot. Ready to give his new allies the bum's
rush, Blocker prepared to go home. The twist in the tail came
when Vinda revealed to Blocker that the extremes of time
travel he had experienced had forever altered the molecular
structure of his body. Blocker would have to remain with the
time team or his body would simply crumble into dust. Vowing
to kill Vinda for withholding this information, Blocker
accepted his situation, and joined the team.
Further adventures included a
future Earth under the Nazis, after Martin Bormann managed to
steal the secrets of time control, and a rather uninspired
Aztec invasion tale which turned Quexalcholmec against his
team-mates. This story was something of a dud, leaving
Timequake on the sidelines as it concludedits run in the
weekly. The strip returned to form in the Summer Special, with
a story about Lenin drawn by John Cooper, and also featured in
the 1980 and 1981 Annuals. There was a very short four issue
stint after the merger with 2000AD, which pit the time team
against Mother Eternal, a renegade time traveller. After
Blocker left her stranded in pre-historic London with no time
apparatus to escape, she swore to return somehow, but like the
strip itself, she never did. Blocker made a cameo appearance
several years later in the "hilarious" Armoured Gideon,
but the time war was a thing of the past. |
