Mark Millar born in Coatbridge, Scotland…..
His best known works include: The Authority, Wanted, and Civil War. But everyone had to start somewhere and he started in 2000ad (okay he did a few independent projects before that but this is a 2000ad based column and I focus on that thank you very much.)
He like many writers started out on what are pretty much the tryouts for writing in 2000ad called thargs future shocks. In my opinion the best of his was "Nightmare On Ses*me Street " after this he created silo a short horror series which managed to rip off two different films and yet was still pretty good. He then relented robot hunter but that never really happened in my revised history of 2000ad so we shall skip that.
In 1993, Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith created a controversial eight-week run on 2000 AD called The Summer Offensive. It was during this run that Millar and Morrison wrote their first major story together, the highly controversial strip Big Dave. This story is wrong on so many levels and deserves a column on it alone.
Now we skip to the end of 1993 as we look in on today’s subject. He is the only surviving member of the priest patrol. He is canon fodder!
Our story begins at the end of the story with a scary looking bloke in fetish gear soundly thrashing our hero. We do not know much of what has happened aside from the canons rather cryptic words
After this flash-forward we go back to the beginning as Dr Watson (yes that one) is called in by the police to investigate a gay suicide pact the victims….
Yeah this story is gonna piss off a lot of fans of Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. Which leads into plot hole one. Holmes, Moriarty, Watson, lestrade and Mycroft are all fictional characters how the hell can they be around? This is not meant to be a League of extraordinary gentlemenesque story this is supposed to be set in the future…..
Back to the story and we meet the good canon for the first time and he is just doing his thing…..
The canon getting away from the scene is harassed by the paparazzo and just brushes them aside. He then gets a call from Watson
Part 2 begins with an explanation of what happened. In the glorious far off space year of 2004. Judgement day happened, all the worlds dead risen hoping to be taken to their final reward but it was not to be for god never showed up. Pissed off at this Holmes and Moriarty committed suicide to go to heaven and kill god. This is of course plot hole 2 as no one can truly die in this story and they would certainly not go to heaven if they tanned in their wrists.
Watson is invited back to priest patrol hq and meets the canon and his housekeeper Sadie. It is revealed in a caption that there were once four priests who shocked and horrified at the dead sticking around after the rapture decided to form their own task force. The canon is the only one left the others disappearing after a battle with the anabolic atheists. We find out the whole story of this battle in the sequel.
Another thing explored a bit more in the sequel is the unspoken love between the canon and his housekeeper. Enjoy it folks this is all the character development the good canon gets in this entire story!
The canon decides to go recruit someone who claims to be Mycroft. Err anyone who has read a book can tell you that Mycroft is not a skinny Hannibal lector wannabe!
Part 3 begins with more pipes being laid by Watson who appears to be in purgatory now writing down the events of this story. He explains a bit more about the state of the world after judgement day and how it pissed off Holmes and Moriarty….
The scene changes to Holmes shooting an angel just for laughs and the two explaining their plan. Holmes is badly written in this entire story you got to wonder what he and the other Conan Doyle characters are doing in this story. This isn’t supposed to be some kind of League of extraordinary gentlemen type story. Which makes the appearance of the Conan Doyle characters even more odder….
Meanwhile the canon busts into some kind of weird festistic club. Inside the cellar is a place where Mycroft did research into opening a gate to hell. They walk through the door and end up in hell which is strangely empty….
Part four reveals the reason for that…..
Holmes and Moriarty reach heaven only to find the pearly gates have been broken into and the place itself in a right state of decay. Angels are being tortured by inhuman creatures and it is quite clear that the men who came to kill god are a little bit late to the party.
And who killed god?
Yep its that scary looking bloke in fetish gear from the beginning of the story and he reveals himself as Lucifer himself. And what did he do to the lord?
Phallic imagery overload!
Meanwhile in the abandoned hell the canon finds Judas Iscariot and gets the low-down on what happened.
After this bombshell the canon and his two cannon fodder friends make it to heaven and witness what Lucifer and his chums have done to Holmes and Mycroft
They are then attacked Watson is dragged under by demons, Mycroft is eaten alive by rats and the canon himself loses an arm to the demons.
The next part is one long fight as we go back to the beginning of the story and witness the canon getting his arse kicked by Lucifer.
Just as Lucifer was ready to pluck the canons eyes out a blast of light fries all of Lucifer’s demon army and suddenly Deity ex machina happens as god is revealed to be harder to kill than chuck Norris….
God is rightly pissed off at the cheek of what Lucifer did and he kills the first of the fallen once and for all.
He turns his anger on the canon and threatens to wipe out humanity as a failed experiment but some quick thinking on the part of the canon saves the day!
The epilogue reveals that Watson was brought back alongside some of the greatest minds both alive and dead to work on the riddle asked by the canon. Watson’s job was to catalogue every single soul who has walked on the earth and what we read was one of his journals.
As for the canon…..
Next time dark matters as the canon faces off against evil creatures while a new writer writing the series upsets mark Millar!
