Review by Win Wiacek
During the 1980s the creation of the Direct Sales Market redefined the possibilities for comic creators. At the height of the publishing explosion and in response to a wave of upstart innovators, Epic Comics flourished under the watchful, benevolent and exceptionally canny eye of Editor Archie Goodwin.
One of the most significant hits was a winsomely engaging blend of fantasy, criminology and urban myth with a beautifully simple core concept: “Sherlock Holmes from Outer Space”. Even that painfully broad pitch-line does the series it became an unforgivable disservice. The Bozz Chronicles was – and is – so much more. It became one of Epic’s earliest hits and sensations, and the reasons it never continued beyond an initial six issue run had nothing to do with poor sales. The mesmerising mix of Victoriana, super-science and sorcery initiated by David Michelinie and Bret Blevins might even be considered as an early precursor to “steampunk”.
‘The Bozz Chronicles’ opens on Mandy Flynn. She is a fiercely independent young woman plying her trade – described then and now as the World’s Oldest – in the sooty, sordid environs of London in the last quarter of the 19th century. She is bringing her latest “brief acquaintance” to her attic abode when the incipient physical transaction is suddenly curtailed by discovery of a strange-looking foreigner trying to commit suicide in her room. As her toff flees in terror, Mandy tries to talk down the intruder and realises just how strange he truly is: eight feet tall, pale yellow in complexion, with a hairless, pointy head. He is also gentle, exceptionally well-spoken, has a long tail and can fly.
Six months later Mandy and the creature she calls Bozz are doing exceptionally well. He still claims to be from another world and certainly acts like no human she has ever met. He cannot tell lies, communicates with animals, constantly wanders around naked and absorbs like a sponge every scrap of knowledge she can provide for him through books and journals and newspapers.
Bozz misses his home, which is a far-distant world of benevolent intelligences he has no chance of ever returning to: so much so that he was trying to end himself as much through boredom as loneliness. Mandy’s brilliant idea to keep him alive is to engage his prodigious intellect in puzzles, and she sets them up as consulting detectives. The only problem is that when no challenging cases manifest, Bozz’s thoughts instantly return to ending it all.
As engaging and enthusiastic as all episodes are, ‘Were-Town!’ is a stand-out moment, as the ineffably marvellous British veteran John Ridgway illustrates a pithy, punchy deep midwinter tale disclosing a hint of Mandy’s past whilst introducing her reprehensible absentee father Egan Thorpe.
Despite the diligent researches Michelinie and Blevins undertook, the tone often smacks more of Hollywood than Cricklewood. It’s not something non-Brits will even notice, but the differences are there to be seen… and felt. Such is not the case as Ridgway applies his meticulous line and copious pictorial acumen to a genuinely spooky, photographically authentic tale of deranged artists, dastardly squires and infernal paintings coming to unholy life in snow-capped rural wilds of Southeast England.
The Bozz Chronicles is a magnificent, idiosyncratic and impressive, and should have a place at the forefront of fantasy fables.
