Review by Ian Keogh
A subtitle of 60th Anniversary is unfounded optimism for a character barely seen for fifty of them, but the Sludge is a British variation on the mindless muck monsters familiar to American comics readers. Creator E. George Cowan wastes all of three panels explaining how atomic bomb residue from tests at sea combines with undersea volcanic vapours to coalesce into a muddy human form, large enough to clamber onto a passenger liner. Don’t worry readers, it’s completely evacuated in good time with not a single person harmed. When the Sludge arrives in Montreal we learn it can induce violent rages in people who touch it.
Originally intended as two serialised pages per week in 1965, the opening story retains some of its original thrilling premise over forty pages. Cowan rapidly escalates the Sludge’s threat from contact with a reporter to being attacked by fighter planes and consistently shows how something that’s essentially mud isn’t going to be destroyed by conventional methods. A reporter in hat and glasses accompanied by a young photographer is amusingly intended as a homage to Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen.
Artist Bill Lacey has a clean style able to pack a lot into two pages, conveying the action from a distant viewpoint in order to encompass scale. He makes the most of the Canadian scenery and draws some great 1960s cars. Lacey’s painted colour art when the Sludge returns isn’t as attractive as the neat black and white pages, and Cowan’s rather on autopilot with a daft solution.
Cowan was also the longstanding writer of the Robot Archie strip, and returned the Sludge as an antagonist in 1969 during Archie’s time-travelling period. Here Cowan makes great use of the Sludge being able to control people and animals, which has already been established, but also being able to control Robot Archie is very much the convenience. Cowan assumes it’s different readers four years on, so Archie has similar problems to those previously troubling more conventional forces. There’s a good ending to the first part, but the Sludge isn’t easy to kill.
Credited as Ted Kearon on the Robot Archie reprint volume, here it’s the more formal Ernest Kearon illustrating. As seen on the sample page, even when given an image with great possibilities, Kearon doesn’t always make the most of it, and this isn’t the only page featuring problems with scale and perspective. It’s workmanlike art following Lacey’s accomplishments.
While the opening story has a period charm and good art, the remainder is very dated, with Cowan’s dialogue a particular source when more sophisticated personalities are the order of the day.
