In case you missed it from the SDCC dust settling, Rebellion has announced a new superhero miniseries for October: Smash!. The US-format, three-issue series will be written by writer/artist Paul Grist (Kane, Jack Staff) joined by top notch artists Anna Morozova, Jimmy Broxton, and Tom Foster, with covers by Andy Clarke.
Smash! will feature a who’s who of vintage British supercharacters for an action-adventure romp – including Jane Bond, The Steel Claw, Robot Archie, The Spider and more. The first issue will release October 25 in the UK and November 29 in the US [Diamond code AUG232169].
The plot synopsis:
“In Victorian London, when the legendary elastic-limbed escapologist Janus Stark traps a demon in a stone idol, hoping to seal away the malevolent monster for all time – yet he has just created a prize too alluring for criminal masterminds to resist!
“Sixty years later, terrifying high-tech thief The Spider organises a heist for his Crime Syndicate to the steal the statuette. But heroes from across the ages unite to confound the king of crime, and prevent him from unleashing the demon hidden inside. Can they succeed and keep the evil of the stone idol contained?
“However, The Steel Claw and Jane Bond are assigned to halt the theft, but they encounter a mysterious stranger who throws both sides’ plans into disarray.”
Paul Grist, who is heading up this new series, said:
“The Spider is, without doubt, my favourite British comic character. There are others that are more famous, more heroic, or just longer running, but it’s the Spider that’s been living rent free in my head since I first came across him in the pages of a ‘Summer Special’ whilst on a caravan holiday with my family many summers ago.
“So to be asked to write a bunch of stories of his battles with his more ‘heroic’ contemparies wasn’t something I was going to turn down! At least I could finally get him to earn his keep!
“The three-issue[s] that make up this series of Smash! give the Spider a chance to cavort across 60 years of British comics history, crossing paths with the Steel Claw, Robot Archie and Adam Eterno, as well as a few surprise ‘guest stars’ along the way. I even get to write a Janus Stark story to kick things off!
“But don’t worry, it doesn’t require the reader to have read years of British comics in order to appreciate it. But I hope that it will give the you, the reader, a flavour of the range, variety and, quite frankly, the sheer bonkersness of British comics over the years!”
Smash! was a British anthology comic that ran from 1966 to 1971 – running 257 weekly issues before being merged with rival comic Valiant. The anthology ran reprints of US superheroes (such as Marvel’s The Hulk and DC’s Batman) alongside British originated material across many genres – including adventure, sports and humour. Smash!, Wham!, Valiant and more had a number of characters of the super-variety that remain fondly remembered years after they ceased publication – and Rebellion is keen to make use of that IP.
Rebellion has previously done a Smash! special which spotlighted The Steel Claw, by Charlie Higson & Charlie Adlard; The Spider by Rob Williams & John McCrea; and others. It was released in 2020. The announcement of the Smash! mini comes hot on the heels of the Garth Ennis-spearheaded Battle Action miniseries, which has been running to some success three issues into its five-issue run (set to conclude in September), and kids humour revival Monster Fun which shifted from a bimonthly to a monthly schedule in June.
Looking forward to this now. The last special didn’t seem particularly invested in the characters, my memory being that the creative teams played a lot of them as jokes rather than trying to set them up as viable concepts, but given what Grist did in Jack Staff, I feel confident that he’ll do them justice.
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