Scarlet Traces
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Scarlet Traces (2002) is a comic book story of the Steampunk genre, written by Ian Edginton and illustrated by D'Israeli. Scarlet Traces is also used as the collective name for the story and its sequel, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game (2006).
Edginton and D'Israeli's 2006 adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is effectively a prequel to Scarlet Traces, as key characters of Scarlet Traces can be glimpsed therein.
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[edit] Setting
Scarlet Traces is based on the premise that Britain was able to develop alien technology, abandoned after the abortive Martian invasion of The War of the Worlds, to establish economic and political dominance over the remainder of the world.
The artwork shows an imposition of futuristic devices on early 20th century society. In the first series, set in 1908, London cabbies and the Household Cavalry have swapped their horses for mechanical devices with spiderlike legs; homes are heated and lit by modified versions of the Martian heat ray; the pigeons of Trafalgar Square are thinned out by miniature Martian war machines. In the sequel, Britain of the late 1930s is recreated along fairly recognisable lines but with an additional layer of alien derived technology and a political agenda that has modern parallels.
[edit] Plot
[edit] Scarlet Traces
The story begins ten years after the abortive Martian invasion of Earth, with bodies turning up in the dark corners of a glittering post-invasion London. Emerging from comfortable retirement in fashionable Bedford Square, Major Robert Autumn DSO and his trusty manservant Colour Sergeant Arthur Currie search for the culprits. Robert Autumn is represented as a classic Victorian hero, honourable, perceptive and brave but out of his depth in a new age of ruthless exploitation personified by the bullish, cynical government official Dr Davenport Spry. The climax is a grim one in which virtue does not triumph.
[edit] Scarlet Traces: The Great Game
Thirty years after the events of Scarlet Traces, the counter-invasion of Mars is going badly. The central character is an aristocratic young photojournalist Charlotte Hemming. She is saved from the thuggish agents of an increasingly repressive British Government by a now elderly Robert Autumn, but he has a dangerous mission for her — she must travel to Mars to unravel dark secrets behind the war.
[edit] Publication history
The original Scarlet Traces was conceived as a partially-animated serial, intended for the now-defunct website Cool Beans World. In an interview for 2000AD Review, Edginton said "The Cool Beans version was to have been like a little movie in many ways. It had music, sound effects, zooms, pans and dissolves. There was even going to be some limited animation of the War Machines. A lot of the work was done and in the can when Cool Beans shut down production..." [1]
The website ceased operation after only a fraction of the serial had been published — estimated by 2000AD Online as "about the first five pages". [2]
"...when Cool Beans folded, we had a comic which was only 75% complete and which was still owned by the defunct publisher... Having retrieved the property, Ian (Edginton) then managed to license our previously-unpublished comic to Rebellion's Judge Dredd Megazine as a reprint — thus giving us the funds to complete the story while retaining ownership." (D'Israeli, from his blog). [3]
D'Israeli reworked Scarlet Traces as a traditional comicbook story. [3] This version was serialised in 2002 in the UK anthology Judge Dredd Megazine issues 4.16, 4.17 and 4.18. In 2003 it was collected in its own 4-issue limited series (with minor revisions) by Dark Horse Comics, and subsequently collected into one volume by Dark Horse Comics in August 2003 (ISBN 1-56971-940-3).
[edit] References
- ^ Hanly, Gavin. 2000AD Review interview with Ian Edginton. Retrieved on March 15, 2007.
- ^ Anon. 2000AD Online Thrill Zone entry for Scarlet Traces. Retrieved on March 15, 2007.
- ^ a b Brooker, Matt "D'Israeli". D'Blog of 'Israeli: I Have Often Walked Down This Street Before. Retrieved on March 15, 2007.
[edit] See also
- Edison's Conquest of Mars, one of the earliest sequels to War of the Worlds
- Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, another unofficial sequel
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, also featuring the Martian invasion
- War of the Worlds: Second Wave, a comic book by Michael Alan Nelson and Chee for Boom! Studios, in which cold-resistant Martians return.
- List of steampunk works
[edit] External links
- 2000 AD profile for Scarlet Traces
- Dark Horse page for the Scarlet Traces book
- Dark Horse page for issue #1 of The Great Game, #2 and #3
