Shakara's Marauder Revealed !

If you read the British sci-fi anthology comic 2000AD then you know Shakara, and either love him or hate him. Or it. I love it. The story began in December 2001 with Earth destroyed by inter-galactic slavers on the first page and the last defiant human survivor from the International Space Station casually murdered on the third. After all is already lost a compact warship streaks in from nowhere and disgorges its sole occupant, a spikey bandage and chain wrapped vengeance machine that quickly slaughters all the bad guys in a whirlwind of hyper-violence before leaping back into his beak-nosed Swiss-Army knife spaceship and flying off. This set the pattern for the whole first series, every episode of which would introduce brand new, utterly inhuman bad guys wreaking exultant wholesale evil upon some planet before the arrival of the avenger with a new and interesting way of dealing out righteous death and destruction. There were, of course, no humans and only a few humanoid forms, most of the bad guys and their victims being extremely alien. The strip was drawn in a crisp monochrome of black, white and shades of grey with specific exceptions. The avenger's big, perfectly circular eyes and his personal energy weapons, blades or projectiles, were always solid primary red. For the whole first series the avenger only ever uttered a single word, his victory cry... SHAKARA! After the first series there was nothing more for four years, and we wondered - is that it? The ultimate nihilist comic strip just came and went? But then Shakara returned and the story, and its back-story, slowly developed until the multiverse-shaking conclusion in 2011. Shakara's spaceship was a compact all-purpose fighter capable of sprouting special weapons suitable for any occasion, including multiple prehensile machine cannon, computer hacking tendrils and even a planet-converting world-engine. Although mechanical in appearance it was described as alive and regenerated from total wreckage at least twice, remotely piloted by telepathy. No detail was shown of the inside until the last series when the craft seemed to have shrunk somewhat, but glimpses of an internal arched basket structure looked appropriate for a spaceship solid enough to fly right through another one, and only near the very end did we learn that the "eyes" of the beak-nose opened to allow boarding of penetrated enemy vessels. There seemed to be some kind of a cabin with a single uncomfortable-looking bed plinth below the cockpit, and Doctor Eva Procopio mentioned being held aboard in an isolation chamber. Eva Procopio. Yeah. And of course there had to be an armoury, and somewhere to keep Shakara's neat little flying bike. Such a single-minded, sexy little spaceship was just crying out to be made real with Sketchup. I imagined the unseen parts of Henry Flint's brilliant design trying to remain faithful to his style and the watchword "Spartan". The design changed somewhat between stories so my version is a bit of a mash-up, and works out at 160 feet long. The story was written by Robbie Morrison, illustrated by Henry Flint and lettered by Ellie De Ville and Annie Parkhouse. All are gods before whom I joyously sacrifice the fruits of my labour. Throbbing techno soundtrack "Underpulse" courtesy of The Oracle, 2003.

• #film_animation
• #2000ad
• #shakara
• #marauder
• #spaceship
• #sci_fi
• #robbie_morrison
• #henry_flint