by Gordon Derry
Art by Craig A. Tallillefer.
A cowboy riding through the woods from a farm goes past a no trespassing sign. He loses his horse and finds some kind of box near a swamp. He gets a log cabin as a storm continues. In the box is a diary over 200 years oldñ1668 April 1. It is in French. The man returns to the farm and learns a boy joined a cult when he off at school. When his folks died, he let a cult stay at his home. A cult that calls for a Great Old One to return. Atmospheric and moody western story with some real creeps to it. An HP Lovecraft tribute.
Written and Illustrated by Marty Pahls
STORY: Yue, Alex, Lee, and Simon are called the Littlest Splinters but "don't tell them we called 'em that!" At an enormous estate in Ottawa's exclusive Rockcliff Park section stands Agincourt Preparatory School for Young Gentlemen. Prof. Stringfellow arranges it with Dr. Vokra to bring the four Splinter boys there. Stringfellow feels he remembers Vokra from somewhere. Vokra thinks about Dr. Arkoffññone and the same as Vokra? The four boys are skating, free, wearing what they want, doing what they want. The four find suits and ties in their bedroom. They change into them. Homer, at dinner when the boys are told about the prep school, makes fun of the accents, "It's teddibly English, y'know. Cricket 'n' all that rot." The four arrive in a Rolls Royce. Other boys watch them arrive and hope they brought tapes, comics, and candy. Simon always used a mainframe to do math (on the Naganata). Chen is to translate Omnia Gallia (THE TOMORROW PEOPLEñA MUCH NEEDED HOLDIDAY). One of the boys has to find the bathroomñthe head, the lav, the can. Lee bounces a soccer ball off the head of Corleyña bullyñand beats him down. In the showers, the boys get a different reception. They meet Guppy, Bjorn, Jareth, and the younger, shy Cuffy. Vokra has an electric paddling machine. Alex likes Jareth but makes friends with Cuffy, giving him a candy bar. Alex gets weird feelings, a creepy one when he walked past the headmaster's office. Dr. Vokra is planning on something evil. NOTES: The boys curse and use expressions like "jerkñoff" and criticize the food.
written and illustrated by Marty Pahls
Agincourt School is where Prof. Stringfellow enrolled Simon, Alex, Lee, and Yue. Yue dreamt about shredding the Parliament Buildings. Cuffy mentions Bjorn and Guppy and invited the foursome to eat breakfast with them. Alex's ESP feels the school is creepy. Alex reads a "Decision Your Own Adventure" book. Alex always wins. A Bunny Run of the first year kids goes from gym to the showers. The guys go skateboarding (and mention the new ELFLORD) and run into Corley's gang. Corley tries to skate and crashñfalls. At night, DRAGONRING is being read. Cuffy Cuffington insists on real ghost stories: bloodstains on stairs, hairless things, bottomless pits, secret panels, monsters, bats, murderers, torture chambers, and stolen boys. Vokra watches them on a SpyCam. A boy wearing a Big Rig shirt tells them Cuffy wets the bed every night he tells ghost stories. Yue seems to say Alex is not his best friend anymore. Yue tells Alex that he, Simon, Lee, Bjorn, Guppy, and Jareth are sneaking out to go skating but he doesn't ask Alex. Yue tells the others that Alex didn't want to come. Vokra moves a floor out from under Simon as the boys skate under the school. Simon falls down a hole into fog.
Written and Illustrated by Marty Pahls
A quite surreal story in content and presentation. The boys are hanging around (Alex seems to be playing Hawk Eriksen and Windblade). Someone put a toad in Cuffy's underwear drawer. Alex climbs into the window (someone mentions they thought it was Godzilla). Other kids are playing monopoly. Another thinks about the electric paddling machine Alex escaped from, even though Alex hid out in the woods from Dr. Vokra, who didn't know Alex was gone. Cuffy tells about a tentacled hairless monster in the woods. Vokra uses spycam screens. In the labyrinths, Simon Stringfellow, who he will use to turn into a toad, is attacked by a giant frog. He knocks it down a chasm, skateboarding across a plank first. Simon mentions his father. The boys go swimming. Alex finds that the others boys do not remember Simon. Cuffy will still be Alex's friend even though the Kangaroo Court (of kids) sends him to coventry. A giant toad watches the boys. The captions at the end promise the next installment to be titled TEST TUBE TERRORS.
Written and Illustrated by Marty Pahls
Corley usually tries to copy Alex's quiz answers. Alex feels Simon is trying to contact him. Alex tries to get Yue and Lee to talk to him. Vokra gets interference on a psionic levelñññAlex. Simon is lost in tunnels while the other kids (except for Alex) have forgotten about him). Simon feels someone trying to communicate with him. Simon hears screams of kids and finds a torture dungeon or chamber. A giant frog is going to eat tied up boys. Simon trips over an alarm which sounds just as Vokra is chloroforming and kidnapping Cuffy from the deserted pool area. He plans on the boy's life juices animating his amphibious carnivores. Vokra hides Cuffy in a suit of armor. He uses forget fog to cloud the kids' minds to forget their missing friends.
Simon is chased by giant toads in the underground. Other boys, half naked, await their fate, tied up below as a frog moves to eat some of them. Almost lights out in the East Quad: they hear Cuffy's screams. Alex wakes everyone up. Some boys don't goññthey play chess and piss off or something like it. Yue knocks over the knight and they get Cuffy out. They find computer print outs that Vokra dropped: Simon is to be transmuted into the body of a giant toad. Cuffy fills in the rest of the story. The boys raid the office of Vokra and see Simon on the computer screen. The others start to remember Simon. Ned is one of the boys. One says this is like WEIRD SCIENCE comics. Giant toads drag Simon before Vokra. Vokra tells him, "I am Arkoff!" Vokra wonders what to do with the chained up boysññboiling in oil, the rack, the hot pinchers, food for the giant toads he made giant size. Vokra makes one rag wearing boy bind Simon. In return the boy will not be fed to the toads. The boys find spears and swords in an old storeroom. Yue accidentally set off an alarm as they start the rescue. Arkoff threatens the boys who are free not to cut the other's bonds...one pull of a lever and all will be blown to perdition!
Simon tells Lee they fought Dr. Arkoff with Hotachi before. Lee sort of remembers. Cuffy thinks Arkoff wants to fry kids on a roasting spit. Arkoff makes the free kids go back into chains and wants to slice off young Stringfellow's...Cuffy challenges him. Cuffy threatens to bite off Arkoff's arm (Simon thinks, "He will too! I got marks!"). Arkoff loves to watch flesh drop slowly off young bones. A slave boy helps Arkoff get Alex when the madman threatens to fry him instead of Alex if he doesn't. Arkoff moves to slit Simon's jugular but the other kids attack and rush the cells. Lee frees Simon who starts to remember what happened. Freed kids smash the control room. Alex turns a toad control and the toads shrink back to just small frogsññArkoff lied: they are not kids turned to toads after all...just regular toads turned giant. Arkoff plans on pushing his remaining half naked captive boys down a bottomless pit (really just a thousand foot drop). He uses this to get across a chasm. The boys are freed and Lee fights swords with Arkoff. Arkoff's spectacles fall into the pit. The Agincourt Gang run through the cells, freeing the wasted little victims from devices for torturing flesh, for humiliating, breaking brave young spirits. New friends meet (Ronnie is saved) and old friends rediscovered (Conley finds Arthur). Lee is knocked off the edge but lands behind a rock. Lee, into Karate and soccer, kicks Arkoff's head off. The head rolls away, threatening to return for them and pay with death. Alex laments that Cuffy is now hero worshipping Lee (feeling his muscle) and has forgotten all about his friendship with Alex. Cuffy asks Lee to teach him karate and Lee winks, "Okeh, kid just f'r you!"
Out on his boat on the Amazon, Homer lays on a lounge chair, drinking a bottle of liquor. He likes this: not a care in the world, just hoping his pals in the good ol US of A are doin' ok. He hears noise and gets his semi auto gun out. It is a Brazilian or Amazonian boy, wearing a loin cloth (barely) with a sack, "Homer, Homer. It's me. I back from mission." Homer almost shot him but is happy he got "it." The boy holds up a new bottle of whiskey. Homer say, "Good. Then I don't' have to get up today."
Gen tells the others that Shield is more dangerous than the gangsters. He goes into the basement, ripping the door off and knocking it into and on top of Gen and a bit onto Simonññwho is pulled back a bit by Neji. Shield says, "Añha! I see one of the perps!" Kimmi with a black eye, one eye closed totally, beaten, clothing ripped, drooling, is cornered by Shield but Simon and Neji stop him as he puts his fist in a punch. It hits a pipe and bends it. Water hits Shield in the head. The crooks go up to the roof. Lightning hits Shield as he grabs onto the brothers on the roof. The two brothers seem to turn into skeletons. Shield tells the boys that his sinuses have cleared. Neji rolls his eyes upward. REVIEW: A funny end to a funny story. Glad Kimmi didn't die.