BARBARIENNE #1 by Martin Lock & Nick Neocleous Harrier Comics had been going for a while, and I was thinking of producing some "one-shot" comics, complete stories in a single issue. And so I came up with the idea of "Barbarienne", since I was fond of the swords & sorcery genre, and we were already publishing REDFOX with some success. The idea was to have two main female characters, and to focus on a mainly female cast as well. Gradually, the adventurer Charol took control - a hero, but one with a past, aggressive yet vulnerable. And along came "Memree" too, a mystery, silent and helpless in this story, but the narrator. A "memree", it seems, is an imaginary companion that a child might have; it was the name chalked up outside the dungeon in which she was chained, so she took it for her name, since she had no memories of her past before Charol opened the cell door and liberated her... Well, I don't want to give the entire plot away, but we find out how our under-clad blonde heroine came to be in that situation, and Charol and Memree between them end up triumphant. But Memree still has no past that she wishes to explore - and it looks as if she has decided that Charol is her future! Nick Neocleous had been a long-time contributor to many British fanzines, and had done some strip work for the 2000AD offices - he was interested in doing some work for Harrier, so he was my first choice as illustrator. This was probably the longest work he had attempted at that time, and I think he did an excellent job - that, and the fact that I felt there were more tales of Charol and Memree to be told, led to this being published as the first issue of an ongoing series. The black & white comics boom was already starting to decline, but sales of the first issue were still pretty respectable, helped no doubt by Nick's eye-catching painted cover. The scanty clothing and bondage elements did attract some controversy at the time - we were rather ahead of the trends, there! For better or for worse, I called the text page "Lettercolle" - but that, at least, was a one time only deal... I have composed a text version of this story, bringing it more into line with the later "Eros" style of sexiness - you can go to its page, sadly unillustrated at the moment, by clicking the button below... |
