FutureQuake 2020 continues the title's tradition of being an absolute belter of an anthology, providing a hundred pages of brain-melting science fiction comics from some of the most talented UK & international creators, for a mere £6.50. Alexi urges you to consider purchasing this fine item.
Valiance, the story he scripted - with art by Sinclair Elliot and letters by Bolt-01 - is a tale of a square-jawed space hero Vincent Valiance (who is perhaps not entirely unlike a certain Dan Dare), reflecting on the discrepancy between his clean-cut adventures as reported in comics, and the rather less clean-cut reality of space diplomacy. It was born out of a fondness for that classic style of space adventure where everything is disconcertingly well-mannered.
Obviously other more substantial comics have addressed that tension (between that vision of the future and a more rough-edged reality), including versions of Dan Dare himself (Alexi has always been fond of the Ennis/Erskine run and wishes it had had longer to develop), however, Alexi hopes his story has something new to say about this topic.
The script, as often seems to be the case with many of Alexi's scripted comics, was somewhat complex in structure - jumping between present and past, and real events and how they were reported in comics - but Sinclair (and Bolt) did a great job making it work.
The anthology is chock-full of other great work, and is available now from the FutureQuake Press web shop.