THE GUN - THE ORIGINAL VERSION

Book 4: Hostile Takeover

This story was the last one actually made, because I lost the original Book 4. My mum probably gave it away to my subhuman art teacher without asking me. They where pretending to be psychologists, and wanted to 'understand me', by stealing a load of my drawings. Silence of the Lambs ruined an entire generation of middle-aged women, didn't it? That's not even considering the fact that a lot of the drawings she gave away where actually NOT MINE, but my brother's. Never mind, they're both "the kids", they don't have any identities of their own. When I was given them back by one of the scummy Learning Support scum about 3 years later I just threw them all away, because I was so angry. I wish I had kept them now. I could have made a whole page with the scanned drawings, and some writing about what they imagined I was like by looking at them. Anyway from what I remember of the actual Book 4, it was pretty nonsensical (even more so than usual), and possibly had a load of zombies.

Anyway, onto the actual comic... Being the last one made, the art is hugely improved over number 3, almost on a par with Insanity Please Classic, though I was still drawing people in the "two circle" style at the time. It starts with a cool-looking feet-first motorbike driving round a pretty-looking coastal road, some text explains that, in 2014, "Experiments with seismic shockwaves" where used to create artificial islands by raising the land. In the Gamma Universe (the idea of the Felneyverse shared multiverse was created long after this comic!), 2014 is the year of the great revolution, so this is presumably after the revolution, because the E.U and other such governments the revolution gets rid of would not consider such a cool project.

Actually, after I invented The Gun, Robert, my brother and I (and sometimes Robert, Thomas or Wayne) used to play "The Gun", holding toy guns or sticks and blasting away at hordes of imagined attackers. In these games, islands Alpha, Delta etc represented our gardens, and we travelled between them by helicopter or boat (read: BMX or MTB), they certainly weren't intercontinental distances apart! In some of the rejected and abandoned stories, they were huge places, with deserts, mountain ranges, forests, swamps etc...

The biker, called Rik, is driving his bike round the coast of the island, he goes around a corner and says "Uh, what is-" before being shot, then 'something' flies away. Later an investigation has been set up, Gunn and Jackson are there, wondering what significance four large, flattened rectangles in the road could have. The next day, Gunn is riding along on his bike, the Radar (it has 'hi-tech' Windows icons on it, wow) picks up something that then vanishes, he stops and looks around, when a giant flying 'queen' flies up from under the cliff. It's even bigger than the one in the prequel, the size of a small destroyer, but able to fly! It was also, apparently, flying very low (and silently), which explains how it avoided radar. Quite why they flew it up to the island, just to shoot one guy on the off chance, then fly away again, I don't know.

People lean out the windows and start firing at Gunn, so he gets on his bike and takes off. He starts explaining what he saw on the radio as bullets impact all around him. He rides into a tunnel, running head on into a truck with a missile launcher on it, he lands further down the tunnel and Jackson comes to see him, the Queen fires a rocket and blows up the truck, Gunn optimistically observes "We're dead". Back at the base the Stealth Force aircraft appear on radar now, coming towards the island, the radar shows the big queen still close to the island, while another one flies in formation with some smaller ones, but in 2 frames time both of the big ones are in the formation. A bunch of guys with rocket launchers, two rocket launcher trucks (one big, one small), and a Heavy Tank with rockets on it, are waiting. They fire and the big queens launch Chaff and Flares, this distracts most missiles but some get through, the ones that do all use their computing power to form together and close in on one target.

One of the 'small queens' (they look suspiciously like Star Destroyers, except only about 20m long, and with a multi-rocket pod instead of the bridge module.... because that's exactly what represented them in battles I acted out with toy soldiers!) gets hit and blows into three pieces. The wreckage tumbles into the ocean, with burning crew members falling from it. The other 3 small queens return fire and blow up the large rocket truck, and presumably the small one too. The Heavy Tank gets hit but survives, and is the 'only survivor' of the somewhat one-sided battle. It drives away, then Gunn and Jackson arrive and look at the wreckage.

Further up the road, one of the big queens lands and deploys some "Bi-Fly" mechs. These were ripped-off from a 2000AD strip called Rogue Trooper. Specifically one in which the planet where two armies have been fighting a bitter war for decades gets invaded by "not the Catholic church". The two bitter enemies immediately join forces in order to fight "not the Catholic church", which genocides children and that. Yes, OK Patrick, we know it sucked that your Catholic parents made you go to church and tidy your room. It's really time to let it go, now.

In the Wolf Force command centre, a woman with her ponytail over her shoulder (that feels really annoying in real life) reports on the invasion, a commander says to "Ready the armoured divisions", when she comments they have hardly any. The commander says they do have Steve Gunn, his reputation as a guy who goes off on stupid solo missions and shoots unarmed people in the back must precede him. Back at the road, the Queen is about to take off when the roaming Wolf Force heavy tank arrives and shoots one guy at the back of it. It takes off and they blast it with the cannon, so it has to land again to fix the damage.

Meanwhile The mechs are flying towards the Wolf Force base, saying "Surrender to Stealth Force!" over loudspeakers, and blasting the wooden guard tower. A Tank and Rocket Truck manage to destroy one of them, but the rest start rampaging around the base. Gunn and Jackson are hiding out while one of the mechs walks past them, Gunn reckons his bullets wont harm it, but realises Armour-Piercing might.

In an unusual moment of logic, the armour piercing rounds are held in a separate magazine, rather than just being magically 'made' from previously non armour-piercing ones, like in most stories. Gunn shoots the driver of the mech through the huge window, the control panel has Ford written on the side of it (I think they were in the news for photoshopping a black guy out of a brochure, or something, at the time). The thing powers down and Gunn steals it. Meanwhile another mech blasts the Heavy Tank that's driving around with a laser, but Gunn comes up behind and shoots him with a Grenade.

At the base, seemingly only one enemy mech is left, but it's destroying everything that moves, meanwhile Jackson watches the other big queen land and soldiers start to come out, she Radios this in but gets caught. Gunn arrives at the base and blasts the remaining mech, then says over the loudspeaker that he is on their side, before flying off to rain fire on the Stealth Force soldiers, he blasts a few with lasers and bullets before being shot down. He ejects but gets shrapnel in the leg, in a dead-ringer (with terrible art) for a scene in the Commando comic "Killer in the clouds", with the exception that his wound magically disappears and gives him no pain at all minutes later.

Gunn parachutes amongst his own side and joins the infantry battle, he sets his gun to 'Tracer', which somehow magically converts the otherwise-normal bullets into tracers. Once he lands he hides behind a crate and starts firing with normal shots again, and manages to hit one enemy... but several times! He launches a grenade that takes out at least 6 people and the enemy start retreating, he fires stun gas at a remaining few, knocking two out. Jackson meanwhile is on the enemy Queen, she grabs one guy and kicks another, then gets one of their guns and shoots both. She opens a locker and finds a parachute and a bomb, so adds some C4 to the bomb and jumps out of the queen.

Gunn finds her while she whistles and the enemy queen flies away, then it explodes in the distance. She comments that the rest got away, but she knows where they went, which sets the scene for book 5, even though that was made several years before this one in reality.

Back