45th Anniversary Edition of Be Pure!

Hi everyone,

I’m delighted to tell you about my 45th anniversary special edition of Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000AD & Judge Dredd: The Secret History, and the forthcoming collectors' NFT limited edition.

Five years have gone by since my original book came out for 2000AD’s 40th Birthday and a whole lot has happened since then: some good, some bad and some ugly. I relate these events in a new introduction and an extended extra final chapter, a total of 8,000 words.

Great! So where can I buy it? Well, bear with me for a quick digression: we planned to release the 45th special as a second edition, keeping the original Kindle and paperback first editions available. We were going to set up a pre-order, offering all our loyal readers a discount before it went on sale. But this wasn't possible for technical reasons, and instead we have to replace the original book with the special edition. We don't know if or when Amazon will 'push' the updated copy to existing customer's Kindle device.

Because of all this, to make sure you still can get a cheap copy, we've put the special edition ebook on sale on our Gumroad store, for £2.99.

So back to the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is that I’ve managed to complete my various serials before leaving 2000AD. That is, apart from Flesh, which still requires a final serial. So everything is done and dusted. The good also includes leaving Sláine on a high note, as rendered by Leo Manco’s brilliant interpretation. And Rebellion’s assurance that my stories end with me and won’t be pounced on by hungry hacks eager to make a quick buck and then fuck them up as they’ve fucked up so many great comic stories in the past. So that’s an excellent reason for celebration!

 The bad is the reasons I finally had to throw in the towel and leave 2000AD, joining a long list of writers and artists who loved the comic but reluctantly had to give up on it. I guess I lasted longer than most, because 2000AD was my creation. I believe that out of the original writers and artists, I’m almost the last man standing. I’m not sure the significance of this creative exodus is always understood by some readers or perhaps they imagine that writers and artists are endlessly replaceable, which has always been the publishers’ fantasy. But today, it is just a fantasy. It’s also inexcusable because creators are irreplaceable.

 So the extra chapter explores this bad in some detail. An example is Joe Pineapples by Simon Bisley, joined by Clint Langley. Simon and I started work on it in 2014 and it still ain’t out there in 2022! I figure it could be 2023, but I wouldn’t take a bet with you on it. The reasons for this ludicrous delay go to the heart of the underlying problem – that the creative deals are simply not attractive enough and so Joe Pineapples became a rainy day, bottom drawer story for Simon. Clint took over and exactly the same thing happened. More on this in the special edition’s final chapter.

And finally: the ugly. The search for the hideous in science fiction and fantasy to give the readers the necessary shock hit they signed up for. And no more so than in Defoe, where the zombies have to look utterly foul! And they were indeed fabulously rendered by Stewart Kenneth Moore. But the preparation work took so long, Stewart’s design pages were generally stronger and clearer than the actual strip. Same problem again with time and financial reward.

In Flesh, too, the dinosaurs must look horrific. We came close, but I don’t think they’re grotesque and frightening enough for a finale that readers have waited 45 years for! As evidence, these later Flesh stories have not been collected in a physical edition. But anything that is very popular and is going to make Rebellion serious money is reprinted. So that’s my barometer. I don’t believe in just finishing off the story for the sake of completion and paying the bills. As I’ve said to Clint, I would have to think long and hard whether it’s a shortfall in the story or the art or both, and how it can be rectified in the finale. It would be a huge investment of my time and I don’t know whether 2000AD are interested in making that happen. Currently, I’d say not.

So there’s lots more like this I have to say about 2000AD’s last five years in the 45th anniversary special edition.

Moving on to the collectible NFT (non-fungible token) limited edition: we’re going to mint 45 copies of the book as an NFT. Price £120 each (approx. 11.5 Moonriver cryptocurrency) Each book will actually be a 1/1, as it includes a unique, signed AI-generated piece of art, inspired by one of my stories. The NFT edition also has ‘utilities’ (think of them as extra goodies or benefits), for example each NFT edition holder will also be sent a physical, print edition of their book (delivery date to be confirmed) and it will contain the AI artwork as a bookplate, signed by me. This means that each book will be unique. There will be other utilities, too, such as an ‘ask me anything session’, hosted by Readl, the Web3 publishing platform we are using.

The ethics of NFTs in this context we’ve sorted out to our satisfaction and Lisa goes into comprehensively in Tokens of Esteem. 

Here I want to focus just on the AI illustrations and to show you some examples. Even if you’re not persuaded by NFTs, I think you’ve got to acknowledge that to celebrate a science fiction comic’s 45th birthday it’s appropriate to have 45 images actually drawn by robots! Who’d have thought in 1977 that Tharg’s droids would actually produce fantasy art in 2022 for real!

We used NightCafé Studio, providing descriptives phrases and art styles relevant to each story and in just a matter of seconds we had the results! Scary! I’ve spent today looking at 62 images that Lisa has generated, thinning it down to the 45 best. The first thing we discovered was that AI is crap at designing dinosaurs, so we had to forget Flesh! They were so bad I’m not even going to show you them. And that was with carefully chosen phrases like ‘Science fiction cowboys in a slaughterhouse killing a triceratops.’ AI couldn’t even get a triceratops right! So no danger of AI producing that final Flesh strip!

But when it came to zombies, Wow! AI loves zombies! Maybe because AI is a kind of robot zombie, it feels some kinship for them? Or perhaps AI has been binge-watching the Walking Dead? Anyway, I think some of these zombies are even more horrible than the zombies in Defoe! And when Lisa said ‘In the style of Gustav Doré’, AI totally got it, big time!

Like us, it seems to be a big Gustav Doré fan and it’s captured the style of his engravings perfectly. One AI depiction is like a scene out of Bedlam. Another seems to be an old master painting with zombies. 

And for this nightmare image, Lisa suggested a caption: ‘When you took a wrong turn on the way back to your lodgings.’

Similarly, AI really understood the mood of Sláine The Horned God and Slough Feg. Some of the Feg images are genuinely scary. We didn’t give NightCafe any picture references of Sláine or Feg, only text phrases, but it still produced a strong echo of the comic book characters. And its Fortress of the Ever Living Ones – as a dream-like fantasy castle - was pretty good.

The AI’s robots were also very cool so ABC Warriors and Ro-Busters were sorted. In fact, one of the robots, with no influence or input from us, even looks like a cousin of Ro-Jaws. Perhaps Ro-Jaws is already deservedly notorious?

‘Science fiction Crusaders’ as in Nemesis The Warlock, was a challenge, but we’ve found a couple we liked. But I fear Nemesis and Torquemada were too weird for it! But not The Horned God? Go figure!

And before you ask – no, we didn’t ask AI to be inspired by Bill Savage. Could you imagine what it would do with 1970s’s London, the Volgans and a lorry driver hero with a shotgun?

If you’re a collector and want one of our NFTs, stay tuned, because we’re just finalising the details: Lisa is minting them this week. We’re offering first refusal to everyone who minted one of our POAPs (what’s a POAP? check out Lisa’s NFT post). After that they're open to everyone, and we'll email you again very soon to let you know how you can get your NFT.

And just to say now – you don’t need cryptocurrency to buy it, but you will need to set up a digital wallet. A final important point is that if want to, you’re free to sell your collectible on an NFT marketplace, and I’ll receive a small royalty on that resale. It’s a great feature of NFTs!

You will have access to the NFT book through Readl’s online reader and you’ll be able to download the unique AI art to display however you want. The exclusive chat session will be announced later.

I hope you’ll go for one of them. And special thanks to art droid AI for coming up with so many fantastic and imaginative images! You’ll be pleased to know we did pay him. Okay – his masters!

Exciting times!

Pat