The Making of Sha: The 2000AD connection

Discover another Golden Age of wild science fiction, beautifully illustrated, with new ideas and new characters that should give you the same hit as the original classics.

The cover of the Polish edition of Sha.

If you’re a 2000AD reader, especially from the Golden Age, you will find much to appeal to you in Sha. It’s a chance to discover another Golden Age of wild science fiction, beautifully illustrated in full colour, with new ideas and new characters that should give you the same hit as the original classics. That was certainly my experience when I saw Olivier’s designs.

From Sha Vol 1

I’m going to share the synopsis and some of the pages from each volume with you, starting tomorrow. We’re thinking about running a Kickstarter campaign to publish a deluxe Sha edition in English, and I really want your feedback. More on that tomorrow!

So there’s a futuristic death game in Book Two which we will see next week. If the death game reminds you a little of Aeroball in Harlem Heroes it’s worth noting that Olivier came up with the idea and I know he had never seen those early 2000AD progs. In fact it’s even nastier than my original Harlem Heroes creation and it’s beautifully rendered in full colour, so, for me, it comes close to Rollerball, one of my favourite movies which inspired Death Game 1999 in Action and then Harlem Heroes in 2000AD.

Then there’s Olivier’s idea for President John Smith XXIX, the 29^th clone of the American President who goes around in an armoured suit because the 28 previous clones have been assassinated. I could just imagine someone like that in Judge Dredd!

The Demons of New Eden who control their human puppets have reached the stars and their Space Missionary army has made first contact with an alien world with predictable results.

Yes – you’ve guessed it. Extermination.

Just as Christian missionaries and Knights exterminated so many indigenous peoples on Earth. No apologist will ever rationalise and justify their monstrous crimes and yet they are largely ignored today. I’ve even heard a Christian refer to them as ‘cleansing’. Just like Torquemada does in Nemesis.  Here is the leading warrior theologian in Sha speaking to his troops.

‘Yes, Brothers, we have the responsibility of the sacred quest, to redeem – with the blood of Jesus Christ our saviour – this galaxy destined by its sins to eternal damnation! Amen!’

If that sounds far-fetched, consider my story Slayer in Spacewarp. It notes the real-life Jesuit astronomers who have thrown the indigenous Apache Indians off their sacred mountain and are looking for signs of alien life in the universe. If they find it, their priest leader has declared they would want to send a mission to convert the aliens to Christianity. Truly! He’s on record as saying this, decades after I’d written Sha. It was great in Sha to be able to finally spell out the dubious intentions that I had to skirt around a little in Nemesis with the sermons of Torquemada: Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!

Brief digression: I recently had a ‘meet and greet’ with two top Catholic theologians – a priest and a nun – and I’m leading a forum debate with them on Zoom on Friday  July 12^th. It should be recorded, but it’s possible it may be edited, so live would be best. I want to ask them about Canon Law – the very foundations and ‘engine’ of the Catholic Church, which is where I believe the problem began and remains to this day. I believe this two-hour conversation with myself and other forum members is a media first. It’s a unique event to talk to the Church about its failings in an open public debate with its critics. How often does that happen?! Whatever else, it won’t be boring. I’ll be posting details on my patmills.wordpress.com site later this week.  When you read the third and final part of the Making of Sha you will understand why I am so passionate and believe it’s important to walk my talk. I don’t see any of  my stories, especially Sha as just entertainment, they are driven by real life passions and themes. Otherwise, what the fuck is the point?

Back to the story!

As you will see, Olivier’s space crusaders have much in common with Torquemada’s space knights. But they derive not from my Nemesis story but from Olivier’s fantasy crusaders in his long-running series Chroniques de La Lune Noire (Chronicles of the Black Moon). Check out the cover of Volume One and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

His Chroniques were actually inspired by French Dungeons and Dragons and I believe Olivier was a keen player. They feature vast fantasy armies that table top games would sag under the weight of.  Along with Warhammer 40K, Nemesis and ABC Warriors, Sha and our subsequent series Requiem Vampire Knight are all in the same fantasy genre. So, too, are the stories in Spacewarp, notably Slayer with art by James Newell, and Hellbreaker with art by Ian Ashcroft. Why we are all in our separate creative ghettos and rarely hang out together is a pity when we have so much in common. It would be great if there was a comic convention which emphasised such best-selling heroic fantasies, rather than superheroes. In fact it was when Olivier saw the French edition of Sláine The Horned God that he realised we were kindred spirits and wanted to work with me. You can see some Simon Bisley influences in some of his demons later in the series.

The 2000AD connection continues with the dystopian, Blade Runner inspired retro city of New Eden: a cousin, undoubtedly, to Mega City One. Note the amazing retro-futuristic cop cars and the robots. And finally, my personal favourite: the evil cyborg torturer Iron Lung in Book Two. A classic monster, he is up there with 2000AD classics like John Wagner and Mick McMahon’s  brilliant Heavy Metal Kids: ‘Hello, Fleshy Ones.’  I recently learned the name originated from a William Burroughs story which also inspired the music genre. What a great heritage!

But there is another element to Sha which is central to it, and is as spooky as you can get. Namely witchcraft. More on that next week in part two of The Making of Sha – the Witch Connection.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing the synopsis and pages from Sha Volume 1: The Shadow One and sharing our plans to bring back this series with a deluxe edition, on Kickstarter.

Next week: The making of Sha – the witch connection.