Yes! Prog 1935 sees the return of Outlier by Tom Eglington and Karl Richardson. I loved this series when it debuted back in Prog 1874. For those with short memories, There's a recap of this gruesome revenge story after the main article.
The new story takes place six months after the events of the last series as private investigator Carcer awaits trial in a military recovery centre. Carcer is haunted by flashbacks, panic attacks and strange visions following his encounter with the Hurde weapon Caul. The human authorities are desperate to learn the secrets of the Hurde, with Carcer being the only person to have survived multiple encounters with this terrifyingly powerful race...
In Karl's sketch below, we see Carcer's turmoil, and a hint to a deeper link to the Hurde...
Yuck! Somone gobbed on Carcer!
The sketch is fleshed out, with further detail and colour tests added...
Bollocks! Carcer had ran out of his favourite mud pack.
The 2000AD logo is added to play with composition and interactivity with the cover. That's the old logo Karl, get with the program Granddad!
Get your new Carcer string puppet, only from Hurdco!
With composition nailed, Karl begins to digitally paint the cover...
Yeuch! Carcer's finger had gone through the toilet paper AGAIN!
Most of the skin done...
Oh no! Carcer had lost five of his new fake fingernails.
More gruesome details added as he painting progresses...
Ouch! Carcer knew he shouldn't have sat on that thorny patch!
And the finished painting. Poor Carcer, that looks bloody painful!
Ooo-oh, I Hurde it through the gray vine!
And here's how the prog looks on your shelf, terrifying!
Someone has stolen my accordion!
HUGE thanks to Karl for sending the images. I'm a big fan of Karl's artwork and I really hope we see some double page splashes to rival the gobsmacking ones of the last series! Thanks again Karl!
The ominously titled Outlier: Dark Symmetries begins in Prog 1935.
Better Call Caul - Outlier, the Story So Far...
How!
One by one, the crew who served on a scavenger ship called The Outlier were being ripped apart by a killer of impossible strength and cruelty. The ship's captain, Ramona Farson, hires private eye Jared Carcer to track down the killer before she is added to his list of unfortunate victims. Carcer is augmented with optical implants that allow him to see beyond the visible spectrum, a gruesome gift given to him when he and his family were captured and tortured by an alien race known as 'The Hurde' when he was a child.
Carcer discovers that the killer is an ex-crewmember of the Outlier, a lowly cook named Caul. It seems the Outlier ran into a stricken Hurde vessel and ventured aboard to salvage it's valuable cargo. Caul was forced aboard the ship by Farson, who then left him and his girlfriend to die when the Hurde returned to the ship.
Caul was captured and tortured, being forced to watch the girl he loved being slowly ripped apart by the evil Hurde. Caul himself was eviscerated, as the Hurde studied and collected every organ in his body. The Hurde used this knowledge to turn Caul into tan unstoppable hybrid killer, hell bent on revenge...
Newcastle supporters at a Primark sale.
Farson gathers together the remaining crew of the Outlier to lure Caul into a trap. However, we discover that the duplicitous ship's captain is really working for a powerful weapons company called Falcorp, who will pay big bucks to get their hands on Hurde technology.
Alright! Alright! Calm down!
Caul springs the trap, ripping apart the surviving members of Outlier's ill-fated mission. While Caul gets on with his grisly task, Falcorp are studying him, extracting the last few pieces of a mysterious script that will give them the keys to the Hurde's advanced technology. When the final fragments of data were extracted, Falcorp sent a pulse that rendered the killer immobile.
However, it turns out that this was simply a Hurde trap. They never wanted humanity to have access to their script and sent a modified copy of Caul to destroy humanity's knowledge base of the Hurde archives. As Caul explodes, he sends out a pulse that destroys both Farson's base and Falcorp's computers, wiping out mankind's knowledge of the Hurde's secrets.
Carcer manages to escape from Farson's base before it blows but is arrested for helping Falcorp with it's murderous mission. We discover that Caul was simply a cypher, created by the Hurde from their vast archive database. A database that somewhere holds copies of all their victims, including Caul, his girlfriend as well as the members of Carcer's family...
