How A Triple-Barrelled Surname Saved The World

Okay, Okay, I Exaggerate
For "The World" read "Belgium and France", and there were a lot more surnames than a single triple-barrelled one.
     "What on earth are you bab - talking about now, Conrad?" I hear you comment.  Don't think I didn't pick up on you being about to say "babbling", either, and there will be payback for that later.

I promise

     Well, as you should already know, your humble scribe has a worryingly obsessive interest in the First Unpleasantness, known by many at the time and after as "The Great War", in which "Great" implies a sense of scale, not - as today - something faintly wonderful.  I am now on the second volume of "The Grenadier Guards in the Great War* 1914 - 1918" and came across an officer with a triple-barrelled surname:  "Blundell-Hollinshead-Blundell", which seems a bit greedy when most of us make do with a single surname.  Of course I had to check and found a few others, to wit:  "Makgill-Crichton-Maitland", "Filmer-Strangways-Rogers" and finally "Montagu-Douglass-Scott".

The Other Ranks at rest

     That's not the only interesting aspect of the Grenadier Guards officers at the time, as the regiment simply burgeoned under the assembled ranks of British aristocracy.  For example:  "Lieutenant Colonel Lord Loch", "Lieutenant the Honourable W. Cecil", "Lieutenant HH Prince Alexander of Battenburg", "Lieutenant Sir G. Duckworth-King (Bart.)", "Captain The Earl Stanhope".  I've just chosen different titles here as frequently there were many Sirs and Honourables in each of the Regiment's battalions.
     Tempting as it might be across the gulf of years, it's also unwise to mock these officers and the men who served under them, as the Guards were an extremely formidable unit; you might be guerillas or a militia or a regular army unit - if you took on the Guards you knew you'd been in a fight and no two ways about it.
     Ironically, for a formation named after grenades, the Grenadiers didn't have proper ones until 1916, which might be called a species of killing joke.
     Okay, after our rather sombre Intro, let the motley begin!

Grenades.  For Grenadiers

"Futureshocks: The History Of 2000 AD"
If you don't know what I'm talking about THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!
     For your information, 2000AD is a comic, begun in 1977, featuring science-fiction stories (almost exclusively).  Conrad was an avid fan and buyer up until Prog 1000, when it lost the plot, and I have copies from 2 - 1,000 and a replica of Number 1, which cost £50 if you could get hold of it, last I checked, which was a few years ago.

2000AD's editor, which might explain a few things
(Johnny Alpha and Rogue Trooper on the wall behind him)

     This documentary had the editing staff, the writers and the artists, all telling the tale of their comic (each with an on-screen credit for a 2000AD story and another one).  Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, John Wagner, Grant Morrison, Dave Bishop, Andy Diggle and a lot more.  I recognised all - and I mean ALL - of the characters in the background, the intros and the cutaways.  

2000AD's most famous son

     The arrival of 2000AD on the British comics scene can be accurately compared to that of the Sex Pistols on the British music scene; they were rebellious, anarchistic and out to change things in a big way.  2000AD, I mean!
     Kevin O'Neill's comic career had begun as what the other artists described as an "Art Bodger"; a minion who used Process White to delete or obscure any artist's signatures, names, in-joke graffiti or anything else that editor's didn't want to be seen in the traditional comics.  His acknowledged guilt at doing this might well have impelled him to come up with the idea of a "Credit Card" for each comic strip in 2000AD, which was simply the names of the writer, artist and letterer.  This was a simple yet revolutionary step as this had NEVER been allowed before, and it instantly changed things for the better.

     Credit Card top left corner
   
(To be continued ...)

 - And For Today's Coincidence -
I was thinking of how to promote this blog post over on Facebook and had a brief image of Noah and Nelly and the Skylark.  "All aboard the Skylark" is part of the theme, I believe, and so I was going to have that as the top line, then the link to Blogger, then underneath I was thinking of adding, as a complete non sequiteur and contrast, " - so we can destroy the Mysterons!"

"No slander this time, eh, Conrad?"

     I tiptoed over to my i-pod to play an album in the "H" section, got "Hit Clubbing 3" and got goosebumps when I saw the third track - "Spectrum Is Green".
     "Spectrum", you see, being the organisation tasked with destroying the Mysterons.

Not Bad For A Stopgap
Since I can't play my episodes of "Person of Interest" on my laptop whilst tapping out comedic genius for BOOJUM! I play them on my main PC.  Because it is not in my nature to sit and vacuously goggle at a screen, I took to annotating my volume of Palazzo and gas warfare in the First Unpleasantness.  Art?

Page 15

     Not bad for a stopgap, as I said.  That's 131 pages into a work only 200 long, so I'll have it all noted thoroughly in short order.
     Conrad: blowing his own shawm.

If only he was Irish, and unclad.
Then he could be Sean, shorn, playing his shawm.

* See?  Told you.