Timesmasher was an original strip by Paul Neary and Mick Austin which ran in Marvel UK's Rampage Magazine #40 and #42-44 (issue #41 featured Alan Davis's 'The Crusader' instead). A rather offbeat story, it told of a convicted criminal from a dystopian future flung into the past to die in a booby trapped time capsule, who was knocked off course by a collision with Captain Britain (Brian Braddock) (engineered by Merlyn) and ended up crashing in the Scottish Highlands. The arrival of Time Traveler (whose name was eventually revealed to be 'Ralf') caused two people, elderly stargazer McMurdo and the improbably named Kilgore Slaughter, to be engulfed in a 'reality wave'; McMurdo gained precognitive abilities, while Slaughter was transformed into a creature of near limitless power. After using the abandoned time capsule of Ralf's pursuers to travel to Ralf's home time and destroy his corrupt civilization, Slaughter returned to Scotland in 1982 (where Ralf had found love with McMurdo's daughter, Fiona) and his new adoptive family. We're still waiting to find out what happened next...
Issue #41 also featured an interview with Paul Neary in which he described his future plans for the strip, strongly suggesting that it was originally intended to become a regular feature and that ties to the Captain Britain series would be developed further. Sadly, this never happened.
_001.jpg "Merlyn (Otherworld) 001.jpg (114 KB)")
