Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man? (2009)

Fastest Man cover image

Current mood: giddy
Current listening: Images Under Construction 3 by Dandylion. Seriously, she's incredible. Try Never Look Down and see if you don't get hooked.

Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man?, written by Dave West, was the first story in Accent UK's Blessed & Cursed series, and told the story of Bobby Doyle, a twentysomething Londoner with the ability to freeze time.  To me it's a very British spin on the idea of the superhero: Bobby Doyle has a superpower, but it's utterly unglamorous. He can't leap tall buildings or hurl a tank at anyone, or cut through metal with his eyes.  When his morning train crashes and the passengers find themselves suddenly removed to a place of safety, it's not because he managed to teleport them there: it's because Bobby froze time, picked up the frozen passengers and carted them bodily to their destination, one by one.  When a lunatic scientist plants a bomb in the basement of a London landmark, Bobby must repeat the trick and evacuate the city.

Needless to say, this takes a while.

Fastest Man, page one

I won't say much more for fear of spoiling the story. Suffice to say, Dave's script is meticulous in exploring Bobby's heartbreaking situation to the very end. Fastest Man won the 2009 Eagle Award for Best Black And White Comic book, which still blows my mind, and I offer a belated thank you to everyone who voted for it.

Visually, the style was dictate by a need to distinguish between Real Time and Doyle Time, in which Bobby is the only person able to move.  I can't say my solution was particularly complex - some of it's in pencil, and some of it's not.  Voila!

(Actually, there was a logic behind this choice: if the world is frozen around you, you get a chance to examine it in more detail, and heavier pencil-shading seemed somehow more "detailed" and less immediate than the bare outlines of ink to me. In retrospect I think I'd have emphasised this more, especially as in some panels the difference is harder to spot. But it won an award, so who cares whether I screwed anything up? I don't. It won an award!)

Bobby discovers the atomic chocolate orange bomb

Below is my favourite page I think - partly because I'm really happy with the shading, and partly because every comic needs a bit of open-heart surgery.

Fastest Man

To read more about Fastest Man and to maybe even buy a copy (available as a download as well as hardcopy!), visit Accent UK's website here.

All text and images copyright © Marleen Lowe / Accent UK Comics - please do not reproduce without permission