Defoe, Vol. 1: 1666 is trade paper back collection of the comic series of the same name published in the British science fiction anthology 2000 AD. Defoe is written by Pat Mills and has black & white inked artwork by Leigh Gallagher (who contrary to popular belief is a man).

This collection contains the first two series, or ‘books’, of Defoe, being Book 1: ’1666′ (from 2000 AD #1540-1549, 2007), and Book 2: ‘Brethren of the Night’ (from 2000 AD #1589-1598, 2008). Defoe is an ongoing series, and Book 3: ‘Queen of the Zombies’ (#1640-1649, 2009) just wrapped up in the weekly progs about a week ago. The fourth book of the series ‘A Murder of Angels’ is already planned out, and is set for publication in 2010.

The protagonist of this eponymous story is Titus Defoe, a royal approved zombie hunter in an alternative 17th Century London overrun by plagues of zombies after a comet struck London in 1666. Defoe and his companions keep the undead plagues at bay using weapons devised by the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci and Robert Hooke.

Book one: ’1666′ opens with a really nice historical twist. We open in Whitechapel, in the year 1668 and find houses guarded by plague doctors. The assumption being that the inhabitants of the house are under quarantine with the plague. History buffs will of course realise that the Great Plague actually ended in the year 1666, so something is already amiss here. Within the house we find a doomed family, sharing what is to be their last supper. The family begins talking about how quiet the neighbours are, and they suspect that they may have died, or rather joined the Undead, what they refer to as ‘Pretenders‘. As they talk, a widening crack appears in the wall between houses, and suddenly their undead neighbours smash through the wall and begin ripping them to pieces (more astute zombie fans may recognize a reference to the opening scene of George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead here.) The family try to escape but they are turned back by the men in plague masks. Then a man walks down the street carrying a huge scythe and a six barreled shotgun. When he gets to the guards one of them asks him, “How do you do it Mr. Defoe?” To which he stoically replies, “I blow their heads off”, before he enter the abode and begins disposing of its undead inhabitants. This short and brutal introduction tells you all you really need to know about Titus Defoe. He is a Zombie Hunter who takes no pleasure in what he has to do, he is just a simple man doing a necessary but dirty job.

As the series progresses we begin to learn about Defoe’s life before the undead began to rise. During The English Civil War (1641–1651)  he fought as a Roundhead for the Parliamentary forces, seeing action at the battle of Naseby, where his friend Jack received horrific face wounds. A committed Leveller, Defoe and his like-minded friends were betrayed by Cromwell’s Republic after the war and executed or exiled. Disillusioned by Cromwell’s actions, Defoe retired from military life and worked a sedan chair around the streets of London with Jack until he had saved enough money to buy a cottage in Colchester with his young wife, where they soon had several children. However, this life was shattered in 1666 when a meteor passed over the country, starting the Great Fire and raising the dead. Defoe was away at the time, and so was unable to prevent the zombie hordes from consuming his wife and children, a fact for which he has never forgiven himself. Following this, Defoe joined the employ of the lately restored King Chrles as a zombie hunter, dedicated to ending the undead scourge and bringing order back to the streets of London.

In the first issue we are also introduced to an important side character called Fear-The-Lord Jones (which Pat Mills himself tells me is an authentic name.) Fear, a daring reporter for ‘The Weekly Newes’ is looking for an interview with Defoe, trying to find answers behind the current undead uprising. Fear essentially becomes the narrator of the story, as he is continually following Defoe around, and we get lots of text boxes showing his journals. Following Defoe’s first meeting with Fear he gets a  terrible shock when his old friend Jack turns up one night, while Defoe is out slaying zombies. Jack is now undead, and calling himself Jack O’ Bite. Jack is seemingly in possession of all of his previous memories and abilities, and is acting as the lieutenant in the zombie army. It soon becomes apart that there is more going on here than the dead simply rising from their graves, and some marshaling intelligence must be commanding the undead hordes. This intelligence is later revealed to be the severed head of Oliver Cromwell.

Along the way Defoe meets up with fellow zombie hunter, and former infamous hangman, Jack Ketch, and the two get overrun by zombies, and in dire straits when a deux ex machina swoops in from the wings, in the form of a flying machine piloted by Issac Newton and Robert Hooke. It seems that Newton, Hook, Boyle and other Natural Philosophers of the Invisible College, are spearheading the fight against the zombies with new weapons and new technologies, as part of the ongoing angelically inspired Renaissance.

After Cromwell’s head (atop a pike) leads an attack on the King it is down to Defoe and his band of misfits, armed with the Newton’s angelical and alchemical weaponry to defeat the hordes before they take the kingdom. During the conflagration Defoe learns from Jack O’ Bite of a terrible treachery, as he reveals to Titus that is is he who was responsible for the death of his wife and child. Filled with Rage, Defoe means to kill his old friend, but in the heat of the battle Jack escapes, leaving Titus feeling betrayed and defeated.

The first book closes with Defoe being declared Zombie Hunter General of England. but things are far from over, as the truth about the comet that passed over London in 1666 is revealed, and there is talk of new zombies who have special powers. There is also talk in the Invisible College of a woman named La Voisin, the self-styled “The Queen of the Zombies” and her commander, the mysterious Mene Tekel (Aramaic for ‘The Writing n the Wall’.)

Book Two: ‘Brethren of the Night’ opens several months after the battle against Cromwell, and Defoe is now firmly established as Zombie Hunter General. He has  assembled his own team of elite zombie hunters know as The Bretheren of the Night, or unofficially as ‘The Dirty Dozenne’. This team in includes: Titus Defoe;  Jack Ketch, the infamous former hangman; Mungo Gallowgrass, an anatomist and necrophiliac; and many more social outcasts and  misfits

One night, when the Bretheren are out clearing zombie nests they come across Gonoph Bendigo, a dung collector and former bare-knuckle fighter who had tasked his two young apprentices to loot the tunnels below the ruins of any forgotten valuables. The boys wake the sleeping evil in the tunnels and released a horde of fire zombies, who slay both the boys and Bendigo himself.

Meanwhile it is revealed that in between story arcs, Fear-the-Lord Jones had tracked down La Voisin to Ipswich and learned her true identity, only to be confronted and shot by her. Embarking on a frantic ride back to London, a mortally wounded Fear staggered to Whitehall to find his brother If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Wouldst-Be-Damned Jones, an agent in the British Secret Service. Managing to impart his information before he dies, Damned swears to avenge his brother and track down La Voisin.

Unaware of these event, Defoe is asking amongst Bendigo apprentices about a man named ‘Mister Quick’, a mysterious masked figure who stole away young boys that later turn up dead, as hosts to zombie eggs implanted by La Voisin, the second in command of Mene Tekel.

Later on, while closing down an illegal zombie pit fight, Defoe encounters an enigmatic foreign diplomat, Countess Madalena von Konigsberg, or ‘Prussian Blue’, who seems to have some measure of control over the undead. Realising that Defoe is suspicious of her she causes an outbreak of fire zombies, causing the crowd to bolt from the stands. In the confusion she escapes in a waiting carriage. Later, when he meets Damned Jones he comes to realise that Prusian Blue is non other than La Voisin herself. According to Damned, before he died Fear discovered La Voisin’s secret hideout in Ipswitch, which is home to a group of super-powered zombies known as the Diabolonians. Together they vow to avenge Fear’s death.

Pat Mills is no stranger to creating incredibly original concepts for comics, but Defoe is probably his most original stories to date. Steampunk has been quite a popular concept for a while now, as has the zombie craze, but he has managed to bring both of these concepts together into one madcap action romp that is so much more than the sum of its parts. This book is Pat Mills writing at his absolute finest, you can tell that he has a huge affection for this historical period, and is having tons of fun playing around with the period’s eccentricities. Steampunk is incredibly popular right now, but Mills has made a slight change to the normal Steampunk formula, in that this is not set in the Victorian Era, but rather 150 years prior to it. This enable Mills a lot more room to maneuver, because he doesn’t have to worry so much about repeating things that have been covered many times by other writers. Mills has clearly must a huge amount of historical research into this book, and he uses lots of real word references , but manages to mix them in with the more outlandish elements of the story so seamlessly that it is almost flawless. Something I have always loved about Mills’ is the fact that he is not afraid to take risks, and that he able to take an absolutely serious idea and throw in tons of thoroughly bizarre stuff and lots of hilarity, and actually make it all work. Mungo is a great example of this. We have the very hard and stoic Titus Defeo waging a very personal war against the zombie hordes, and Mills chooses to open Book 2 with the rambling journals of a complete madman would is continuously having sex with the zombie corpses. The character is even depicted with a big bulbous head, with huge bulging googly eyes! This is an idea that could have fallen flat on its face in the hands of a lesser writer, but Mills makes it work perfectly.

Before working on Defoe Leigh Gallagher did artwork on a twelve-part Vertigo series called The Witching. After The Witching wrapped up, Gallagher’s work was not to be seen in the industry for a couple of years. Taking some time off to rethink his style, so that it would have something that would make it, in his words, “stand out from the crowd” he sent his samples off to 2000 AD, who had him working on Defoe the very next week. Obviously Tharg (Matt Smith to his friends) saw something special in those samples because Leigh’s artwork is just amazing on this series, and it is the perfect match for Mills’ gruesome script. The art that Leigh uses on the series is very intricate and detailed, and is almost akin to the line art style that was popular in the 17th century, with the biggest difference of course being the use of shading where line art would use just hashing. Leigh also proves his mettle on the title by drawing anything and everything that Mills throws at him, such as 17th Century English architecture, hordes of zombies, steam powered flying contraptions, and all manner of strange alchemical and steam powered weapons, contraptions, and vehicles. Leigh seems to just take it all in his stride, and draws it all with the deft hand of a seasoned pro!

Since the series began Gallagher’s artwork has improved quite markedly, as he has grown as an artist. When he learnt that 2000 AD were going to press with the first collection of Defoe he asked Tharg whether it would be possible for him to go back and do some slight improvements to what he believed were some of the messier parts of his original art. Tharg gave him the green light, and here are some of the results.

So even if you’ve already read the series in single issue format, you’re going to be getting something extra special here in the form of the revised art. That’s not even mentioning the wonderful Pat Mills penned essay ‘The Last Leveller‘, and the fantastic afterword by John Higgins. Then, as if to overload your senses, there is even a nine page gallery of concept sketches by Leigh Gallagher. There’s so much Thrill-power packed into this one volume that you might have to weigh it down to stop the book from bursting open to release all that pulse-pounding energy!

Pat Mills has been involved with 2000 AD since the very beginning, and over the years he have created some of the anthology’s best loved and most popular stories, including the ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, Savage, and many more. Defoe has only run for three books so far, and I would already place it as high a regard as any of Mills’ previous works; and considering this is essentially the true stylistic debut of Leigh Gallagher, his quality of artwork is just astounding. I hope that Defoe carries on for many years, it’s a true 2000 AD classic in the making.

If you would like to Purchase Defoe (and you should), here’s how to order:

In the UK you have quite a few options:

• At your local comic shop
• The Book Depository £7.19
• Forbiddenplanet.co.uk £7.24
• Amazon.co.uk £7.69
• Play.com £8.49
• 2000 AD store £10.99

US/International:

As the book is not yet available to order from Diamond it is not available for preorder from comic shops or from Amazon.com. You’re best best is to order the book from The Book Depository, where it will only cost $16.22 with free worldwide shipping. Which is amazing really!

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