Skreemer is a six-issue comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 limited series

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

, written by Peter Milligan

Peter Milligan

Peter Milligan born in London, a British writer, best known for his comic book, film and television work.-Early career:Milligan started his comic career with short stories for 2000 AD in the early 1980s. By 1986, Milligan had his first ongoing strip in 2000AD called Bad Company, with artists Brett...

 with art by Brett Ewins

Brett Ewins

Brett Ewins is a British comic book artist best known for his work on Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper in the weekly comic book 2000 AD.-Biography:...

 and Steve Dillon

Steve Dillon

Steve Dillon is a British comic book artist, from Luton, Bedfordshire, best known for his work with writer Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and The Punisher.-Biography:...

. The first issue was published by DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 in May 1989.

Plot

The story is set thirty-eight years after the fall. The central character is Veto Skreemer, an imposing giant in an age when giants are near obsolete. His story is narrated by Peter Finnegan as he looks back on both Veto’s life and how it intersects with the lives of the Finnegan family, contrasting the formers’ rise to power with the latter’s struggle to survive.

Inspiration

Brett Ewins, in the foreword to the book, explains that Skreemer has two distinct inspirations—gangster films, specifically Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 Italian epic crime film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime...

and The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday is a British gangster film starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. It was completed in 1979 but, because of release delays, it is generally credited as a 1980 film...

, and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

’s Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

.

Collected editions

The series has been collected into a trade paperback

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

:

• Skreemer (169 pages, 2002, Titan Books
  Titan Books
  Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
  
  , ISBN 1840234857, DC Comics, ISBN 1-56389-925-6)

Awards

• 1989
  1989 in comics
  -Year overall:* "Inferno" company-wide Marvel Comics crossover continues, involving the mutant titles The Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, The New Mutants, and Excalibur, as well as the X-Terminators limited series and various other Marvel titles...
  
  : Won "Favourite Single or Continued Story US" Eagle Award