The Bojeffries Saga
Encyclopedia
The Bojeffries Saga is a series of comics stories written by Alan Moore
and drawn by Steve Parkhouse
which have been published by a number of different companies since their debut in 1983
in the UK comics anthology Warrior.
Described as a "soap opera of the paranormal" it features an eccentric English family of werewolves, vampires and monsters in various peculiar tales.
anthology Warrior #12 (Aug, 1983), with three further stories appearing in Warrior to July 1984. A fifth story was published in the eighth issue of the Fantagraphics publication Dalgoda (Apr 1986), and the four Quality issues were "reprinted, coloured and reformatted," for Flesh and Bones #1-4 from Upshot Graphics.
Between May 1989 and April 1990, a further four tales were published by Atomeka Press
as part of its all-star anthology
title A1 issues #1-4, with a fifth appearing in the A1 True Life Bikini Confidential (Feb 1991). In 1992, Tundra Press (the company set up by Kevin Eastman
with profits from his co-creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
) reprinted the ten Bojeffries stories together with an introduction from Lenny Henry
and four new illustration-stories: three cut-outs and a recipe.
In 2004, the prologue created for Dalgoda #8 and the first two-part story from Warrior (reformatted for Flesh and Bones) were reprinted in the A1: Big Issue Zero as a reminder of the A1 style, before the then-upcoming 2005 relaunch. The relaunch stuttered, however, and the new ongoing A1 series never appeared. It had been intended for the reprinted stories to form the foundation for the A1: Bojeffries Terror Tomes an all-new three-issue series, with each issue focusing on a different member of the family, starting with Festus. Although previews of the finished stories were made available in February 2005, with an anticipated launch in April, no new titles were published.
In 2004 Parkhouse suggested there would be no more stories, however A1-editor Dave Elliott and Gary Spencer Millidge
(editor of Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman
) have both suggested there will be more stories while long-time Moore-collaborator, Kevin O'Neill
said, in September 2008, that Moore was taking breaks from working with him on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century to finish the finale of the Bojeffries Saga, which was for the new collection from Top Shelf
.
and high-profile comics-fan Lenny Henry
(who wrote the introduction to the 1992 Tundra Press collection) described the series as "weird," recalling that the series' arrival in Warrior was "a breath of fresh air, bringing an anarchy and weirdness to comics similar to the kick up the arse that The Young Ones
brought to television. It was different. Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse had created a group of people you wouldn't want to be in the same universe as - let alone the same room..."
The Independent
described the series as "The Munsters
written by Alan Bennett
high on episodes of Coronation Street
, all beautifully rendered in a style equal parts Robert Crumb
and the Bash Street Kids
' Leo Baxendale
."
In a 2004 interview Parkhouse said that the story was not influenced by Charles Addams
, but drew more on his time in South London as a child. He "wanted it to be uniquely British and reflect life as I saw it." Lenny Henry noted "Lord Snooty
this wasn't," launching alongside "'Miracle Man
', 'V for Vendetta
', 'Shandor', 'Laser Eraser and Pressbutton' and... Zirk" in the ubiqitous UK comics publication Warrior. The British-ness of the strip was underlined by its setting - a council house
in Northampton - as well as its initial storyline (dealing with rent collection) and the new material created for the Tundra Complete Bojeffries Saga in the British Annual tradition. (A trope which Moore would return to some ten years later in his and Kevin O'Neill
's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
collections.)
Illustrations created for the Complete Bojeffries Saga TPB:
, The Complete Bojeffries Saga (ISBN 1879450658), in 1992.
A new collection was created by Top Shelf Productions
(ISBN 978-1-60309-063-6) including a new story:
for The Complete Bojeffries Saga
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and drawn by Steve Parkhouse
Steve Parkhouse
Steve Parkhouse is a writer, artist and letterer who has worked for many British comics, especially 2000 AD and Doctor Who Magazine.-Biography:...
which have been published by a number of different companies since their debut in 1983
1983 in comics
-Events and publications:* Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird found Northampton, Massachusetts-based Mirage Studios.* Chicago-based First Comics makes a strong entree into the publishing field, putting out four ongoing titles, American Flagg!, E-Man, Jon Sable Freelance, and Warp!; featuring the talents...
in the UK comics anthology Warrior.
Described as a "soap opera of the paranormal" it features an eccentric English family of werewolves, vampires and monsters in various peculiar tales.
Publication history
The first Bojeffries tale - "The Rentman Cometh" - appeared in black and white form in the British Quality CommunicationsQuality Communications
Quality Communications is a British publishing company founded by Dez Skinn in 1982. Quality was initially formed to publish the award-winning monthly comics anthology Warrior. The company has been involved with comics in both the UK and the U.S., mainly with reprint material from Warrior and...
anthology Warrior #12 (Aug, 1983), with three further stories appearing in Warrior to July 1984. A fifth story was published in the eighth issue of the Fantagraphics publication Dalgoda (Apr 1986), and the four Quality issues were "reprinted, coloured and reformatted," for Flesh and Bones #1-4 from Upshot Graphics.
Between May 1989 and April 1990, a further four tales were published by Atomeka Press
Atomeka Press
Atomeka Press was a British publisher of comic books set up in 1988 by Dave Elliott and Garry Leach. Atomeka ceased publishing in 1997 and was then revived in 2004, but its future seems uncertain, as it has not published any new material since 2005.-History:...
as part of its all-star anthology
Comics anthology
Comics anthologies collect works in the medium of comics that are too short for standalone publication.- U.S. :- UK :British comics have a long tradition publishing comics anthologies, often weekly...
title A1 issues #1-4, with a fifth appearing in the A1 True Life Bikini Confidential (Feb 1991). In 1992, Tundra Press (the company set up by Kevin Eastman
Kevin Eastman
Kevin Brooks Eastman is an American comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman is also the current owner, editor and publisher of the magazine Heavy Metal.-Early life:Eastman was born on May 30, 1962 in Springvale, Maine...
with profits from his co-creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists...
) reprinted the ten Bojeffries stories together with an introduction from Lenny Henry
Lenny Henry
Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.- Early life :...
and four new illustration-stories: three cut-outs and a recipe.
In 2004, the prologue created for Dalgoda #8 and the first two-part story from Warrior (reformatted for Flesh and Bones) were reprinted in the A1: Big Issue Zero as a reminder of the A1 style, before the then-upcoming 2005 relaunch. The relaunch stuttered, however, and the new ongoing A1 series never appeared. It had been intended for the reprinted stories to form the foundation for the A1: Bojeffries Terror Tomes an all-new three-issue series, with each issue focusing on a different member of the family, starting with Festus. Although previews of the finished stories were made available in February 2005, with an anticipated launch in April, no new titles were published.
In 2004 Parkhouse suggested there would be no more stories, however A1-editor Dave Elliott and Gary Spencer Millidge
Gary Spencer Millidge
Gary Spencer Millidge is a British comic book creator best known for his series Strangehaven. He has also written and contributed to books about comics.-Biography:...
(editor of Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman
Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman
Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman is a tribute to comics creator Alan Moore edited by Gary Spencer Millidge and Smoky Man and published by Abiogenesis Press in May 2003...
) have both suggested there will be more stories while long-time Moore-collaborator, Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
said, in September 2008, that Moore was taking breaks from working with him on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century to finish the finale of the Bojeffries Saga, which was for the new collection from Top Shelf
Top Shelf Productions
Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
.
Influences and reception
ComedianComedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
and high-profile comics-fan Lenny Henry
Lenny Henry
Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.- Early life :...
(who wrote the introduction to the 1992 Tundra Press collection) described the series as "weird," recalling that the series' arrival in Warrior was "a breath of fresh air, bringing an anarchy and weirdness to comics similar to the kick up the arse that The Young Ones
The Young Ones (TV series)
The Young Ones is a British sitcom, first broadcast in 1982, which ran for two series on BBC2. Its anarchic, offbeat humour helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers...
brought to television. It was different. Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse had created a group of people you wouldn't want to be in the same universe as - let alone the same room..."
The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
described the series as "The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...
written by Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
high on episodes of Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
, all beautifully rendered in a style equal parts Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
and the Bash Street Kids
The Bash Street Kids
The Bash Street Kids is an ongoing comic strip featuring in the British comic The Beano. The strip was created by Leo Baxendale under the title When the Bell Rings, and first appeared in The Beano in issue 604, dated 13 February 1954. It became The Bash Street Kids in 1956 and since then, it has...
' Leo Baxendale
Leo Baxendale
Leo Baxendale is a British cartoonist, who was the creator of the classic Beano strips Little Plum , Minnie the Minx , The Bash Street Kids and The Three Bears .Leo Baxendale was at the end of his National Service days in the RAF, when he decided he...
."
In a 2004 interview Parkhouse said that the story was not influenced by Charles Addams
Charles Addams
Charles "Chas" Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
, but drew more on his time in South London as a child. He "wanted it to be uniquely British and reflect life as I saw it." Lenny Henry noted "Lord Snooty
Lord Snooty
Lord Snooty was a fictional character in a comic strip in the UK comic The Beano, first appearing in issue 1, dated 30 July 1938, and was the longest running strip in the comic until Dennis the Menace and Gnasher overtook it...
this wasn't," launching alongside "'Miracle Man
Marvelman
Marvelman, also known as Miracleman for trademark reasons in his American reprints and story continuation, is a fictional comic book superhero created in 1954 by writer-artist Mick Anglo for publisher L. Miller & Son. Originally intended as a United Kingdom home-grown substitute for the American...
', 'V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...
', 'Shandor', 'Laser Eraser and Pressbutton' and... Zirk" in the ubiqitous UK comics publication Warrior. The British-ness of the strip was underlined by its setting - a council house
Council house
A council house, otherwise known as a local authority house, is a form of public or social housing. The term is used primarily in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at...
in Northampton - as well as its initial storyline (dealing with rent collection) and the new material created for the Tundra Complete Bojeffries Saga in the British Annual tradition. (A trope which Moore would return to some ten years later in his and Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
collections.)
Characters
The Bojeffries Saga is the story of a family living in a council house in Northampton, England (not coincidentally the hometown of writer Moore). The family is made up of:- Jobremus Bojeffries (father)
- Ginda Bojeffries (daughter)
- Reth Bojeffries (son)
- The baby (which appears nuclear)
- Uncle Raoul Zlüdotny (a werewolfWerewolfA werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
) - Uncle Festus Zlüdotny (a vampireVampireVampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
) - Grandpa Podlasp (whose form is amorphous)
- Trevor Inchmale, rent collector appears in the initial stories
Publication
Short stories created for various publications and publishers:- "The Rentman Cometh" [black & white] (in Warrior #12, August 1983); [colour] (in Flesh and Bones #1, 1986)
- "One of our Rentmen is missing" [black & white] (in Warrior #13, October 1983); [colour] (in Flesh and Bones #2, 1986)
- "Raoul's Night Out" Parts I-II [black & white] (in Warrior #19-20, June and July 1984); [colour] (in Flesh and Bones #3-4, 1986)
- "Batfishing in Suburbia" (prologue) (in Dalgoda #8, April 1986)
- "Festus: Dawn of the Dead" (in A1 #1, May 1989)
- "Sex with Ginda Bojeffries" (in A1 #2, September 1989)
- "A Quiet Christmas with the Family" (in A1 #3, February 1990)
- "Song of the Terraces" (in A1 #4, April 1990)
- "Our Factory Fortnight" (panels & text in the UK comic strip tradition) (in The A1 True Life Bikini Confidential, February 1991)
Illustrations created for the Complete Bojeffries Saga TPB:
- "Under the Settee with Len" (introduction)
- "4-Dimensional Fenestration" (cut-out recreation of Grandfather Podlasp's garden)
- "Festus: Halloween Masque" (cut-out Halloween mask)
- "Ginda's Fabulous Fashions" (paper cut-out Ginda dollPaper dollPaper dolls are figures cut out of paper, with separate clothes that are usually held onto the dolls by folding tabs. They have been inexpensive children's toys for almost two hundred years. Today, many artists are turning paper dolls into an art form....
with attachable clothes) - "Raoul's Recipe" (for "German Shepherd's PieShepherd's pieCottage pie or shepherd's pie is a meat pie with a crust of mashed potato.The term cottage pie is known to have been in use in 1791, when the potato was being introduced as an edible crop affordable for the poor Cottage pie or shepherd's pie is a meat pie with a crust of mashed potato.The term...
")
Collected editions
Tundra Press published a collectionTrade 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...
, The Complete Bojeffries Saga (ISBN 1879450658), in 1992.
A new collection was created by Top Shelf Productions
Top Shelf Productions
Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
(ISBN 978-1-60309-063-6) including a new story:
Awards
1994: Nominated for "Best Graphic Album--Reprint" Eisner AwardEisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
for The Complete Bojeffries Saga
External links
- Bojeffries Saga Collecting, index of published issues