FELL LAZARUS
By Alan Morgan

Bill Chandler – superhero in denial

Mr Clanky - Britannia Ironclad MK III

Clara Dunn – Bad Moon Rising

Mr Jakkal – Sharp Dressed Man

Jocasta Hewitt – Blue Blood

Smiler – The Cat in the Hat

The Mole – He Wants to Smell Your Pants

Mab - Flower Child

Amelia - As Within, So Without

Harry Slater – Good from Bad may come

"People of Earth - your attention please. As of midnight tonight We have assumed control." - Magistra, on behalf of the Tabula Rasa, 17th May 1987.

The Tabula Rasa are the moral guardians of humanity. Through the mechanism of the UN they control the Industrial Nations and, through their military and economic resources, the developing world as well. Magistra, Persephone, Starlight, and Flechette and their army of lesser superhumans watch our world from an orbiting satellite, Highside, like teachers might watch a class of naughty school children. Because if we're not mature enough to look after ourselves, someone else will.

‘One People, One Faith, One World’ - the Tabula Rasa slogan.

In the year 2002 the once proud nation of Great Britain has degenerated into a second world state where poverty and unemployment is widespread north of Watford. The days of Empire are now long gone. Today the United Nations flag flies over the Houses of Parliament, alongside the Tabula Rasa standard, and a small, modest looking Union Jack. The pigeons still fly in Trafalgar Square, and the shit-stained statue of Nelson still watches over his people, but tradition aside, Britain is nothing more than the fabled 'Airstrip One' predicted in Orwell's 1984. The weather is bleak due to climactic changes, and certain parts of low lying land on the East Coast are now permanently under water.

Think 'dark Satanic mills', bleak industrial wastelands, empty coal mines, black rain from two hundred years of pollution, a strong class system between the haves and the have nots, workhouses for the poor, and a silent sullen people, going about their bleak grey lives, dreaming dreams of empire, when England was great and She ruled the seven seas and when superheroes didn’t rule the world.

What little power and wealth there is is concentrated in major urban centres - cities such as Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford all boast wealthy communities but encamped around them are slum housing developments where conditions resemble those in Victorian days. In 2002 the rich are richer than before but the poor are equally poorer. In the countryside conditions have reverted back to almost feudal times, with country folk being indebted to the landowners for work and housing. And in the North it is said that 40% of the population can only find employment in state run workhouses. The minimum wage applies here, paid out in state coupons that can only be spent in state run shops. These warehouse stores sell cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap everything. Most of it is imported from the third world or from the production mills of the workhouses themselves.

In the furthest corners of England it is possible to find small experimental communes where licences have been granted to establish back-to-nature settlements.

Rhys the Leek and Charlie Bittersweet - South London assassins for hire (superheroes a speciality)

London remains the exception to the bleak misery of England today. An American setting foot in London would see little different from his home. London remains a city of finance, culture and the arts. Fashionable wealthy middle class men and women dine in stylish restaurants, browse through museums and art galleries that still contain the plundered treasures of half the world, and relax at the opera or shop in the luxurious West End. But London too has its ghettos - Brixton has become a sanctuary for black culture that draws heavily on afro-Caribbean principles. Camden is the centre of the counter culture - a tribal village within London where alternative clans operate a market system open to anyone. An informal but rigorously enforced 'Camden Peace' exists between the English counter culture 'tribes' of drummers, Goths, punks, neo-hippies and under worlders.

But there is a hidden London that few people get to see. Central London lies on the Thames alluvial flood plain, hemmed in by hills to the north and south forming hundreds of miles of rivers. Few now remain above ground and some, such as the Shoreditch and the Langbourne, have been lost completely. The most famous of London's underground rivers flows from Highgate via Camden Town and the City to the Thames near Blackfriar's. It once ran through the seediest parts of 18th century London. Dead animals, industrial and human waste turned it into a foul sewer. In Ben Jonson's Famous Voyage, two lunatics travelled down it and described it as eclipsing the four rivers of Hades in foulness. It was covered in 1765 and apocryphal stories of wild pigs living in it persisted into the 1920's.

The subterranean river Tyburn started in Hampstead and was bricked over as a sewer. It runs below Regent's park, Oxford Street, Buckingham Palace, across Whitehall where the Ministry for Secular Affairs is housed, and into the Thames near Scotland Yard. The Victorian writer John Hollingshead wrote about his voyage along it underground. Infrequent gratings dimly illuminated stained yellow brick walls. Its underground course included the remains of a Roman bathhouse and a 13th century reservoir.

London has 500 miles of sewers. Some like the Fleet and the Tyburn are fifteen feet high and easily walkable with huge pillared and buttressed chambers like underground cathedrals. It is in this underground world of dank chambers and narrow passageways that the true disposed of London create a sanctuary for their kind. No one knows how many wretches live beneath the streets of London but, like rats, they multiply every year.

Simon Bretnor and Peter Gabriel - ORBITAL's most dedicated agents (with a lucrative sideline in swindling their expense accounts)

The centre of power in England has moved from the Houses of Parliament (now a public museum) to the old Admiralty, and Foreign Office buildings that make up Whitehall. It is here that the Ministry for Secular Affairs looks after the security of the country. Mr Price heads this department and also oversees the sub-department, ORBITAL, which concerns itself with any matters involving super human activities. ORBITAL consists of 23 AMBER teams. The Ministry for Spiritual Affairs occupies the old St James' Palace. It concerns itself with matters of a super natural nature, though due to the nature of super heroes and villains, this sometimes crosses over into Secular Department territory and vice versa. Lord Tobias Wolf is in charge of the Spiritual department. Neither department head likes the other and they rarely co-operate, preferring instead to reserve large parts of their yearly budgets to spoil the work of each other.

The unofficial centre of power in England resides in the parochial drawing rooms of the highly exclusive Paracelcian Society. The membership of this club reads like a Who's Who of the ruling classes. It is whispered that the Paracelcian Society has an inner circle of power brokers from the oldest English families, and that aside from the UN and the Tabula Rasa they wield the greatest power in England today.

All characters, concepts and stories are copyright Rob Nott and Alan Morgan, with the exception of Johann Carver who is copyright Jason Tippitt and is used with permission. The stories, characters and incidents portrayed in Airstrip One are entirely fictional and no similarity with real life is intended or implied. Airstrip One and Fell Lazarus Illustrations are copyright Alan Morgan.

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AIRSTRIP ONE
By Rob Nott

Argent – London’s Favourite Superhero

Alyson Price – Superhero Wannabe

Herne – A Superhero for the Slacker Generation X

Mr Punch – The Most Dangerous Man Alive

Harry Stone – Sarcastic Superhero-hating Terrorist

The Surgeon General – An American Psycho

Atom Man - Radiation can give you superpowers, but if you overdo it...

Professor Woland – The Educated Face of Evil

Mr Price - The Head of ORBITAL

Bulldog Drummond - Rightwing Superhero

Charming Billy - Crimefighting Has Never Looked so Good!