Flesh Book One was one of the original strips to appear in 2000AD. It ran for 19 episodes up to Prog 19, before being dropped to make way for Shako.
By the 23rd century mankind had destroyed most animals on Earth, living instead on synthetic foods. With the invention of time travel corporations travelled 65 million years to the Cretaceous Period (or Time Zone Alpha-8) to farm dinosaurs, processing them and beaming the flesh back to the 23rd century.
Synopsis[]
Part One[1][]
Earl Reagan is leading a team of rangers herding Styracosaurs through Tyrannosaur country. At camp, Maverick gets eaten by a phobosuchus. The smell of his blood draws tyrannosaurs to attack the herd which causes the styracosaurs to stampede. Joe and Reagan manage to steer most of the herd away from a cliff. By the time the herd reaches the Trans-Time base, twenty rangers and six styracosaurs have been lost.
Part Two[2][]
A fleshdozer runs amok and drops a dinosaur which has not been stunned correctly on a ranger. Offbase the rangers find a herd of Alamosaurs, but Joe's spotter plane is attacked by Pteranodons, with Joe being carried off by one of the attackers.
Part Three[3][]
An air buggy comes to Joe's aid but the crew are then attacked from behind and killed by a huge tyrannosaur. Recovering from being dropped by the now dead pteranodon, Joe is then picked up by the tyrannosaur in it's jaws. He begs Reagan to put him out of his misery, but Reagan instead shoves his goad into the tyrannosaur's eye, causing the dinosaur to drop Joe. With Joe's legs injured, the rangers manage to escape for Carver City before the rest of the pack arrives.
Part Four[4][]
Old One Eye calls her pack to her and heads north to Carver City after Reagan. By the time the rangers reach the city, Joe's skin has broken out in black boils. Finding the Doc drunk and gambling in the Saloon, Reagan is told that they need to get a gland from the throat of a Tyrannosaur to cure the plague. Carver finds out that Reagan has brought plague to the city and the two fight in the street. The robotic Marshal is programmed to break up all street fighting and in the melee, the robot's laser cracks the plastic dome, giving Old One Eye an opportunity to tear her way into the city.
Part Five[5][]
While dinosaurs eat their way through the robot sheriff, Reagan cuts out the Tyrannosaur gland from Old One Eye's throat when she attacks him. Reagan grabs the Doc from the Saloon as Old One Eye tears into it and gets him to adminster the vaccine. Carver attacks him as he leaves the surgery but the two form a temporary truce in order to drive away the dinosaurs.
Part Six[6][]
Carver and Reagan fight their way into the general store to pick up fuel. Joe starts to recover in the surgery. Old One Eye fights one of her sons over which of them gets to eat a ranger. Killing him, she goes on to find Reagan, who is thrown at her by Carver as his town burns around them.
Part Seven[7][]
Asking for help, the rangers who are looking after the herd are told by the Trans-Time controller to return to base and leave the others to die. Reagan ends up cast aside as Old One Eye, nearly blind blunders a mile away from Carver City, encountering a ranger and an alamosaur, both of whom she kills. Reagan and Carver call another truce, mediated by the Doc.
Part Eight[8][]
The Doc ss killed by a giant snake while trying to find creepers. Taking to a river on a raft, Old One Eye follows the rangers. Carved pushes one of the men off the raft into the dinosaurs path. While she tackles a phobosuchus that capsises the raft, the rangers set up a trap over some spiky plants in a pit. Reagan uses himself as bait and tricks Old One Eye into falling into the trap.
Part Nine[9][]
A tourist train lets off the Tyranno horn before stopping to let tourists get out and take videos. The rangers follow the sound of the horn just before a pack of tyrannosaurs are drawn by the noise. The rangers take over the cab and gun emplacements on the train, and start it moving again. The train increases speed, but Old One Eye stops it again by lashing out at some rocks which fall on the line.
Part Ten[10][]
Smashing the train through the rocks, Reagan steers the dino express to the Trans-Time Base where it crashes through the buffers. Old One Eye experiences a mild heart attack brought on by her age and the events of the last few days.
Part Eleven[11][]
The Flesh Controller dismisses any warnings from Reagan as he believed the invisible laser fence surrounding the base is enough to protect it from the carnivorous dinosaurs massing around it. On the second day of the siege, various species of dinosaurs, including Old One Eye's pack, converge on the base from all points of the compass and gather into huge packs. Meanwhile giant spiders who fed on the blood overflow pipes are gathering underground.
Part Twelve[12][]
On the third day of the siege the controller feeds rejected meat to the tyrannosaurs, thinking it will satisfy their hunger, but instead it just whets their appetite. They charge the fence in waves, eventually overwhelming it. Reagan leads the rangers against the dinosaurs, convincing the controller to spare all the men from the fleshdozers except for one night watchman. On the fourth day, the spiders beneath the base rise to the surface, as their supply of blood from the now inactive fleshdozers has dried up.
Part Thirteen[13][]
The spiders scamper into the bunk room and attack the sleeping rangers. Claw locks Reagan in the bunk room with the spiders while he goes to the controller. Reagan escapes the spiders by distracting them with a song from an audio-recorder. He joins the others as the spiders' nest is plasticreted over.
Part Fourteen[14][]
Angered that the controller executed some of his men for showing fear in the face of the dinosaurs, Reagan and Joe are locked up. They break out, arriving at the controller's office just before a flash storm breaks. Lightning prompts the pteranodons to swoop down, the plant eaters to stampede in panic and the spiders to rip out of the ground.
Part Fifteen[15][]
On the seventh day the tyrannosaurs break through. The controller finally reports the emergency to the heads of Trans-Time Corporation just before spiders break into the room, but they refuse to send reinforcements. Joe is injected with poision by a giant spider.
Part Sixteen[16][]
Reagan goes after Old One Eye, but the two are grabbed by a fleshdozer being driven by the controller. Reagan falls into a spider's web where he is injected by venom while Old One Eye's weight breaks the fleshdozer's grabbers. She chews through the controller's legs.
Part Seventeen[17][]
Reagan uses his knife to cut the wound and suck the venom out. Playing dead, he lures the spider in so he can use his knife on it. Arriving at the time beaming room, he discovers Carver smuggling gold bullion reserves on to a time shuttle. Arriving in the 23rd century time port, three of the rangers are fused to a dinosaur body.
Part Eighteen[18][]
23rd century police kill all of the tyrannosaurs that have beamed through while Reagan is dragged from a time shuttle to a long prison sentence. Old One Eye, having led the destruction of the base, staggers away from the ruins.
Part Nineteen[19][]
Having rampaged through the base for seven days and nights, the dinosaurs lay down to sleep it off. Old One Eye drags herself away. The base explodes when she is a few miles away. She marches through the night, suffering another heart attack. As pteranodons and scavengers pounce she revives, killing them all and staggering on for another three days, eventually finding the Tyrannosaurs' graveyard where she collapses into the canyon between two volcanoes. Trapped in sandstone her body is fossilised, eventually to be discovered by 20th century workmen.
Recurring Characters[]
Earl Reagan[]
- Reagan is the trail boss, working for Trans-Time Corporation.
Claw Carver[]
- 'Claw' Carver is an ex-trail boss, who has constructed his own town named Carver City.
Other Characters[]
Joe Brontowski[]
- Joe is a young member of Reagan's team of rangers. His legs are injured by Old One Eye, then he contracts a form of plague. He recovers from this but is killed by spiders in the Controller's office.
Maverick[]
- Maverick is a veteran ranger who is on his last tour of duty when he gets eaten by a phobosuchus.
Huck[]
- Huck is a ranger who gets killed by the Fleshdozer when it runs out of control due to an incorrectly stunned styracosaur.
Old One Eye[]
- Old One Eye is a 120-year-old female leader of a pack of tyrannosaurs. She has her eye gouged out by Earl Reagan. She has a son Satanus, whom she kills when he challenges her as pack-leader.
Doc[]
- Doc is the resident physician at Carver City. He is an alcoholic and, until treating Joe Brontowski, has lost every patient. He escapes Carver City when it is attacked by Old One Eye but is killed by a giant prehistoric snake in the nearby swamp while trying to get to the Trans-Time base.
Orville Wainwright[]
- Orville is a 23rd century child who goes on a Trans-Time Holiday with his family. He gets eaten by Old One Eye.
Slick Parsons[]
- Slick Parsons is a Trans-Time Holidays tour courier.
Hank[]
- Hank is the Chief Pilot of the Dino-Express when it gets attacked by Old One Eye and a pack of Tyrannosaurs.
Flesh Controller[]
- The Flesh Controller is in charge of the Trans-Time base in the Cretaceous Period when it gets overun by dinosaurs. He ignores Earl Reagan's warnings to call for reinforcements until it is too late. When the dinosaurs overrun the base he goes mad, seizing control of the Fleshdozer and trying to kill both Old One Eye and Reagan. Old One Eye chews through his legs and leaves him for dead.
Jake[]
- Jake is a Trans-Time ranger. He is overpowered by Earl Reagan when he and Joe are imprisoned by the Flesh Controller.
Johnson, Mills & Shepherd[]
- Johnson, Mills & Shepherd are Trans-Time rangers who are all being eaten by a tyrannosaur when they are transported to the 23rd century, getting their genetic codes spliced in the process. They are not named within the story itself, but their names appear on the cover of Prog 17.
Alf[]
- Alf is one of the workmen who discover the fossilised remains of Old One Eye in 1983 during excavation of an extension to the London Underground.
Professor Gizzard[]
- Professor Gizzard is a scientist who studies Old One Eye's fossilised skeleton. He theorises that the dinosaurs were not wiped out at all and that they merely evolved in to birds, scoffing at Professor Magnus' suggestion that time travellers had killed them. He dislodges a rod holding Old One Eye's jaws open and becomes the dinosaur's final victim.
Professor Magnus[]
- Professor Magnus is a colleague of Professor Gizzard whose son reads a boys' paper which features men using time-machines to kill dinosaurs. He is present when Gizzard is killed by Old One Eye's fossilised skeleton in 1983.
Locations[]
Technology[]
- Wrist T.V.[7]
- Judgement Machine
Vehicles[]
Weapons[]
- electric whip
- electric goad[3]
- anti-matter launchers[13]
Robots[]
Species[]
Megafauna[]
- Styracosaurs[1]
- Tyrannosaurs[1]
- Phobosuchus
- Alamosaurs[3]
- Pteranodons[2]
- Terrible Claws
- 'prehistoric snake'[8] (species unknown)
- Ouranosaurus
- Furry Tyrannosaurs[11]
- Spinosaurs[11]
- Terrible Hand[11]
- Hadrosaurs[15]
Flora[]
Organisations[]
Arts and Culture[]
Behind the Scenes[]
Prog, the short form of programme was first used in the introductory text to part 9 of Flesh Book One[9].
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Flesh Book One Part One, 2000AD Prog 1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Flesh Book One Part Two, 2000AD Prog 2
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Flesh Book One Part Three, 2000AD Prog 3
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Flesh Book One Part Four, 2000AD Prog 4
- ↑ Flesh Book One Part Five, 2000AD Prog 5
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part Six, 2000AD Prog 6
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Flesh: Book One Part Seven, 2000AD Prog 7
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Flesh: Book One Part Eight, 2000AD Prog 8
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Flesh: Book One Part 9, 2000AD Prog 9
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 10, 2000AD Prog 10
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Flesh: Book One Part 11, 2000AD Prog 11
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 12, 2000AD Prog 12
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Flesh: Book One Part 13, 2000AD Prog 13
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 14, 2000AD Prog 14
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Flesh: Book One Part 15, 2000AD Prog 15
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 16, 2000AD Prog 16
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 17, 2000AD Prog 17
- ↑ Flesh: Book One Part 18, 2000AD Prog 18
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 Flesh: Book One Part 19, 2000AD Prog 19