Load Runner: The Galaxy's First Computer Comic

Ever heard of LOAD RUNNER? I certainly hadn't. It's a real curiosity. A computer-themed comic aimed at 9-16 year olds and featuring a mix of stories told with artwork, photographs, and text. LOAD RUNNER was published fortnightly by ECC Publications who also made WHICH COMPUTER PRACTICAL COMPUTING, IBM USER, and SINCLAIR PROGRAMS and SINCLAIR USER; until they sold the last two to EMAP in September 1984. LOAD RUNNER arrived on 23rd June 1983 and ran for 13 issues, with the last issue dated December 8th 1983.

I am a serial accidental destroyer of things. I ruined my collection of old CRASH magazines simply by carelessly re-reading them. The result is, I am constantly amazed by the things people kept, and in such good condition. All 13 issues of LOAD RUNNER have been uploaded to the Internet Archive and you can read them here.

SINCLAIR USER
July 1983 page 30

LOAD RUNNER hit the shelves on Thursday 23rd June. Trying to work out the on sale dates of comics and magazines is a bit of a nightmare (to stay current they tended to print the last on sale date rather than the publication date) but I think this is what LOAD RUNNER issue one would have sat alongside[1].

1983 was still the good times for the UK comics industry. I'm a long way from any kind of expert so expect gross generalisations ahoy but there were broadly three companies, IPC and DC Thompson dominated the market and Marvel UK were the plucky underdog. LOAD RUNNER borrows from comics and magazines by all three. Most obviously, LOAD RUNNER bows to two comics from IPC, 2000AD and Eagle which was successfully relaunched in 1982. The cover copies the format of Eagle with a big splash panel to catch the reader's eye and then one or two smaller panels to begin the episode. Victor did something similar. It positions the comic midway between obviously for-kids fare like The Beano, which always had a comic strip on the front and teenage magazines like Jackie and Smash Hits with proper covers, like the magazines mum and dad would read [2]. 

If you want to know more about the artists who worked on LOAD RUNNER then check out this article by John Freeman on downthetubes.net. The article also includes a decent summary of the strips which would run across the 13 issues of the comic. 

The contents are a grab bag of material themed around computers. Andy Roid- the DOMINATORS' Rogue Star! is a strip that dares to ask the question, what if Roy of the Rovers but robots? It's 1993, the future, and all sport is played by robots. Our hero Andy Roid (groan) has to wear a tin suit to play football. It is written by Chris Winch who picks up credits on other ECC magazines as Group Art Director. Trumbell's World is a baffling soup of ideas [3]. A story that ended in issue 10 and did well enough with readers to get a sequel which began in issue 13. Countdown to Chaos was a two-page text story. The Adventures of ROM and RAM is the funny strip and looks like it's fallen from the pages of Whizzer and Chips. Finally, there's The Invasion of the Arcadians which sees aliens attempt to conquer the world by hypnotising children with arcade machines. 

The big colour front cover goes to Load Runner which is clearly intended to be the spine of the comic. A series of serials which can run without a break. The Judge Dredd of LOAD RUNNER. The first four episodes were written by editor Bill Scolding who moved on to SINCLAIR USER in February 1984 after LOAD RUNNER was cancelled. His first credit for ECC was for design on the first issue of SINCLAIR PROGRAMS, in May/June 1982.

Load Runner is a bloke-gets-sucked-into-a-computer-to-play-games story. Yes, like Tron from 1982. Eagle later did the definitive version of the premise with a 1985 story called The Computer Warrior. Eagle's version quickly dropped into full-throated endorsement and saw the lead character playing inside real home computer games. The fourth part of The Computer Warrior is about the Commodore 64 version of Wizard of Wor, and readers later have a chance to win copies of the game. The LOAD RUNNER version is oddly timid by comparison. The first game our hero Mike Roman (micro man) plays is Chess. This was followed in issue 4 by a story clearly based around 3D Monster Maze from J.K. Greye Software but the source is never acknowledged; beyond a coy caption at the end of part three, "NEXT PRINTOUT MONSTER MAZE!" [4]. This bashfulness gets really out of hand when a Coming Soon advert in issue 8 says:

Load Runner meets the Spiders in a deadly confrontation based on the well-known computer game.

I know it's Horace & the Spiders. You know it's Horace & the Spiders. Bill Scolding knows it's Horace & the Spiders. Solicitors acting for Melbourne House would know it's Horace & the Spiders. The strip even includes a computer-eye-view showing what is unmistakably an artist's impression of Horace & the Spiders. 

Horace & the Spiders
Printout 9 page 2

You know, I think this might be Horace & the Spiders. So why not name it? Were LOAD RUNNER worried about copyright or being seen to endorse games and being accused of running an advertorial? Who knows. Horace even accompanies Load Runner and Petra Hawke for a couple of issues. 

Printout 10 page 1

That's not even the craziest scene from this story. This might be, when they all go skiing.

Printout 10 page 3

Maybe if the comic had run for longer there would have been a change of direction in the same way EAGLE took the premise. Instead, the joyfully bonkers Horace story comes to an end in issue 11, and the comic goes the same way two issues later. The final parts of Load Runner tell a much more generic western story based on the arcade game Gun Fight. 

Load Runner undergoes another significant change at the start of Printout 6 with the introduction of a character called Petra Hawke .

LOAD RUNNER
Printout No. 6

The background to her character was explained by a story in THE HUDDERSFIELD DAILY EXAMINER, Monday 11th July:

Bill Scolding, editor of the computer answer to the Bash Street Kids, is hoping his comic will appeal to girls and boys.

"We are having discussions about the content of the comic with the Equal Opportunities Commission, who are concerned that information technology is in danger of becoming a boy's subject. We are actively considering the introduction of a major girl character in one of the strips together with a feature on women in the computer industry," he said.

Petra Hawke becomes co-lead of the Load Runner strip. She is the earliest example of the change of direction Bill Scolding wanted to see but not the last.

Time Plan 9 was the second story of issue one and is where LOAD RUNNER shows the biggest debt to Eagle. It's a photo story. An idea taken directly from Eagle who had successfully borrowed the concept from comics and magazines like DC Thompson's Jackie, aimed at girls, where they told Photo Love Stories [5]. Eagle's use of photo stories to tell action stories for boys gave the comic a distinct look and style. Obviously photo stories work well for a police serial like SGT. STREETWISE [6] but it's a lot more difficult to do space opera. Eagle developed a couple of strips which really nailed a kitchen sink science fiction aesthetic to show the domestic rubbing shoulders with the fantastic [7]. Time Plan 9 does the same, telling a story about a kid and his friends who have to deal with a home computer that starts to malfunction in weird ways and summons people from the past. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, apparently more than LOAD RUNNER's readers who always seemed to nominate it as the story they liked least. Time Plan 9 only lasted until issue six. It feels like the story ends abruptly but with a bi-weekly publishing schedule it would have been in print for 12 weeks, forever to kids. The story has a quirky sense of humour and puts its characters in deliberately silly situations with historical characters popping out of thin air and causing problems. Julius Caesar has passed out in the front room after watching an Open University history lecture and learning Brutus will assassinate him; what will mum say when she gets home? The story came to an end in Printout 10 with a splash panel previewing its replacement.

LOAD RUNNER
Printout No. 6 page 12

School for Software starts in Printout 7. There are no science fiction elements and the subsequent story would work equally well on Grange Hill. Bev Jeavons is a computer mad girl whose attempts to use the school computer are thwarted because everyone knows computers are for boys. It's a story based firmly around Bill Scolding's manifesto. The down to earth photo story is shot on location on the streets of Streatham; judging by the banner for Buffer Micro Shop in the background of one of the photos. The same page also provides a free plug for the August issue of SINCLAIR USER who reciprocate the favour with an advert for LOAD RUNNER on page 84 of the August issue.

School for Software
Printout No. 7 Page 6

The issue containing School for Software was on sale from 15-23rd September. A week later the comic picked up some publicity in THE GUARDIAN, in an article by Brenda Polan called The Mini Revolution, Wednesday 28 September page 10. Bill Scolding was quoted a couple of times: 

"Every strip," says editor Bill Scolding, "has a female figure in a central role."
..."We're slightly disappointed," says Bill Scolding, "that most of out readers still seem to be boys. Only 20 or so of our 350 strong fan club are girls -and only 20 or 30 per cent of the letters to our problem page come from girls."

In any given issue only half of the 40 pages were comics. The other pages were bulked out by cheaper factual articles. Music, sport, television, films, it doesn't matter as long as it somehow references a computer. Issue one includes a colour centre spread about Ultravox, editorially justified by a small feature about bass and keyboard player Chris Cross and the computers he uses. My eye was immediately caught by the issue two pull-out poster called "Blake's 7 star computer Orac with Avon".

Issue 2
July 7-July 20 1983, page 20

BBC1 was repeating Blake's 7 series D across the summer of 1983. Headhunter and Assassin were shown while issue two was on sale. At the time Marvel were publishing BLAKE'S 7 MONTHLY and I get the impression the LOAD RUNNER production team were keeping an eye on the newsagents for ideas about what kids might like to read. The background to the poster is an odd selection of black and white stills (two of which don't show the regular cast) and the colour picture of Avon and Orac has one major problem. It's not Orac. The still comes from the episode Countdown and shows Avon standing by the control box for the solium radiation device. To be fair to LOAD RUNNER, what are the chances of getting a photo of Paul Darrow standing in front of a Perspex box stuffed with wires and it's not Orac?

LOAD RUNNER gradually starts to perform the sort of course corrections you see in any title once the editor gets past the chaos of the launch and develops an idea of what readers like. Unfortunately, one of the things readers liked was listings. The dread type-it-yourself programs start to appear from issue 4. A page of game reviews is also started and LOAD RUNNER gradually comes to resemble a computer magazine with comic strips rather than a computer themed comic. How many of these changes would have stuck? Who knows. The early cancellation makes it next to impossible to see any real evolution. Consider 2000AD, there's very little change across the first 13 issues.

LOAD RUNNER is missing the x-factor which made 2000AD and Eagle immediately work. An issue can go from seeming modern to old fashioned with the turn of a page. Countdown to Chaos is like something from a seventies Doctor Who annual. Time Plan 9, probably the best story, is bang up to date and would work in Eagle. The two-page text feature The Astounding World of Computerfax feels like it's wandered in from Look and Learn but over the page might be a colour poster of Terrahawks or a cutaway drawing of the Tandy Color Computer or a picture of David Hunt sitting in his Acorn Computers sponsored racing car.

The biggest problem with LOAD RUNNER, and I suspect its downfall, is the price. ECC clearly didn't have the resources of IPC or EMAP so five to seven pages of each issue were used for advertising (familiar names like Cascade, Virgin Games, and Legend) but in order to be profitable the price has to be much higher than it's competitors. LOAD RUNNER is expensive. Each issue costs 40p. The same as a 1983 issue of PRIVATE EYE or SMASH HITS. You could buy LOOK IN and 2000AD for the same price as one issue of LOAD RUNNER; VICTOR was 16p, JACKIE 18p, and EAGLE was the most expensive of the kid's weeklies at 22p. 

I can't help wondering when the production team knew the axe was going to drop. Issue 11 seems like a good candidate. Invasion of the Arcadians gets a sudden five page finale; the story normally had no more than 3 pages. Load Runner wraps up the Horace and the Spiders story and quickly moves into a more generic western themed story. School for Software finishes in issue 12, bringing to an end the more expensive photo story material. Across those last three issues the number of pages dedicated to strips gradually falls; 22 pages in issue 11, 19 pages in issue 12, and only 18 in issue 13.

Issue 13 still costs 40p but only has 32 pages. It is the only issue not to feature a photo story and the only holdovers from issue one are Load Runner, Andy Roid, and Rom and Ram. There is also a one-off story about a bloke playing Defender in a pub. Clearly the magazine is being wound down and issue 13 exists only to use up already paid for material. This is unfortunate because one of the stories that has been paid for is part one of Simian's World the sequel to Trumbull's World. There is no announcement that this is the last issue so presumably loyal readers scoured newsagents looking for issue 14. 

[1] Look In cover downloaded from here and these were the sources for Victor, Jackie, and Smash Hits.

[2] With this in mind, it's kind of interesting that 2000AD also aims itself at older readers by going with a big cover picture as if they don't see a difference between pop star Matt Fretton and Judge Dredd being attacked by a werewolf.

[3] The story is set on a dystopian overcrowded future Earth run by a robed quasi-religious council, led by Siman. The world is waiting for programmer Trumbull to discover the equation which will give hope to the huddled billions. In between working for the betterment of his fellow man Trumbull relaxes by playing adventure games he's written. Then he has second thoughts about revealing his equation so he loads it into one of his adventure games and shatters "the clasp" so it can never be found. The secret Police beat him unconscious so his kids have to go into the game to retrieve the clasp. Episode one ends with the caption "NEXT ISSUE: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS" which just makes me wonder why the adventure can't begin now, when I'm already here to read it.

[4]  LOAD RUNNER refers to its issues as Printouts in the same way 2000AD called them Progs.

[5]  They have a much longer history than that. In 1965, John Cleese starred in one in American magazine HELP! and you can read it here.

[6] He's a cop who bucks authority and plays by his own rules but gets results.

[7] The Invisible Boy is a good example but the best, obviously, is Doomlord. Particularly once the skull-headed alien settles down in Mrs Souster's boarding house and really gets into watching Coronation Street.

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