Next year, the indie publisher Time Bomb Comics will be 20 years old. They launched Quantum as a mainstream British anthology comic, selling in high street newsagents. They made a respectable fist of this and stuck it out for three years, but ultimately it didn't work. High street distribution isn't what is was, especially when crowdfunding, subscriptions and digital distribution let the publisher and creators keep much more of the cover price. It also didn't help, for instance, that W.H. Smith's sold its high street operations in 2025 to a private equity firm that rebranded it as TGJones. Oh dear. Anyway, the 13th and final issue of Quantum came out in February. Here's what Dave West (who's also a writer here) has said:

"We really wanted to get comics back into newsagents, but the vast majority of them just weren't interested. We had to settle for WHSmiths (as was) but found that not enough people seemed to go into town centres these days. We just couldn't make it work financially. We learned a lot in the process though, so if anyone else is considering something similar then get in touch and I'll be happy to share. It was fun doing it though and I'd like to thank all those who did support us on the journey."

Anyway, this is the first issue... and it's quite good. The worst thing about it is the cover, which is okay but a bit messy and has too many small images instead of one big, dynamic one.

It's steampunk, with the Brittanic Empire in 1896 stomping across the solar system and fighting alligators on Venus. The strip's merrily aware of its heroes' political incorrectness and plays it up with extreme dialogue. "More ignorant natives, eh? The empire seems infested with them, these days. The tough love of a hard bullet! That's what will sort them out!"

Major Rakhana herself, though, undercuts the stereotypes by being female, non-white and accompanied by her concubine (a big fit bearded bloke in a loincloth whose main skill is brewing a pot of darjeeling). She keeps him leashed. The whole thing's silly, but it's also wholehearted, funny and a good start to the collection. Also, Major Indira Rakhana herself is badass.

Is the title a pun on "Major Arcana", i.e. tarot cards? I think probably not, although it's not impossible given the line expecting the natives to "show due respect to their celestial sovreign". (The tarot's into celestial stuff, e.g. stars, moon, sun, while its other cards include Emperor and Empress.) However, there's already a ton of iconography here, with British Empire "tally-ho old chaps" encountering some reasonably interesting SF (e.g. Envoy Lucy Version G12 A00 from the Clockwork Embassy).

It's a dour, hard-bitten piece about Wild West werewolves. The writing's good, but what I liked best was the scratchy, characterful art and its bold caricatures. The colouring adds mood too.

This one's a bit dry and weird. It's set in Egypt, with lots of research and lovingly precise art, but I was never clear on whether I was reading about Ancient Egypt, the modern world, some kind of parallel universe or whatever. I'd be willing to see how it continues, though.

Imagine a story from the Flash's point of view, i.e. he's got all the time in the world and can potter around without urgency. He's also a British bloke in glasses called Bobby Doyle. (We're told that he's 25 years old, but he looks middle-aged.) He can stop time. There's also a wry, deadpan look at British society and a rather nice art trick to show the difference between time-stopped and able-to-move. (This shares a writer with Westernoir.)

...and this shares its writer with Major Rakhana. It's again lurid comics silliness set in British history, this time with a robot Cavalier from the English Civil War who's still active a century later and doing vigilante stuff in 1753. (Nothing extreme. No supervillains. He's just fighting crooks.) This is silly and fun, but I wondered about the historical angle. 1753 is the Bloody Code, isn't it? Lots of petty crime was punishable by death. If the Clockwork Cavalier goes hunting child thieves and giving them to the authorities, might they end up hanging from a rope? Mind you, maybe the writer knows that and was doing it deliberately.

It's a decent anthology, actually. The only story I'm lukewarm about is Memphis and even that gets more entertaining and trashy at the cliffhanger. The Clockwork Cavalier is okay (well, it's only a six-pager) and the other three stories are pretty good.