The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Thunder Brother Soap Division – Issue 1 – The Apprentice

By Paul Rainey

After serialising it online, Paul Rainey’s first print issue of Thunder Brother: Soap Division is available right now from his website. It features the first full colour TB:SD storyline, The Apprentice (as reviewed back here in March), along with a couple of special back up strips… over to Paul for the details:

“Too hot for The Beano! Jack The Robot was my runner-up entry into last Summer’s Tartan Bucket Award!”

“What is the obstacle preventing eight year old Ethan from investigating a suspicious object in his street in Grounded”

“And find out why long car journeys from the early eighties were even more miserable than they are today in Move.”

Like I said back in the previous review, Rainey’s a veteran of sprawling sci-fi with a soap operatic edge, and his There’s No Time Like The Present was a series that really, really impressed with Rainey’s control of a large cast, all fleshed out, against a backdrop of complex and clever sci-fi. Rainey’s not one for the big explosion, he’s one for making you scratch your head and think about the science in the sci-fi.

And Thunder Brother Soap Division definitely looks to be a continuation of that, another ensemble cast, more thoughtful sci-fi, but this time we’re not so much soap operatic in feel, we’re actually deep into soap opera land itself. A mundane opener, with 13-year old soap addict Sally Timmins applying for an apprenticeship at this Soap Division thing. But it didn’t take long before Rainey starts getting weird…. and Sally finds out that these soaps are all real, and Soap Division is all part of creating and controlling them, with agent Thunder Brother jumping between our world and those delivering the soap storylines in his self dividing proto-sphere.

This first issue is a great opener, and the follow up storyline Going Straight takes us further into the multi-dimensional Soap Worlds. I haven’t gone much further than that too be honest, and now that I know Rainey intends to produce print copies, I may well wait for those before reading on.

Thunder Brother: Soap Division issue 1 is 24 pages of full colour for just £3, available from Rainey’s website. And TB:SD continues its serialisation online, with weekly updates.