DwarfCast 176 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #14 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 3rd April 2025, 14:49 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes “Jane Killed Flick” It’s the end of a relatively minor era, as we conclude our coverage of Volume 1 of the Red Dwarf Smegazine. Get ready for the cross-over event of the century, as one character from Back to Reality meets another character from Back to Reality, along with about fifty other comic strips of varying quality. We also uncover some scandalous censorship on the news pages, discuss Robert Llewellyn being sodomised by a rabbit, covet tiny cardboard models, deride one of the worst April Fools jokes of all time, and stalk a baby. It’s quite the ride. We recommend reading along as you listen; you can find scans of the mag at archive.org or Stasis Leak. DwarfCast 176 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #14 (278 MB) Show notes Buy The Thursday Man by Grant Naylor on Amazon! Robert Llewellyn on KYTV – with no actual sodomy, but plenty of slightly less rude antics Limmy and the paper aeroplane Book ‘Em and Risk It, an accidentally topical G&TV Norman Lovett plays with his dolls house Cool to do drugs.
Senior editor Mike Butcher. I probably commented on this when it was mentioned in a previous month or something, but are Howarth and Lyons just gradually bowing out? DUANE DIBBLEY “Imagine a Britain where the people live in constant fear, where the government is proud to be called ‘fascist’.” Honestly, let’s not read this in 2025, please. I bet the police constable’s visual similarity to a pig is completely coincidental. The police are also stupid and kill indiscriminately. Goodo. Castration treatment. Did Rob write this? The idea that our side of Back to Reality was a hallucination and this is actually reality is quite a good idea. This is fucking heavy going though. SERIES VI NEWS SPECIAL Oh this is going to be fun. Ah so this is where all the big news really does break. I wonder what the very obviously pasted in gap below the Kochanski story originally said. Psirens being “hideous but loving” feels deliberately misleading by Rob and Doug. Good to see the movie is just around the corner! The Thursday Man, another to add to the list of Grant Naylor scrapped ideas. This is becoming quite the lengthy selection. “May fourth go with you,” as Luke Starwalker used to say. Joe Nazzaro’s book. I wonder what became of that. Brittas getting 6.8m viewers, what an inconceivable idea. BOBBY LLEW INTER VIEW What’s Boon? CANTEBELIS TALES Doctor Who territory with that name. Icke-con is a terrible pun, but once again the suggestion that lunatic conspiracy theorists would be long gone by this time is depressingly optimistc. Oh, they’re literally taking a planet name from Doctor Who. I quite like the idea of someone worshipping Rodney Bewes as a God, and the art is quite impressive, but um. That was crap. SERIES 6 SHOCK REPORT What the fuck is that picture Oh, right. Great. ANDROIDS Fuck off. BRITTAS First half of this is literally a list of actors going in and out of a rehearsal room. The interview is more interesting, though, and I completely agree with Chris about the scripts for the third series stepping up a gear, 3-5 are the series that I think it’s astonishingly good. MR FLIBBLE GETS POOED Scrunge! Poit! Bleah! Splith! That was quite fun. RED ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY I’m glad this opened with two paragraphs explaning what reading is, I’d be so confused otherwise. What age range is this article aimed at again? COMIC #62 Oh right, it’s an Ace one. Why is Lister called Darren? I think the other guy is meant to be Kryten, right? What the fuck’s going on? Why has Evil Rimmer been keeping Graham Linehan in his ship? “ACE ‘BLACKHEART’ RIMMer” Oh, good, another evil disabled character story. Eh. HOLLY-GRAMS Oh no. Haha fucking hell, the bit where they point out the reader’s typo. There’s a real level of snark in this magazine at times. Steve Rogers’ list of Smegazine article awards is easily the best thing that’s been printed in Holly-grams. It’s good to see the seeds of G&T go back that far. The 23 month old Red Dwarf fan is clearly not a Red Dwarf fan. MEL BIBBEH “Without set designer Mel Bibby, the cast of Red Dwarf would be acting on an empty sound stage in the middle of Shepperton Studios.” I think it’s more likely they’d be acting on sets designed by somebody else, surely? “They’re just in it for the acting and the gags.” Now there’s a man who doesn’t understand Red Dwarf fans. JAKE BULLET Oh God is this still going Ok, didn’t actually see the crossover coming, that’s pretty cool. I wonder how far ahead this was planned. KOCHANSKI Yeah great. THE RED DWARF SMEGAZINE QUIZ Wait a minute, that’s not a proper quiz… Yeah, that was quite good.
I am definitely in the slither that would make Sonic and Red Dwarf a Venn diagram rather than a circle. I love how the Amazon listing for The Thursday Man has it at 240 pages, and gives an ISBN which appears on What Should I Read Next as the ISBN for Backwards by Grant Naylor.
I downloaded some 1993 Fleetway comics to check for Smegazine ads, but didn’t see any. Judge Dredd: The Magazine from the same period has ads like this: – Kitching’s Dibbley stories are some of my favourite Smegazine things. This time with helpful background notes for those who missed Back to Reality and would wonder what the hell’s going on even more than usual. – Why is it noteworthy to Howarth & Lyons that Bobby didn’t use a pseudonym for his book? – The Cantabelis Tales nicely captures the funereal vibe of some of Series V, but then gets bored of its own parody before long and skips to the end. Why did they censor the Mr Flibble title when page 12 gets away with “bollocks” and “wankers?” – Fleetway later came up with some similarly “cracking” April Fool gags for STC and promptly “chickening” out (egg). – Androids has surely peaked at “whore-ratio,” but let’s keep going. – I was genuinely looking forward to more outrageous Flibble antics, so the silent cartoon clowning was a letdown. – I don’t care for any of the Ace stories, but this one’s notably tedious for being so long. Are we sure we need those 8 extra pages per month? – Fuck Jacob Keeble of Horley, here’s a 16-month-old fan caught enjoying some non-staged background reading.
“Imagine a Britain where the people live in constant fear, where the government is proud to be called ‘fascist’.” Honestly, let’s not read this in 2025, please. Starmer isn’t quite that bad. Give it a few years.
THE RED DWARF SMEGAZINE QUIZ Wait a minute, that’s not a proper quiz… I was really hoping given the faux-quiz format (and the odd number of questions) that Ian would use the opportunity for another piss-taking quiz! Ah well, very enjoyable pod otherwise, thanks chaps.
Lovely podcast! Nearly perfectly timed with the April Fools attempt in the magazine itself too. You’d almost think these were planned. Though I am getting worried that quizzes have psychologically broken Cappsy. – It’s really irritating that at this point they’re trying to frame Holly not being in Series VI as anything other than a direct creative decision. Even if Rob and Doug were being forced to do a series entirely on Starbug where Red Dwarf is lost, there have been plenty of episodes where they brought Holly with them to Starbug – like Backwards, where Red Dwarf is light years away from them in distance and millions of years away from them in time – so they absolutely could have kept Holly in Series VI if they wanted to, without even needing to fudge anything. It’s actually far less believable that they would be able to keep Rimmer than keep Holly. Of course now we know with 100% certainty how disingenuous this was, because Doug has since made 3 full series set on Red Dwarf but without Holly anyway. – Fun to hear one of my favourite fan theories – the Kochanski/Inquisitor theory – get a discussion! But I must defend it from the accusation that it doesn’t make sense because Series 1 Kochanski’s life isn’t meaningfully different from Series VII Kochanski’s life. This is exactly what happens when The Inquisitor replaces Lister and Kryten too! So it fits perfectly… except for the fact that Lister and Kochanski’s relationship was retconned in before The Inquisitor and we see Clare Grogan Kochanski after The Inquisitor. Both things were from Lister’s mind though, so maybe his personal role in resetting the timeline had a weird effect on him. – I appreciate them not bothering with the framing device for the Duane Dibbley comic this time, where they said the stories can only happen when Cat gets a new bump on the head. The Duane Dibbley comic is like a What If.. ? or Elseworlds type story, we don’t need it to be fit into canon. And it being a dream means they’re really shouldn’t be any scenes not from Duane’s perspective. – So if the Jake Bullet and Duane Dibbley comics take place in the same universe, how did the death of Sebastian Doyle work? I understood Duane surviving because he was at the end of the line up, but Jake was at the beginning. Unless this becomes important later (or it was already explained and I forgot it), I guess it’s just that he’s part mechanoid, so it never would have killed him? – I wonder what people thought about Psirens in the context of that Kochanski teaser. I can only imagine disappointment if they built up a Kochanski return in their minds for several months only to realise it was just someone pretending to be her. – What would be the better purchase, one super-duper deluxe Red Dwarf jacket, or 28 copies of each of those choose your own adventure books? 90s Red Dwarf fans waiting for Series 1 to come out on video: 90s Red Dwarf fans waiting for the comic adaptation of Balance of Power:
I would’ve be in the sliver that didn’t care about Sonic 5 years ago, but that has changed since. And Moonlight is entirely to blame for this.
Just remembered I “reviewed” You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat a few years ago. https://cwickham.blogspot.com/2019/02/you-can-be-stainless-steel-rat.html
I’d also argue that we basically don’t know Clare Kochanski’s early life. How do we know she went to cyber school and had a pony called Trumper?
The only other UK comic that I know of which has distinct “volumes” is ‘Judge Dredd Megazine’, which was – of course – also then published by Fleetway (now Rebellion). The last changeover for the Megazine was to Volume 5, however given that Volume 5 currently spans a period of about 22 years I think they may have quietly fucked it all off.
Buster, also published by Fleetway, *technically* had two volumes; the second volume began when it switched from weekly to fortnightly near the end of its run (to preserve the pool of available material, as the amount of reprints steadily increased over the course of the nineties until the entire publication was almost entirely archive material).
It’s weird how they started a crossover story right before the new volume, but since Androids refuses to stop, there was no chance of going in with a clean slate anyway.
Pretty good issue. I really enjoyed all three of the interviews, the Duane strip, the Ace one and I still seem to like Jake Bullet more than most people. Intrigued by the Duane/Jake crossover. The other strips did nothing for me I’m afraid. I hadn’t realised the guy who writes Androids also wrote Ace of Blackhearts. Really?! Androids is so fucking shit. The panel with Philby Frutch lying on the beach that’s largely taken up by the soles of his feet is very reminiscent of the Better Than Life novel cover. NEWS Steve Martin directing Thursday Man is a new one on me but I do remember reading in an interview years ago that Rob and Doug wrote it with Walter Matthau in mind for the main role, but when he read the script he hated it. ROBERT INTERVIEW Maria McErlane (that is the correct spelling), who Robert talks about doing From Volvo to Vulva with, went on to host the sex-themed ITV game show Carnal Knowledge. Her co-host was Graham Norton, except for the pilot episode where she was ably assisted by Robert instead, and here is said pilot: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nuYGnq-2EQ4&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD Highly amused by the interviewers interrupting Robert’s protestations about nepotism regarding Judy Pascoe’s casting in Camille, with “Craig Charles’s girlfriend was in it too.” MEL BIBBY Very interesting and Mel comes across really well, especially in his diplomatic comments about Paul Montague’s work. He’s absolutely right of course, and I very much enjoyed Cappsy pointing that out and his little rant about Rob and Doug being all pissy about the Series 1 and 2 sets. Very cool Demons & Angels pic with the Lister stand-in. I don’t remember seeing that before. Cyberzone is set on a spaceship? Cracking DwarfCast. Looking forward to whatever the Volume 1 related bonus turns out to be!
Finally found the time to read the issue and listen to the podcast this weekend. Great stuff as always! (This issue really is Kev Sutherland’s magnum opus isn’t it? He seems to do more here than ever.) Before I start on the contents, a couple of comments on the relaunch strategy: while it’s pretty unusual for UK magazines to have numbered volumes, it did happen sometimes for comics – for example, the UK “Mighty World Of Marvel” anthology magazine went through two different volumes in slightly different formats in the 70s and 80s (as well as two further volumes after being resurrected in the 2000s). And these kinds of reboots are a lot more common in US comics, where relaunching with a new #1 is a fairly well-established way of getting a new readership on board – the thinking being that a prospective buyer is a lot more likely to try a #1 and get in on the ground floor than they would be to try a #19 (say) where they are likely to be halfway through the story. These kinds of reboots are also often timed when there is an associated big movie or TV release, to try and capitalise on the publicity and capture casual fans that might have been attracted by that, and might be looking for a related comic to read. So with all that in mind, in the case of the Smegazine I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few elements at play: the format of the magazine having been refined over these initial run of issues, giving a stronger sense of what they want it to look like; an opportunity to capture a growing audience of Red Dwarf fans (as well as Series V’s broadcast in 1992, you’d had a repeat run of IV soon afterwards which had helped to build up viewers); and perhaps most importantly, the fact that Series VI was on the horizon (and was thought to be even more imminent than it ended up being) – and there was likely to be a big promotional push for the show that would also spill out for the Smegazine. With all that in mind, I can see why they might want a new #1 on the shelves rather than just an issue #15 of the existing mag. Anyway, on to the contents. The small print in the competition rules actually made me laugh this time, a rare occurence. The Duane Dibbley strip begins: “Imagine a Britain where the people live in constant fear, where the government is proud to be called fascist.” While there wasn’t much to go on here, I did like the blending of different art styles with the Jake Bullet appearance in the final panel, which was a delightful surprise. News From The Dwarf is pretty good this month. The Kochanski item spoiler box and the mention of The Thursday Man are both intriguing for different reasons, and the ratings info made me laugh with how insanely good those figures would be today. Although the mention of “May 4th (go with you)” did make me think STOP GETTING STAR WARS WRONG. I found the second section of the Robert Llewellyn interview a bit boring, but it did highlight just how busy he was back then – lots of projects get a mention – and I enjoyed the Backwards set photo of Kryten in his Sensational Reverse Brothers get-up, which seems like a relatively rare shot to me (I don’t remember seeing it before). On to the Cantabelis Tales strip, which I thought was really great! From the very start with the derelicts gag and Icke-con pun it had me on-side, but there’s so much to like here, especially in the art: that uplit panel of Kryten is genuinely chilling, and along with some of the easter eggs mentioned in the Dwarfcast, like the cheeky Superman cameo, I also loved the stupid Wife Of Bath visual gag in that same panel, which feels like something out of Airplane or Police Squad. In fact, the whole thing had that ZAZ sensibility to it, the scattershot gag approach that’s just going for laughs at any cost. The Procul Harum reference might be my favourite of all. Oh, and one other thought did occur to me: was the section of the story dealing with Plowman/Parsons/Sergeant a deliberate reference to UK comedy names that would have been well known at the time, or just a coincidence? On the Batman ad question about which version is being referred to (and Bruce Wayne becoming Batman for the first time), I looked it up – and interestingly the issue being advertised is another relaunch of a UK comics mag in a second renumbered volume: Vol 2 of Fleetway’s Batman launched in 1993 and reprinted Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s fantastic and now-classic “Batman: Year One”, which retells the origin story (and is well worth a read if you’ve never read it). The April Fool page was entertaining for about five seconds (although rather than “what a waste of a page”, I think they were probably actually thinking “what a way to fill a page” – with as little effort as possible). Having said that, it did make me think of both Rob’s recent musings on doing a Red Dwarf show in animation, an also (inevitably) Red Christmas. It also made me think of this other 90s April Fool from the UK Sega Magazine about Virtua Racing on the 32X, which did actually fool me at the time, and which I felt utterly stupid about afterwards (after spending about half an hour trying to drive around and spell out “Daytona”). I mean, the guy’s name is even Li Poo Farl. Androids is as baffling as ever – but Cappsy’s comments about big nose not being dead made me think of the “old Bignose is back” gag from The Black Adder, which gave me more laughs than the actual strip did. The Brittas feature offered a few nuggets of interesting detail, but none more so than the fact that you could buy a plate of sweet and sour for 98p. Different times. As for the Flibble strip, I think it’s exactly the kind of intelligent, right-on comedy that the Smegazine needs. The books page is a bit lacklustre, but the mention of the Time Machine series unlocked a memory – I definitely read a few of those. Also, is it me or does the “Stainless Steel Rat Wants You” title not match the cover image? As for the Ace Rimmer strip, I thought it was an interesting idea but a bit clunkily executed – I didn’t love the art and although the twist about how the two Aces diverged was a nice idea (that mirrors the confounded-expectations of the TV show), they didn’t really leave enough time to explore it. Although I loved Mr Rat’s forerunner in the shape of Mr Dormouse. The Holly Grams page was… ok, I suppose. The point about Cat never having met a real woman is a fair one though, as well as Stasis Leak there’s also Backwards and the pub in Timeslides, lots of examples really. I thought the Mel Bibby/Joe Nazzaro interview was a great feature, full of interesting tidbits and things that I hadn’t noticed before (like the Holoship set redressing for BTR). These deep-dive interviews are some of my favourite parts of the Smegazines, proper little time-capsule moments that go into very pleasing detail on various aspects of the show. I hope there are more of these coming up. And finally, Jake Bullet is very like the opening Duane Dibbley pages: I don’t care much for the story itself, but smashing the two strips together is a brilliant idea that must have taken a fair bit of planning. More recently (well, in 2012), a similar idea was pulled off very well in the pages 2000AD, with a story called Trifecta that ended up pulling together strands of three different strips all running in 2000AD at the same time, and revealing halfway through that they were all part of a single narrative that ended up coming together in a single story for the finale. These things are very complicated to plan, but a brilliant surprise for those reading who don’t see it coming.
Oh, and related to the Smegazine relaunch, Forbiddenplanet has this archive photo from a May 1993 signing which I assume must have been to promote the new #1: https://forbiddenplanet.com/posts/red-dwarf-smegazine/
and perhaps most importantly, the fact that Series VI was on the horizon (and was thought to be even more imminent than it ended up being) – and there was likely to be a big promotional push for the show that would also spill out for the Smegazine. That makes sense. I associate Smeg Vol 2 with being the Series VI Edition, and I specifically collected Vol 2 a few years later partly for that focus (the larger size and value helped).
Oh, and related to the Smegazine relaunch, Forbiddenplanet has this archive photo from a May 1993 signing which I assume must have been to promote the new #1: https://forbiddenplanet.com/posts/red-dwarf-smegazine/ Oh wow! I can already hear myself saying “link in the show notes” in the next Smegazine Rack.
BOBBY LLEW INTER VIEW What’s Boon? A belated response to this – it was an ITV drama starring Michael Elphick and Neil Morrissey. I only have vague memories of it but I think motorbikes featured prominently for some reason.
What’s Boon? A belated response to this – it was an ITV drama starring Michael Elphick and Neil Morrissey. I only have vague memories of it but I think motorbikes featured prominently for some reason. One of Neil Morrissey’s less supernatural motorcycle dramas between I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle and The Vanishing Man.
One of Neil Morrissey’s less supernatural motorcycle dramas between I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle and The Vanishing Man. With absolutely no background I cannot tell if you are being flippant or totally serious.
Off topic but the website is borked for me whilst logged in. I can see everything whilst logged out but as soon as I log in the hamburger menu stops working and there’s nothing at the bottom. Although before, jumping to ‘recent posts & comment’ didnae work nor did ‘scroll to bottom’ but those are working now. After trying to comment logged me out so I had to re login. Copying and pasting this tine in case it boots me off again. Here goes …
Also progress: it now shows me multiple articles on the homepage whereas before only the most recent one. (No edit function on my previous comment to add this – although I forget whether that’s normally available on the main part of the site or just the forum.)
On that note, I assume that the inability to post on the forum is both universal and known about? Another weird thing – I reloaded the Smegle Difficult Daily page, and it was showing up as non-completed, even though I did it this morning! Recreated my answers just to be on the safe side.
I actually didn’t realise there was an issue as it doesn’t seem to be happening for admins… I’ve reversed a few changes I made earlier which hopefully works?…
Normal service appears to have resumed, thanks guys! Edit: aha, for my future reference we do have editing ability here too.
I actually didn’t realise there was an issue as it doesn’t seem to be happening for admins… I’ve reversed a few changes I made earlier which hopefully works?… Testing 123 testing
I actually didn’t realise there was an issue as it doesn’t seem to be happening for admins Typical elite.
