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The Sleeze Brothers comic was first published in August 1989 by Marvel UK. After working together on various licensed titles such as the Real Ghostbusters, Thundercats and Dr Who, John Carnell and Andy Lanning were given the chance by their editor Richard Starkings, to create an original six issue mini series. The deeper, darker origins. In the beginning... The Sleeze Brothers was an idea created in the pub in Knightsbridge, some 12 months earlier when John Carnell met with Andy Lanning to ask him to do some artwork for a poster for the cleaning company he was working for at the time. Andy, who was already well on his way to fame and fortune, drawing strips for Look In magazine, duly agreed. For £50 and a pint of lager he drew a picture of ‘the Grimebusters’ a bunch of cleaning folk, not unlike the Ghostbusters, but holding mops, vacuums and brushes instead of Ion Cannons and ghost traps. Job done and lunch time drinks taking hold, John enquired after Andy’s cousins Phil and Pete Carmichael, old friends from their home town of Ramsgate. Andy, who would often caricature family and friends, had drawn them dressed up as a couple of Private Dicks called ‘The Sleeze Brothers’ and was toying with the idea of making them into a comic strip. John, who was a writer in disguise, yes, a bit like a Transformer, liked the idea and ran with it. Within the hour, and a few pints down, the first mad ideas for futuristic detective agency set in the dystopian future world of The Big Apple, was born. Episode 2. Back to reality... John needed a job, writing. The cleaning work was giving him housemaids knee, elbow and brain. Andy suggested he should try writing comic strips. Encouraged, John followed Andy into a tryout for Marvel Comics and there met the man soon to become the architect of the Sleeze Brothers attempt to take over the world - editor Richard Starkings. Andy, port folio filled with drawings, was hired and John, empty-pocketed, but with a head full of ideas and enthusiasm, was given a chance to write a sample script with Andy. The process was tortuous, they laboured long and hard into the night, come dawn, they had sitting before them, a comic strip! But not just any comic strip - one that would put them on the launch pad to greater things. They knew it, they could smell success - or was creative fluids leaking from every pore. No, it was possibly just body odour. Scrubbed up and shaking slightly like two naughty boys sent to see the headmaster, they presented the work to Richard Starkings. They held their breath. He stuck out his unusually large tongue... surveyed their work, humming. Slurping and generally making pleasant noises. Then he laughed. We were hired! Backs were slapped. Hugs shared. Champagne corks popped and flew over the river Thames - hampering the rescue efforts of environmentalists trying to save a stranded whale. John, Andy, Richard and a few of the beautiful, FHM-like models that worked at Marvel at that time, as editors and secretaries, all retired to the pub, setting a frightening trend for Friday nights to come in London WC1. Next... Sleezy goings on in the Marvel UK offices. In fighting, cat fighting, dog fighting, and the sexual relations that led to Sleeze Brothers, the bastard son of Marvel UK, the screaming baby that no one, except us, really wanted to be born. CHARACTERS
El’ape and Deadbeat Sleeze Based in the slum side of Lower Corr Central, El’ape and Deadbeat Sleeze started life as unwanted boil-in-a-bag babies, surplus stock of the frozen embryo market. Bad seeds sown on the stony ground of THE STREET, their rise to private eye status came after El’ape’s ‘much too near death’ experience, fighting in the Rim Wars Penal Forces, as part of President Sinartra’s War Against Alien Terror.Some psychiatrists say that being the the only survivor of his suicide squad messed with El’ape’s mind. Others, that drifting alone, through deep space in a survival pod ‘really put the zap on him.’ But, Deadbeat, who knows his brother better than anyone, will agree that El’ape has always been ‘two bullets short of a clip.’Clumsy, inept, and prone to contagious outbreaks of bad language and unrestrained stupidity, the Brothers survival in the tough environs of The Street is baffling. In straight Darwinian terms its a brilliant example of ‘survival of the thickest.’
An immigrant worker from the Dumbslob Delta star system, Pigheadski started at the bottom of the pile as a section house cleaner, but soon beat his way up to sergeant in The Big Apple’s police department. Vindictive, grouchy, foul-mouthed and constantly harangued, Pigheadski’s lot as a cop is unenviable. No matter how hard he works, fitting people up, planting evidence and beating confessions out of innocent suspects, he just can’t get the quota of prosecutions he needs to get his promotion. So, he takes out his frustration on The Sleeze Brothers.
President Sinartra started life as Bing Frankie Croona Sinartra, son of a small time embryo farmer from the bible-burning belt of the Heinzz midwest. However, after an accident involving his sperm spreading tractor, a teleport and a gene splicer, his life was irreversibly changed. Half man, half industrial plant, he became an attraction in a travelling circus before moving into showbizz proper, hosting his own panel game show where the contestants had to spot the genetic alterations of the guest celebrity, winning the chance to have their own billion dollar genetic makeover! Buoyed up by his huge popularity and propped up by Sicilicon Mafia money, Sinartra went into the ultimate freak show of politics, winning the people’s hearts and droids parts, to become President. Marilyn Blondeclone President Sinartra’s main squeeze, Marilyn is a born survivor. “An Actress ” by trade, she started life as a reloader on a Texas Turkey Shoot*. Surviving ridiculous odds of being winged in the melee, Marilyn made it onto the cover of Gun Nut Illustrated and soon became the pin up of millions of Alien-hating good old boys. After flirting with Borno Movies* she emerged from the San Andreas Clinic genetically altered. Having the gene’s of other tragic Blondes spliced into her make-up seemed like a good idea on the surface - boy does she look hot - but a ticking time bomb lurks below. *Texas Turkey Shoot - vacation camp for the Sinartra administration. Every year, the wealthy and powerful gather on the Sinartra ranch to shoot illegal aliens entering earth via wormholes from deep space. * Borno Movies - Sex in the future has evolved into a mere pastime ( check out our extreme sports feature.)Children are created in the lab via test tubes. Borno’s are home movies of human females gestating and giving birth the ‘natural way’ and are heavily frowned upon by the immoral majority. (see also Twats) J Edgar Hairdryer Multi-ocular, tutu-wearing, ultra-paranoid head of the G.I.B. (Galactic Investigation Bureau). The Presidents main Home World Security Advisor. * G - Men - Clones of dead action movie stars, the more violent the movie the better the agent (The Bronsen 2069 has recently been upgraded by the Death Wish 2199 model, with enhanced ‘shoot to kill everyone’ protocol)
Soon after the Earth opened up it’s space borders for intergalactic trade,the Sicilicons arrived. A race of brutal gangsters from Soprano Star System, they took on humanoid forms to blend in with the existing Earth gangs, and mistakenly named themselves after pasta dishes. Unhappy with the competition, they soon wiped out the existing Mafioso families and imposed their own ancient code of ‘owemurder’ on the criminal underworld - you owe, we murder! Ethereal, malignant and with a goldfish bowl full of stars for a head, The Cosmos Father rules the biggest crime syndicate in the galaxy with an ion fist.* From loan sharking and prostitution, to air smuggling and black-hole waste disposal, the Sicilicons control it all. Cross the Cosmos Father just once and you’ll be sharing pillows with the head of your favourite pet! *ion fist - a hand-held weapon of mass destruction. Raised from private eye stock, Vanity Case is a filly from a pedigree stable. Her father was a sperm donation from a hard up Mike Hammer, her mother a Lauren Bacall clone. Sassy, intelligent, charming and always packing more than a pout, Vanity’s solved some of the century’s most puzzling crimes - The playboy drownings, dubbed ‘The pussy in the well’ murders by the press. The case of the ‘Cornflake Kid’ a cereal killer who terrorised muesli-eating business breakfasts everywhere and most famously, the case of Jaques Normaler, the detecticidal parasitic villain of the ‘murder in space’ caper. * Well Cuffed magazine - a glossy magazine devoted to handcuff fetishists who get their kicks well, err, handcuffing themselves to celebrities. Twats - Terran Women Air Temperance Society The Twats are a small but vocal network of outraged, spleen-venting, whinge-baggers. Made up solely of bored, upper crust homemakers with media and presidential connections, they crusade on just about every moral issue, but mostly about the ruination of mankind - fresh air. Of course, it only took a matter of months before the Sicilicon Mafia made them an offer they couldn’t refuse and took over the business. The most popular way of taking air in is fizzy drinks, cut with carbon dioxide. Pigheadski’s long-suffering subordinate and distant relative. A pigs ear of a policeman. Nuff said. Boy, does that hog stink. Us here at Sleeze HQ have come up with a mad competition that no Sleeze Brothers fan anywhere, on any planet, could resist. ( Including those alien fans who keep abducting me. Stop it. I don’t like the probing.) We’re offering you the chance to come up with a theme tune for the animated series! That’s right, a competition where the winner will go down in history as the originator of the theme tune to the biggest animated show ever. (I have a time machine. It’s already happened.) All you have to do is use the lyrics provided as a guideline*, put them to a tune, film yourself performing it, and post it on Youtube under the name of 'Sleeze Brothers theme tune'. Don’t freak out if you haven’t got a recording studio or a professional camera, just do it, live or otherwise. Film yourself on a phone, if that’s all you’ve got. You can perform it with your band, or go Han Solo. The style could be Metal, Folk, Punk, Classical, Techno, Hip Hop, Country, Ska - anything you like! Whatever launches your space shuttle! (err, as long as its the not the disintegrating one). We’ll know what we like when we hear/see it! The winner will have their song recorded professionally in a studio. Then the song will then be spliced, using footage from the animated series, to create a three minute music video. 1st runner up will get a Sleeze bag and a night out somewhere in the world, (Could be in L.A. South Korea, Amsterdam, or Newcastle, England) with the creators of the Sleeze Brothers, John Carnell and Andy Lanning, plus the winner of the comp and team Sleeze. Second, third and fourth runners up will get a Sleeze bag which includes, tee-shirts, figures, Inflatey-Friends (if you’re over eighteen) posters and signed comics. There will also be a big booby prize for the worst entry and/or the one that made us laugh the most. So, what are you waiting for? You’ve got nothing to lose but your vanity - so get on the case, start composing, NOW! * If you want to come up with your own lyrics - that’s cool too. Small print... (read it or we’ll send Sgt. Pigheadski round to beat the crap out of you) Competition will run for six months from this posting or until we’re sick of it. The winner will also receive a negotiated share of the revenue from the theme tune/video which we plan to make available to everyone as a download on this site. No entries will be accepted other than posted recording on Youtube. We will not be held responsible for any content of posted videos. So if you don’t want to upset granny, keep it broadcastble. Foof Productions and the creators Carnell/Lanning will be the sole judges of the winner. In the unlikely event that a clear cut winner doesn’t emerge, the top five entries will be posted on this web site and the fans, you, will get to decide for us. Foof Productions Ltd, will not be liable for any expenses, costs involved for the making, posting, showing of your videos. Or any legal actions arising from them on this planet, any other planet yet to be discovered, in this galaxy, universe, multiverse or any other parallel dimension in which you may be, by some weird distortion of karmic accountability, rule as a despotic king/tyrant and we exists as your humble, terrorised subjects. SLEEZE BROTHERS THEME
Verse 1 No job too big or too small Chorus Sleeze Bothers Verse 2 Down in the depths of Greebatown Bridge Test tube rejects from the lower core Chorus Sleeze Bothers
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