Plot: When orphan Billy Moon finds a painting of 17th Century London in a junk shop he is transported to the time period for real. Sapphire and Steel (dressed in suitable attire for the period) find him there and try to get him back to the 20th Century. But Billy is being used by a malevolent demon for its own purposes. Sapphire finds Van Hulst, artist of the painting Billy found in the junkshop, busy sketching. Introducing herself she makes sure that her own image becomes a part of the picture. Using Billy, the demon causes the Great Fire of London. Billy, Sapphire and Steel are trapped in the flames but by whistling a trigger tune - and given Sapphire's presence in the trigger picture - they are transported back in the nick of time.
Comments: Ranson signs off with
what seems to be a practice run for his upcoming Further
Adventures of Oliver Twist strip, with this detailed period spic set among
the rat runs of 17th Century London. But enough with the pictures already - how many times has this device of 'forces in paintings' been used now? Central premise is a little daft surely - after all, every schoolboy knows that the Great Fire of London was an essential event in history that cleansed filthy London of the plague?
While this was the last
strip for a while, readers were not kept in suspense and the
strip signed off with a message that Sapphire and Steel would return 'later
this year'.
