TECHNICAL SPECS: Published 2 pages at a time in Look-In #12-14/1980, by Angus P. Allan and Arthur Ranson.
IN THIS ONE... A long-destroyed train abducts a little girl.
REVIEW: A simple 6-pager, it has an interesting premise and gives Ranson a chance to draw some train action, but it's very much under-developed. Initially evoking Dickens' The Signalman, train tracks appear out of a disused tunnel when kids find an old belt buckle, and it takes the female child away to be reunited with her grandmother, a practitioner of witchcraft, who died on that train long ago. There's the suggestion that her soul will be transferred to the little girl before the train falls off the bridge and kills everyone, but I don't know if that's more interesting than having the granny change the future when the girl tells her what's about to happen. Sapphire stealing her away just before the accident is a pretty ordinary resolution.
The best bit - aside from the beautiful train illustrations - is probably Sapphire holding up the buckle like she's holding a train's pull break. The worst is that there are too many blondes in the story, the grandmother looking very much like Sapphire, and confusing the narrative early on. I had to track and back and reread, and I didn't get much more out of it doing so.
READABILITY: Medium-Low - There's just not enough to it.
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