In 1998, just after Alwyn and I had completed the first issue of ARMAGEDDON PATROL we were asked if we would like to submit ideas for a proposed new kids comic by a leading British newsstand publisher. In the end the title never happened, but Alwyn and I produced a sample chapter of a comic strip which we had hoped would appear in that comic. Entitled AGENTS OF THE CROWN, it was to follow the adventures of two, larger than life, Victorian heroes - Professor Tempest and Mrs. Heart. We hoped that story would be a kind of mixture between The Avengers and The X-Files - all wrapped up in a gaslights and cobblestones setting. It is the kind of thing which Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill were to do (much better) a few years later as The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The comic would have been in color and so Alwyn produced sample painted color for two of the pages. The colored versions of those pages are included here even though the other pages are only in black and white. I hope they give a sense of what the entire strip would have looked like colored. Alwyn did a fantastic job on these pages. The Victorian setting really seemed to inspire him and he crafted incredibly detailed pages with a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. Playing to his strengths, I gave him plenty of ideas for Tempest's study on page three and lots of space to show it in. He rose to the challenge and produced one of my favorite pages out of any of my strips. So, for the first time ever, anywhere - I'm proud to introduce the first (and only) episode of AGENTS OF THE CROWN!

John 2004