When you're fighting an alien invasion which threatens the solar system, someone has to do the dirty work. So leave it to the V.C.s - the space patrol team monitoring the spaceways and clearing up after the Geek attacks. No wonder they are know as the Vacuum Cleaners The series introduces us to Steve Smith, the newest recruit, who's also the only Earth-born member of a crew manned by half-breeds, who mistrust him and expecting him to earn their respect from the trials of combat. In time he proves himself to be a worthy addition to the crew, but not without sacrifice and tragedy.

Gerry Finley-Day has been Tharg's master of future warfare having gone on to create Invasion! and Rogue Trooper. The V.C.s is one of the earlier series he created, alongside artist Mike McMahon, for 2000AD and is set in the year 2531. Using Smith as the narrator, his experiences and reactions become the eyes and ears of the readers too as we encounter his world for the first time. He matures as the series progresses and as gradually wins his crewmates around, but not without a tragic toll as one by one his colleagues fall in battle, either killed by the Geeks or permanently blinded like captain Jupe. Such is the brutality of their mission.

The beauty of Finley-Day's stories and those penned by Steve McManus is in creating an realistic vision of the 26th Century: its social and political structure and man's status within the universe. There are echoes of thos=e sci-fi traditions of novelists such as Asimov, Vonnegut, and Frederick Pohl Whilst the origins of the Geeks are never fully explored, we do discover how man has populated the universe, adapting to life on Jupiter and Mars, as demonstrated by two crew-men Dwarf Star and Hen-Sho, as well as the creation of Transatlantic City on Earth. The authority comes in the form of The Diplomatic Workforce (also known as the Dish-Washers), who treat the V.C.s as an expedient means to cut costs in pursuit of peace. No wonder Steve Smith feels like a dustman of the skies, assigned the dirty dangerous work.

The artwork has a brutal dynamism in its battle scenes but with most chapters evenly drafted between Mike McMahon, Cam Kennedy and Garry Leach, it demonstrates their nascent draftsmanship, which if often rough and ready, but which is nurtured through this strip before finding acclaim on Dredd, The Last American, Rogue Trooper, and Miracleman. These are gritty tales of the spaceways with out solar system turned into one giant battleground. By the end, the readers, like war-torn Steve Smith, are older, wiser and hardened to the realities of war. The V.C.s it seems are Valiantly Credible.