The Saviour

Mark Millar, Daniel Vallely & Nigel Kitching
The Saviour (1990)
I don't remember whether this came before Insiders or very shortly after, but it was in any case the first comic which seemed to propel Mark Millar in the general direction of the radar - and a brave undertaking by Leicester's Trident Comics, putting themselves out there with this title and fingers crossed that all that late eighties fan enthusiasm for things which weren't actually the X-Men hadn't been just so much hot air. I remember the sense of excitement fairly well, so it all seems a little sad with hindsight, particularly given that Trident's Martin Skidmore is no longer with us. I met him a few times and he was a lovely guy, and even though Trident went tits up with tragic inevitability, one can hardly fault his ambition.

The Saviour lasted six issues and the story remains incomplete, although I gather Millar may have recycled some elements in American Jesus. This book collects the first five issues, presenting a fairly well rounded if obviously open ended chapter describing a second coming wherein our universally adored Lord and Saviour, is actually the man downstairs taking his revenge in the body of Jonathan Ross. It's more complicated than that, obviously, and although I suspect that Jesus is back but is actually someone else is probably its own genre by now, this was either the first, or is at least the first that I remember. The real Jesus has returned too in Saviour, albeit as an itinerant stoner no-one takes seriously, but - and here I make no apologies for revealing a plot twist in a book that got cancelled thirty fucking years ago - even the real Jesus turns out to be someone else.

I vaguely recall mumblings about the artwork being crap, and that's what killed it, and the same mumblings can naturally be found in contemporary form on Goodreads, but such mumblings are as unto the bleatings of those without sight to see, my child. Daniel Vallely was patently still finding his art-feet but his stark black and white almost photorealist images remain shocking and chilling, and if you can't see the beauty in Nigel Kitching's stark McKeever-esque expressionism, you can go fuck yourself, quite frankly.

I don't suppose there's much chance of ever seeing this thing concluded now, but it's at least nice that we have enough to reveal the full extent of its promise. When they started up a year or so later, Vertigo Comics really should have been all over this one.