Nigel Kitching & others - The Light Brigade (1990)

 

This may seem a bit of a stretch as reviews go - not even a stack of comic books, but a strip featured in an anthology title which was dead in the water by the eighth issue; so The Light Brigade was never finished, which is a shame.

The Light Brigade first appeared in the late and much missed Martin Skidmore's Trident - a bi-monthly which lasted a little over a year - and was arguably the lead strip given its featuring on three of the eight covers, notably those drawn by both John Ridgeway and Alan Davis. Eddie Campbell's superb Bacchus has obviously done much better in the long run, but The Light Brigade, co-created with Neil Gaiman - although his involvement was limited to the first instalment - felt like the potential hit single.

It's a cyberpunk comic strip hitting all of the points you would expect to find in a cyberpunk comic strip, but dating from 1989 - way before the rise of the internet. It wasn't the first, didn't do anything which hadn't already been done in a William Gibson novel, and in the wake of the movie Tron, I've no doubt everyone from the X-Men to Biffo the Bear had toppled some virtual corporate edifice in cyberspace by this point; but The Light Brigade nevertheless feels early, like the first expression of something new, as was, without quite having dated in the usual way. The story, such as it is, tells of four individuals, underwhelming urban nobodies in real life, waging a VR war as magically punky pirates; and it would probably be bollocks were it not for Nigel Kitching.

I gather Kitching went on to international renown as artist on the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book - which seems, by the way, a peculiarly logical development; but back in 1989 he was drawing this, Mark Millar's Saviour, and not much else that I'm aware of. His art tended to the starkly angular and expressionist while conveying a lightness of touch equal, I would argue, to that of Eddie Campbell elsewhere in the mag. We get a few fill-in episodes from adjacent artists, Nigel Dobbyn, D'Israeli and so on, each of which squares so beautifully with the whole as to come and go without the usual sense of disruption or looming deadlines. So I guess it's all down to Kitching's writing, which is well paced, erudite without waffling, and prone to sparking off new and delightfully wacky ideas above and beyond anything you would expect of punky pirates fighting Richard Branson in cyberspace. It was at least as good as anything in 2000AD that year.

Unfortunately, excepting Bacchus, it was significantly better than the rest of Trident for the most part -  a black and white newsprint anthology which never quite found its identity and was neither 2000AD, Deadline, nor the small press. It had its moments - notably a couple of strips by Denny Derbyshire - but was firing off in too many directions with too many weak links - not least being the terrible art of Lowlife. Thus did Trident fall from the edge after just one year, going the way of most attempts to sell not-quite-mainstream comic books to the English. I don't suppose The Light Brigade will ever be finished, but it should be remembered at least.

Red Razors

Mark Millar, Steve Yeowell & Nigel Dobbyn Red Razors (1995)
It's hard to know where to start with this one, the comic book equivalent of a family-size bag of Morrisons' own brand cheese footballs. It's set in that version of twenty-second century Russia in which the Soviet Union endured, as did its furtive fixation with all things western, specifically all things 1970s western to the point where the only clue as to culture and geography is the occasionally gratuitous afterthought of a hammer and sickle slapped on either a building or someone's hat. There's a Church of Elvis, a talking horse called Ed, a Starsky and Hutch themed nightclub complete with Huggy Bear, references to Top Cat, Laverne & Shirley, Scooby Doo, on and on and on. It borders on exhausting for the same reason that comedian Peter Kay became unbearable when he gave up telling jokes in preference for gurgling who remembers fondant fancies? over and over like some peculiarly senile man-toddler. The thing that hurts most is that I know I've done this exact same thing: if you have no story to tell, just keep coming with those hilariously knowing references to the amusingly crap and dated, and maybe no-one will notice. It's probably what kept Deadline magazine going, or at least the careers of Jamie Hewlett and Philip Bond, respectively artists of Tank Girl and the truly excruciating Wired World, the strips which dared to name the fave bands of those involved every three fucking panels. Hey kids, who wants to check out The Wonder Stuff?

I'll pass, thanks.

Yet I still find it impossible to dislike Red Razors - the story of a Soviet psychopath turned instrument of rough justice, in case it wasn't obvious. It's fucking stupid, but it's almost so stupid that it comes out the other side, which is probably helped by the wonderful art of Steve Yeowell who just about manages to do the job of telling the joke with a straight face. There's still a gap in there, a place where certain elements don't quite connect because the story can't work out whether or not it should have been drawn by Paul Sample or Gilbert Shelton; but by the time Millar wheels out Vic Reeves' and Bob Mortimer's Judge Nutmeg as a radioactive mutant dispensing harsh sentences for crimes such as stepping on the cracks in the pavement, it's easier to just give in and go with it.

The Hunt for Red Razors drawn by Nigel Dobbyn doesn't really fare so well. The references to Multi-Coloured Swap Shop have been toned down, but the art doesn't quite fit. It's not that it's bad, but the guy was clearly just starting out and still had some way to go; and I suppose the same was true of Millar himself - Red Razors feels rushed, unlike either Saviour or Insiders so far as I recall, and rushed  to the point of having one of those panels so beautifully parodied in Viz wherein a crowd is stood to one side offering commentary on the action:

Razors is pretty tough! Spike broke his ribs and he's still fighting!

Yes, Barry. Thanks for that.

People tend to get a bit misty-eyed with the Judge Dredd mythos from which Red Razors is derived, possibly because it's enduring and English, and whilst much of it is undeniably great, readers tend to forget all the deadline-driven landfill like The Secret Diary of Adrian Cockroach Aged 13½ Months. I'm not really sure where Red Razors sits on the scale, because the whole thing really is frankly fucking stupid, but as I say, it's so stupid it kind of works, and as such it's very difficult to dislike.