2000AD Summer Offensive

Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and others 2000AD Summer Offensive (1993)
Not a collection, in case anyone was wondering - but eight back issues of the comic nabbed from eBay and dating from a year or so before I gave up on the galaxy's greatest and flogged my entire collection to Skinny Melink in Lewisham. I remember Big Dave being great, and as something which is obviously never going to get a reprint, and the Summer Offensive sounded fun as I applied myself to Wikipedia in an effort to jog my memory of having read the thing.

The idea was to hand the editorial reins over to Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and John Smith for a couple of months just to see what would happen - these being three writers who had distinguished themselves with sparky, volatile strips characterised by a reluctance to play it safe, or summink. Maybe someone was hoping to revive that wave of lucrative outrage which had greeted 2000AD when it first appeared in the seventies.

Big Dave is as horrible as I recall it being, and therefore justifies this return visit. It's essentially real world Biffa Bacon from Viz turned up to eleven, working mainly because it really doesn't have any redeeming features whatsoever and constitutes a psychological portrait of the worst aspects of nineties Britain, and because Steve Parkhouse's artwork is gorgeous, possibly the best he's ever drawn. Big Dave arguably defies criticism by already being everything bad you could possibly say about it.

Then there's the rest, none of which I was able to remember from the first time I read this stuff back in the nineties, and now I know why. Morrison and Millar's version of Judge Dredd isn't bad but it's no Cursed Earth, and only really feels like Dredd because of Carlos Ezquerra's characteristically exceptional artwork, which I guess at least distracts from a story which might otherwise seem fairly average; and the Indian Judge is named Bhaji and comes fitted with speech patterns very much in the vein of Apu from the Simpsons, so that's a bit of a bore.

Back in April, I wrote a satirical thing called 2000AD After I Stopped Reading which proposed a number of strips which may or may not have featured in the comic since I lost interest, informed mainly by sarcasm and vague memories of the formulaic composition of some of 2000AD's lesser series. Anyway, Mark Millar's Maniac 5 and John Smith's Slaughterbowl read unfortunately as though they were expanded from vague ideas I came up with when taking the piss. Maniac 5 looks amazing, having been drawn by Steve Yeowell, but that's all; and while Slaughterbowl isn't entirely without worth, John Smith has written much better, and it reads as though the other two were egging him on, insisting he make it even more offensive; which I suppose at least conceals its parentage in those earlier future sport strips which were mostly just Roy of the Rovers with jetpacks.

I'd say Really & Truly is as bad or worse than I remember it having been, except I had no memory of ever having read it; so it's as bad or worse than I would have remembered it being had I been able to remember having read it, which wasn't the case. It's like a conversation with a pothead, the word wow in faux psychedelic lettering dragged out over eight agonising instalments, or hits if you prefer, man. Groovy. The plot - and it should be noted that were I to frame the word plot as it applies here between accordingly ironic quotation marks, the necessary degree of irony would demand that said quotation marks be of such scale as to force the rest of my text right off the edge of the screen - is almost identical to that of Everyman and shares similar affectations of nadsat, drugs, and self-consciously quirky characters on a really amaaaaaaazing trip, meaning it's unreadable and a criminal waste of Rian Hughes.

So that was the Summer Offensive - Big Dave, a cover version of Judge Dredd, a couple of participation award winners, and a strip which really, really wanted to be Philip Bond's Wired World from Deadline, which was itself a massive pile of wank: not very zarjaz at all, it has to be said.

The New Adventures of Hitler

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell The New Adventures of Hitler (1990)
I flogged all my copies of Crisis a while back, a decision I haven't had much cause to regret beyond the loss of John Smith's New Statesman - which in any case has since been collected - and the four issues containing The New Adventures of Hitler; which is why I tracked them all down on eBay, seeing as we're obviously not going to get a reprint any time soon with the current political climate undecided as to whether Hitler was actually a bad guy or just someone with some very interesting ideas who went about things the wrong way.

As you may recall, this first appeared in some Scottish arts magazine called Cut and in doing so inspired the resignation of its star columnist, Pat Kane of bewilderingly awful pop duo Hue & Cry. Kane objected that the strip represented a combination of gratuitous shock whilst simultaneously declawing the figure of Adolf Hitler to repackage him as a harmlessly entertaining tit - seemingly a contradiction, but never mind...

Labyani makes the point that fascism wasn't just a standard relationship between producers and consumers of cultural commodities; Jews in the death camp were the actual raw materials of such a process, their bodies being shovelled out of the gas chambers and industrially converted into soap, lampshades, toothbrushes. 'Of all the images of fascism this was the one which Nazis did not dare disseminate,' says Labyani, 'but it must always remain the image by which fascism defines itself.'

The New Adventures of Hitler constitutes an image of fascism which fascists, past and present, would quite like to be seen around: the Fuhrer's early life portrayed like J. Alfred Prufrock's, all bourgeois bumble and angst; references to hip pop music and comics culture; surely then, not such a monstrous man, nor such monstrous times?

The objections seem initially sound, but are unfortunately based on a very specific, somewhat loaded interpretation of no more than the first six pages.

For those who didn't get the memo, these New Adventures occur during a possibly apocryphal but certainly formative era of Hitler's existence, spent mooching off his more successful half-brother in Liverpool, England between the wars. He's basically an unemployable twat with delusions of grandeur, a profoundly underwhelming individual such as any of us might encounter - as based on what we actually know of the man. The point of this is not refutation of the myth of Hitler as a monster - as Pat Kane believed - but illustration of the monster as someone with whom we may already be familiar, someone who walks amongst us empowered and transformed by toxic mythology. It's the mythology of which we should be scared you see, because - as even Alan Moore will tell you - it's the symbols and metaphors which do the most damage. Discussion of Hitler, even as a clown, therefore seems preferable to the kind of enforced silence which fosters the mystery, maybe even the frisson of forbidden fruit, the thing which they don't want you knowing about…

Anyway, the point of this tale is that Adolf's legacy, all that bullshit about the Holy Grail and destiny, very much endures in the present political climate - at least since Thatcher - and that the dreams of this awful little man with a runny bottom weren't entirely put to bed in 1945, contrary to the publicity. It seems like something which needed to be said, and it's said beautifully here in a strip which feels like a peculiar combination of Hogarth and de Chirico, atmospherically speaking - despite the smart-arsed colorisation*.

Third World War and the other stuff in these issues of Crisis is about as good as I remember it being, but Hitler is a masterpiece, and so darkly comic that it's not actually funny. Anyone who comes away from the strip with a higher opinion of its star was probably already on the wrong side of the argument.

*: I recall a phone conversation with Aidan Potts of Inkling magazine describing how two of his colleagues - one possibly being Steve Whitaker - had landed the cushy number of colourising the previously black and white strips for publication in Crisis. 'They're taking the piss,' Aidan chortled, 'using wallpaper samples and everything.' I never really understood why I was supposed to have considered this such a wizard wheeze.

Sebastian O

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell Sebastian O (1993)
I had these, then flogged them on eBay whilst raising the funds which would allow me to ship all of my crap to America. Apparently I had a quick shufty through the three issues of this limited series and decided Sebastian O was less than essential, and so off to market it went along with a whole load of other crap I knew I would never read again. Inevitably I eventually came to wonder if I'd not been a little hasty in this financially motivated purge. Of course, I knew there was no good reason I'd ever wish to reacquaint myself with the Invisibles or Preacher or any of that other spooky self-harming landfill which Vertigo did so adequately; but I really had to think about Sebastian O and whether or not it belonged in amongst my collection, and then the bargain bucket at Half Price Books helped in the re-evaluation of my decision - all three issues, three dollars: very nice.

When one is tired of Oscar Wilde rip offs, it's perhaps not that one is tired of life so much as that one is simply tired of Oscar Wilde ripped off without due recourse to wit, like I just fucking said.

See!

I just wrote that.

It's a piece of piss; and that's the problem with Sebastian O.

So here we have some sort of steampunk romp grounded in material which had become clichéd even by 1993 - Victorian computers and so on and so forth; and a steampunk romp starring Sebastian O, a character combining Morrison's continued attempts to channel Jerry Cornelius with his fascination for wisecracking dandy bad lads, which is quite possibly an aspirational thing if our boy's bloody awful autobiography is any indication. So we get a few recycled bits and pieces from Oscar Wilde, J.K. Huysmans and the rest because, let's face it, not too many Sandman fans will have bothered with any of that stuff and it's easy enough to fake. Except actually it really isn't. Oscar's zingers might seem like a piece of piss to the untrained ear because even a horse can work out the mechanism of the gag, but that level of wit is actually quite difficult to do well and to get right for the exact same reason that no-one will ever mistake an Oasis record for the Beatles. Bluntly, whilst Grant Morrison is not lacking in nous and has proven himself more than capable of cracking off an amusingly outré sentence when required, he's no Oscar Wilde. Nor is he even Michael Moorcock, for that matter, so the wit upon which this story hinges simply isn't quite so razor sharp as it believes itself to be, just as those Johnny Rotten impersonations set forth on Steve Wright in the Afternoon always left something to be desired.

On the other hand, I doubt any of this matters because it's drawn by Steve Yeowell and is thus beautiful beyond comparison, regardless of what unjustified smirking may occur within the text. Taking a positive view, the story is competent at least in the same sense of most modern Doctor Who being competent, sort of, and much like Sebastian O himself, its failings are mostly eclipsed by its ravishing good looks.

Zenith: Phase Four

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell Zenith: Phase Four (1992)
Hallelujah and all that. I realise Grant Morrison disowns this one as mere work for hire most likely on the grounds of it being the one everybody liked, but he's wrong as usual, and it makes my little heart go pitty-pat to have it back in print. In 1992 I was still buying 2000AD as a grown man with a full-time job, and every Saturday morning I would sort the mail, bag it up, and then go out on delivery, but before the first brown envelope went in anyone's letterbox I'd pick up Tharg's latest from the newsagent in Dunfield Road, Catford, then rush across the street to my first block of flats and sit in the stairwell for ten minutes with a fag catching up on Zenith, because I just couldn't wait any longer. No-one was expecting a giro on Saturday, so ten minutes wasn't going to make a lot of difference.

This final instalment of the Zenith saga worked better spread out over weeks and months, it transpires, because read in one go it reveals itself as not actually having a story, really just a punchline - which on close inspection may as well be it was all a dream - forestalled by a sequence of vaguely cool images: the ancient scientist unravelling as his ageing process is reversed - sending him back to childhood, superpowered Michael Heseltine as prime minister, the black sun, Lovecraftian entities, and an acid house robot. It has about as much substance as an advert for car insurance, but it still fucking works because somehow cool is the whole point; at least I think it is. It works in the same way a piece of music works, because Morrison was Zenith, pretty much, or Zenith with a load of self-deprecating piss taken so as to defuse the potential absurdity of a man who would have given his left one to hang out with Kylie Minogue if there was just a way to do it whilst still appearing cool. It works in the same way a piece of music works, because just listen to the Sisters of Mercy at their most epic - and who knows what the fuck any of those songs are about either?

This probably reads like negative criticism, but it isn't meant to be. For all its flaws - even that Steve Yeowell's artwork was probably better in black and white - Zenith remains a masterpiece. This collection also includes a couple of er... later efforts from various 2000AD specials, neither of which really do anything much, but you don't have to read them if you don't want to.

Zenith: Phase Three

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell Zenith: Phase Three (1990)
Zenith was already the greatest thing ever, so it seemed to me back when I was reading it in weekly instalments in the pages of 2000AD comic, but Phase Three just took it to the next level so far as I was concerned; and yes I know I've just written took it to the next level, which is because Grant Morrison was for once clearly giving it 110%, thinking outside the box...

Fuck it. Look - this was just magnificent, okay? Lovecraft's squelchy horrors attempt to take over the universe by destroying free-will, and Zenith hangs around making snarky remarks as the day is saved by thinly disguised versions of Billy the Cat and Katie, Robot Archie, Billy Whizz, and other clunky stalwarts of British comic history; and that's all there is. It's hardly even a story, just a series of references and ludicrous characters done grimly realistic - which is itself ludicrous and therefore seemingly aware of its own inherent absurdity - and yet it's a thing of great beauty. Much of this is probably down to timing, knowing when to shut up, and knowing when Steve Yeowell's wonderful artwork - at this point both impressionist and bordering on photographic - is able to speak for itself, carrying even the most preposterous ideas with dignity far beyond their due. This is probably the greatest comic Grant Morrison ever wrote, and it illustrates very well how, when you hold it up to the light, you realise he really isn't anything like Alan Moore, despite all the guff which has been written on that subject between now and then, at least some of it by themselves.

For sake of contrast, just to demonstrate how horribly wrong it all could have gone, this volume also prints a bonus feature drawn by the consistently awful Jim McCarthy, doubtless a lovely bloke but nevertheless one who draws like it's the back of a school exercise book and the hard kid just ain't letting you go until you've copied out that Whitesnake album cover to the very best of your abilities.

Sorry, Jim. Take an art class maybe?

At the risk of appearing crude, any dicks need sucking for whoever helped bring this one back into print, just let me know.

Zenith: Phase One & Two

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell
Zenith: Phase One (1987) Zenith: Phase Two (1988)
I was going to do just the first of these two, but you know how it is once you've started and you can't have just one. Plus I've been fiending for this shit since 1994 when I found myself obliged to make a choice between my large collection of 2000AD comics and regular access to a lady's vagina.

Zenith was Grant Morrison breaking into mainstream comics, or at least breaking into mainstream comics which people read. If you look closely you will notice that it's essentially his take on Brendan McCarthy's Paradax mashed up with Alan Moore's version of Marvelman with a load of Moorcock chucked in for good measure. This isn't a criticism, only an acknowledgement of Zenith wearing its influences on its sleeve, at least for most of Phase One. This is because the methodology of Morrison's writing is, at its most basic, tantamount to that thing you do when expecting a visitor, so you have a quick think about which book will create the strongest impression as your guest arrives, and you turn in your swivel chair to face them with the world's least convincing chuckle.

'Oh hello! You'll have to excuse me - I was just brushing up on my Kierkegaard.'

This is why so much of Morrison's dialogue, particularly early on in his career, is often so arch and affected and so damn teenage. It's portentous horror movie straplines as conversation.

'Are you Gideon Stargrave?

'As often as possible, but you know how it is these days.'

Possibly the funniest example of this that I've yet seen was an issue of the Thundercats comic in which Morrison was busily getting the Moore-by-numbers thing out of his system with first person narrative captions and traumatic back story as substitute for character.

My name is Liono. I am ten years old, followed by junior Liono being bummed flat by one of the older kittens at Thundercat school or something of that sort, closing with the aspirationally chilling Yeowell zoom-in on tear-stained whiskers, and again My name is Liono. I am ten years old...

This isn't a bad thing, but it's a bit comical if you don't get it right and then go on record stating that you taught Alan Moore everything he knew in an autobiography reading much like that of Spawny Get from Viz comic.

As I shagged my massively titted supermodel girlfriend on that pile of sweets, I suddenly had a great idea for a bold new direction for Batman. So I turned to my famous friend John Andrew, the drummer from Kingmaker, and I said...

Anyway, I was more easily pleased in 1987 when Zenith first turned up in the pages of 2000AD, but it still seemed like a huge, bold statement in comparison with the rest of the comic. Phase One still works for me, but mainly because I remember how great it looked first time around. Here in 2012, I can't help but notice how thin it actually is, but the disparity is not so pronounced as to diminish the pleasure of reading it once again. Phase One barely has a story at all, but gets away with it through having just the right book in its hand as it turns to greet you with studied nonchalance, and a genuinely wonderful sense of timing; plus all the jokes still work, which is sort of the same thing. Surprisingly Yeowell's artwork now looks quite ropey, all those big wide faces with their tiny, piggy eyes, but he makes up for it with deft use of shadow; and by the time we come to Phase Two he's absolutely nailed it. The same goes for the writing, which by Phase Two has built up just enough mythology to make things interesting when it all falls apart; and by Phase Two I'd remembered just what made Zenith so great.

As with a lot of Morrison's work, it's all about surface - much like Zenith himself - and here with surface presenting a thoroughly convincing illusion of depth. It seems telling that our boy now regards Zenith as having been a mere job, just one path trodden on his road to stardom. Zenith, having originated in 2000AD, was Morrison doing the sort of nutty shit he does best with some IPC gorilla stood at his side forcing him to behave, perhaps giving him licks every time a Crowley quote looked like it was turning into one of those dreary, meaningless essays. The Invisibles was, by some definition, Zenith without the restraints which saved it from its own author and thus made it readable.

In just two collected volumes this story goes from something that could almost have been published in one of those horrible eighties fanzines with two seventeen year-old nobodies from Chichester presenting their own extraordinarily po-faced take on the X-Men, to something which is at least as loud and exciting as the first Sex Pistols album. We meet a superhero who is essentially a twat, and another who is probably Michael Heseltine with a heart, and Lovecraft gets raked over with a little more vigour than usual, and Morrison reveals his true genius in explaining exactly why a real Superman couldn't end world hunger, war, or any of that stuff - part fourteen of Phase Two, in case you're interested; and all of this whilst casually waving its arse at Margaret Thatcher. Warts and all, Zenith is still fucking brilliant.

Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich

Keith Giffen, Alan Grant & Simon Bisley
Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich (1992)
Six hundred pages worth of Aleister Crowley's short stories can be a tough mountain to climb, so I've taken a break about halfway through and am refreshing my palate with something which, it might be argued, could be considered the thematic opposite of Crowley's laboured symbolism. Lobo is an extraterrestrial bounty-hunter and parody of the sort of angry over-the-top violent loner types which began to infest caped comicdom during the nineties. Lobo goes out of its way to offend, shares most of its basic values with Beavis & Butthead, and is probably one of the more stupid things I've read this year; and yet it's great because it's done right and it works. Simon Bisley's artwork is as ludicrous as ever, comically violent and presumably fuelled by death metal and hard liquor, but there's nevertheless something oddly beautiful about it all - a fine balance is struck with fiddly detail in all the right places and heavy, solid figures. It almost carries the authority of classical painting and as such makes every other clown who ever drew a scowling muscleman firing a gun larger than himself entirely redundant. Although the two four-issue miniseries collected here may have set out to rip huge streaks of piss out of the art of Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld, the thing works because those involved so obviously loved what they were doing; so despite a superficially similar penchant for those kicking-peoples'-heads-in gags, Portrait of a Bastich feels almost wholesome in comparison to the somewhat cynical and nasty Skrull Kill Krew to which I subjected myself t'other week.

I actually bought these when they came out back in the 1990s, then reluctantly sold them on eBay when raising funds for my move to Texas, and it's great to have them back in the collection. Portrait of a Bastich is, roughly speaking, Motorhead in space written by Douglas Adams but without the smarm, and it's very, very funny.

Better get back to old grumpy bollocks now I suppose...

Skrull Kill Krew

Grant Morrison, Mark Millar & Steve Yeowell
Skrull Kill Krew (1996)
The roots of Skrull Kill Krew can be traced back to an ancient issue of Marvel's Fantastic Four wherein green-skinned shape-shifting alien spies are defeated when hypnotised and ordered to transform themselves into cows, cows which end up in hamburgers, hamburgers which have passed viral Skrull DNA and abilities to those who consume them in a fairly arbitrary nod to the 1980s outbreak of mad cow disease. I was unaware of this title when it first appeared, having turned my back on comic books thanks largely to Grant Morrison's Unreadables amongst other Vertigo titles that really weren't anything like so clever as their authors believed them to be. Nearly two decades later, I come close to pooing myself with excitement at the prospect of a book such as this, given the above synopsis and the names involved.

With a few Keith Giffen flavoured exceptions, neither Marvel nor DC ever quite managed humour - at least nothing that worked so well as 2000AD - as evidenced by an assortment of laboured miniseries roughly on par with a you don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps poster. The Uncanny Ecchs-Men...

Oh my aching sides.

Skrull Kill Krew being spiritually closer to something you might have seen in 2000AD, it might be argued, it really should have worked, but somehow nothing quite adds up. Mark Millar's trademark crass chuckles seem unusually lacking in inspiration - blunted like the one about America smelling of burgers presumably because of fat Americans eating at McDonalds blah blah blah - no doubt hilarious if you've never been to America, but slightly bewildering if you've spent any time longer than a couple of weeks here, or seen anything of the country besides some fucking comic book convention; and then there's Moonstomp, the shape-shifting neo-Nazi skinhead with a magic ball-peen hammer called Nobbler in partial homage to the mighty Thor's Mjolnir - great, except did he really have to be a white supremacist just because he's a skinhead, and this being the case would he really name himself after the Symarip song? Then there's a failure to understand Captain America who, as comic book characters go, really isn't that complicated.

I know it's all intentionally over the top and stupid and gratuitously horrible, but those involved have all done this sort of thing much, much better elsewhere. Skrull Kill Krew reads like all five issues were written in the pub about an hour before last orders, and feels just a little too lacking in sincerity or author investment to work, leaving the reader wondering why he or she, but probably he, bothered in the first place. It's still better than The Unreadables but that's hardly a boast. What a missed opportunity.

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.