The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Chatting to top British SF novelist James Lovegrove recently I mentioned British Comics Month, knowing this was an area he had an interest in. Actually that’s putting it mildly as James is a serious comics fiend – you may recall his excellent piece about how he became a comics fan way back in the first issue of the FPI magazine. Well, James has very kindly offered to share more of his comics memories, with this stroll back to the 70s, avoiding dodgy haircuts and space hoppers (er, kind of like now as well, come to think of it) to a couple of titles which we haven’t really talked much about this month – Action and Starlord – and yet both were important titles which influenced the much more long-lived 2000AD, which itself produced some world-class writers and artists (and is still doing that).

It isn’t just an appreciation of comics long gone but not forgotten though; James also talks about how Action drew down the ire of the so-called Moral Majority and the dreadful Mary Whitehouse who was determined to tell us all what we could read or watch (for our own good of course). Comics, both mainstream and underground have often had a tempestuous relationship with censors and ‘moral’ authorities; they present an easier target than novels and, as new stories of outraged people complaining about some graphic novel contents in libraries has shown, this is not a phenomenon restricted to the unenlightened past.

I’ve often wondered about the so-called bad influence some comics were having on innocent kids – I loved Action’s Hookjaw stories, yet graphic tales of a Great White Shark eating people doesn’t seem to have twisted me into a mass murderer, or James either for that matter (of course we wouldn’t admit it if we were) anymore than reading Hamlet or Macbeth in school did (and those were far more violent). Since these comics also sparked the imagination of a young James, firing the imagination that he would develop and use to bring us some of the sharpest new Brit SF novels around I think the influence of those comics is demonstrably in the ‘good’ side of the balance.

The paperback of James’ latest novel, the delightful (and very funny) social satire set in alternate-Britain, Provender Gleed, is published by Gollancz in September (I still think the anagrammatic detectives were an astonishing touch – damned clever and too funny for reading on the bus or tube is you don’t want to irritate other passengers with outbursts of laughter) . When asked about his next work he instead recommended that those who enjoy his work should seek out a forthcoming book by Jay Amory entitled The Fledgling of Az Gabrielson, which is the first of a new series, The Clouded World, which is technically a young adult novel, but one that James likens to Philip Pullman in that it is more of an adult novel that younger readers will enjoy (I suspect that is one reason younger readers enjoy them – its nice to have someone writing to you and not writing down to you).

But back to Action and Starlord… Pauses for nostalgic sigh – do you remember these too? What other comics did you devour as a younger reader? Strontium Dog – now there was a character to almost rival Dredd (come one, Rebellion, you know we want some Johnny Alpha collections in your future graphic novel lists!). But let James take it from here:

Action and Starlord

My friend Johnny’s house was the place to go. His mum would feed us burgers and rum-and-raisin ice cream – you know, the good stuff – and we were allowed to stay up late to watch the Hammer double bill on Saturday nights.

My friend Johnny also knew about the best comics before I did. He was the one who told me about Action, coming to school with lascivious tales about the gore and violence this new 7p weekly contained.

He wasn’t wrong either. Action, by the standards of the mid-1970s, was absurdly graphic and nasty, and its cynicism and its downbeat antiheroes were a million miles from the square-jawed derring-do of Dan Dare and the soldiers in Battle Picture Library, not to mention the angst-ridden positivism of my beloved Marvel superheroes.

Action also offered a thrilling taste of the forbidden, since the majority of its strips were swiped, shamelessly, from then-popular movies that its core readership hankered after but was too young to see. Thus, Dredger was Dirty Harry in all but name, Death Game 1999 was Rollerball with pinball add-ons, and Hookjaw was Jaws with a social conscience, the eponymous shark acting as a kind of ethical nemesis, usually sparing the good and eating only the criminals and eco-vandals.

Even more subversive was Kids Rule OK, which imagined a future where a plague had wiped out all adults, leaving the juveniles to run riot.

It was this last strip above all that prompted the National Viewers and Listeners Association to act. Mary Whitehouse’s band of purse-lipped, professional killjoys wagged their fingers in outrage and saw to it that Action had to emasculate itself or face being boycotted by the major newsagent chains. The comic did soften its tone, readers deserted in droves, and cancellation soon followed.

But its begetter and editor, Pat Mills, learned his lesson well, and when he launched 2000AD a year later, he knew how to pitch the tone just right. The new comic was edgy but not offensively so, safe but not blandly so, and has, of course, survived for nearly 30 years now. Action’s legacy, other than fond memories, is 2000AD’s longevity.

My friend Johnny picked up on Starlord, 2000AD’s glossy offshoot, long before I did. With evangelistic glee he extolled its high production values and cool new characters such as Strontium Dog, the mutant bounty hunter, and the Ro-Busters, Thunderbirds with robots. Starlord was to 2000AD what colour telly was to black and white, he said.

Once again, he wasn’t wrong. Starlord used a larger format and was printed on quality paper rather than the cheap, Izal-alike stuff used for 2000AD. It employed the better 2000AD artists, such as Kevin O’Neill, Dave Gibbons (not to mention Dave Gibbons in tights and cape as superhero editor Big E!! – Joe)and Carlos Ezquerra, and gave their full-colour artwork a chance to shine. It was classy, ambitious . . . and doomed to fail.

It wasn’t dissimilar enough from its sister comic to be distinctive and it was too expensive (12p! It was a lot of money in those days – Joe) for the average pre-teen pocket. After 22 issues and one summer special it suffered the fate of many an ailing weekly and was subsumed into another comic, which in this case, naturally, was 2000AD. The merger saw Starlord’s best strips being kept by the older, more successful title and everything else ruthlessly discarded. Asset-stripping indeed.

For me, Action and Starlord are the two finest weeklies of my boyhood, precisely because, unlike 2000AD, they didn’t last. Time has not tarnished their lustre. They had their heyday and then were gone. There was no lingering, interminable afterlife. Their Golden Age was brief but, by God, it was golden.

My friend Johnny now works in Law, while I am a grifting author. He always seemed to know something I didn’t, and he was seldom wrong. Perhaps that’s still the case.