The Complete Zenith

[hippynumber1]

I concur - "The Driver" was bloody awful!

[Frank]

2000AD began with the assassination of Thatcher's fictional counterpart Shirley Brown, and Big Dave is closer to Bill Savage (after too many lagers) than he is to either Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog, plus, it's hilarious.  More than that, Steve Parkhouse belongs in 2000AD, on anything.

Aye, it seemed to me at the time there was a direct parallel to be drawn between Pat Mills's truck driving Cockney geezer and Manchester's hardest man - and the reaction of some readers to Big Dave as an uncouth and vulgar strip they didn't want to see in their comic seems eerily similar to the views of IPC's board of stuffy big wigs, who Mills describes as engaged in an eternal struggle to make everything in 2000ad as safe and anodyne as everything else they published.

I'd only ever seen Parkhouse on The Bo Jeffries Saga and the last parts of Full Mental Jacket, so the confident solidity of his figures and the expressiveness of their actions, and the easy way he handled big visuals such as the British Army being turned into [spoiler]'mincing nancy boys'[/spoiler] by Saddam Hussein's massive cock-shaped love gun, were a revelation to me. The low opinion of 2000ad readers Parkhouse expresses in David Bishop's Thrillpower Overload doesn't lead me to hope he'll share his prodigious talents with us again anytime soon. Boo.

[Frank]

In a vain attempt to get the Zenith thread back to talking about Zenith, someone posted a pic of Morrison's eighties roughs for the character in the comment section of Laura Sneddon's last piece on the ownership dispute. The character looks very familiar:

[Bat King]

I didn't like Big Dave, never re-read it. Don't think I want to re-read it either.

that said... if they print it I might read it...

[Steve Green]

2000AD began with the assassination of Thatcher's fictional counterpart Shirley Brown, and Big Dave is closer to Bill Savage (after too many lagers) than he is to either Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog, plus, it's hilarious.  More than that, Steve Parkhouse belongs in 2000AD, on anything.

Aye, it seemed to me at the time there was a direct parallel to be drawn between Pat Mills's truck driving Cockney geezer and Manchester's hardest man - and the reaction of some readers to Big Dave as an uncouth and vulgar strip they didn't want to see in their comic seems eerily similar to the views of IPC's board of stuffy big wigs, who Mills describes as engaged in an eternal struggle to make everything in 2000ad as safe and anodyne as everything else they published.

I'd only ever seen Parkhouse on The Bo Jeffries Saga and the last parts of Full Mental Jacket, so the confident solidity of his figures and the expressiveness of their actions, and the easy way he handled big visuals such as the British Army being turned into [spoiler]'mincing nancy boys'[/spoiler] by Saddam Hussein's massive cock-shaped love gun, were a revelation to me. The low opinion of 2000ad readers Parkhouse expresses in David Bishop's Thrillpower Overload doesn't lead me to hope he'll share his prodigious talents with us again anytime soon. Boo.

I don't quite get that - one page Morrison is saying that most people liked it, and then Parkhouse writing off the readership on the other.

Presumably at this time, feedback is only going to be via e-mail? I don't know why creators or editorial put so much stock in people who were writing in.

I don't really remember what I felt about Big Dave at the time - seemed entertaining enough.

[Mark Taylor]

I never got Big Dave. To me, it felt like a third-rate Viz strip and was wildly out of place in 2000 AD. I'd happily have Parkhouse back in 2000 AD every week, though. (Also, at least Big Dave wasn't as bad, to my mind, as that dire garbage about a trucker—"The Driver"—that ran in Toxic, that a lot of people inexplicably seemed to love.)

My sentiments exactly at the time, "What is a Viz strip doing in 2000AD?", basically.

Big Dave slightly warped version of reality didn't make it's appearance in 2000AD appropriate any more than Slaine's streak of irreverent humour would justify its inclusion in Viz.

[Jim_Campbell]

Big Dave was certainly no more incongruous than other 2000AD oddities. Fiends of the Eastern Front, anyone?

2000AD has always been broader and more eclectic than a simple SF anthology, and if it can find room in its pages for Fiends, Summer Magic, Sooner or Later and Zenith, then it can find room for something as wilfully different as Big Dave. I thought Dave was certainly better than the cretinous Maniac 5 which ran alongside it and which --ostensibly-- was more of a fit for 2000AD.

Cheers

Jim

[JOE SOAP]

I thought Dave was certainly better than the cretinous Maniac 5 which ran alongside it and which --ostensibly-- was more of a fit for 2000AD.

Yep, for me Maniac 5 and other stuff like Urban Strike showing up in 2000AD made me flick back to the cover to make sure I had 'the prog' in my hands and not some quick knock-out from Eclipse comics. That didn't happen with Big Dave; it looked like it fit.

[Frank]

My sentiments exactly at the time, "What is a Viz strip doing in 2000AD?", basically. Big Dave slightly warped version of reality didn't make it's appearance in 2000AD appropriate any more than Slaine's streak of irreverent humour would justify its inclusion in Viz.

This week's 2000ad features a werewolf kidnap thriller, a cosmological/teleological/eschatological superhero saga, a historical zombie apocalypse siege story, and a comedic gangster melodrama - I'm not sure that leaves many genres which still qualify as not our kind of thing. Conversely, the Gary Bushell version of the world made manifest in Big Dave wasn't any less of a fantasy than that presented by Disaster 1990, Mach One, and Summer's Magic - it featured zombies, robots, voodoo and ray guns.

[dweezil2]

I never got Big Dave. To me, it felt like a third-rate Viz strip and was wildly out of place in 2000 AD. I'd happily have Parkhouse back in 2000 AD every week, though. (Also, at least Big Dave wasn't as bad, to my mind, as that dire garbage about a trucker—"The Driver"—that ran in Toxic, that a lot of people inexplicably seemed to love.)

My sentiments exactly at the time, "What is a Viz strip doing in 2000AD?", basically.

Big Dave slightly warped version of reality didn't make it's appearance in 2000AD appropriate any more than Slaine's streak of irreverent humour would justify its inclusion in Viz.

Case for the defence:

Button Man.

[IndigoPrime]

Button Man.

OBJECTION! Button Man wasn't rubbish.

[Frank]

Button Man.

OBJECTION! Button Man wasn't rubbish.

If Tharg had only printed stories which weren't rubbish, 2000ad's publication schedule would have been annual instead of weekly. We're all fond of shite stories which have seen print over the years, but everybody's fond of different shite stories from everyone else.

[dweezil2]

Button Man.

OBJECTION! Button Man wasn't rubbish.

If Tharg had only printed stories which weren't rubbish, 2000ad's publication schedule would have been annual instead of weekly. We're all fond of shite stories which have seen print over the years, but everybody's fond of different shite stories from everyone else.

Case closed!   

[opaque]

I'm not sure that leaves many genres which still qualify as not our kind of thing.

Nothing to do with genre. 2000ad can have everything. It's just that we all like to pick out the crap as we see it.
I really liked Zippy Couriers

[Mark Taylor]

Button Man.

OBJECTION! Button Man wasn't rubbish.

I second Button Man not being rubbish!