Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight (resurrected)

[Andrew_J]

Such a great post title by Tiplodocus needs to be resurrected. It perfectly sums up my feelings after a recent re-read of Atlantis from Case Files 10. Not only is the art by Brendan McCarthy as brilliantly refreshing as I originally remember it but the story is black comedy gold from John Wagner at his most brutal.

The script has some great one-liners but the tragic ending involving [spoiler]the drowning of innocent six-year old Leslie the mutie[/spoiler] really threw me. Reading this ending now as a dad packed a powerful punch this time round. Have to say, Wagner's writing is like a good wine; it gets better and better with age and is, um, hard to get out of white carpets.

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[Bubba Zebill]

Wagner's writing is like a good wine; it gets better and better with age and is, um, hard to get out of white carpets.
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[Frank]

Such a great post title by Tiplodocus needs to be resurrected ... the story is black comedy gold from John Wagner at his most brutal

485-488, or Case Files 10. Credit where it's due, I think Stephen Sondheim is recognised as the author of that couplet, and Alan Grant was still accounting for at least half of either the blackness or the humour of TB Grover's output at the time Atlantis saw print. Because Wagner's written so many fantastic stories since the TB Grover partnership dissolved, it's easy to apportion full credit for everything great about that period of Dredd to him alone, but I think Grant deserves credit for the ruthlessness and amorality of the character and the strip's tone during those years.

Both writers say the reason for the comic tone of those stories is because it was easier to write comedy as part of a duo than anything more serious or heartfelt, and an awful earnestness and sentimentality sometimes crept into Wagner's work in the nineties. It's difficult to imagine that Mrs Gunderson or Vienna would have survived long past their first appearances in the strip if Wagner and Grant had still been sitting across the floor from each other, trying to crack themselves up by visiting ever more cruel and outrageous fates upon the inhabitants of MC1.

It was Grant who wanted to kill Chopper, after all.

[Andrew_J]

Alan Grant was still accounting for at least half of either the blackness or the humour of TB Grover's output at the time Atlantis saw print. Because Wagner's written so many fantastic stories since the TB Grover partnership dissolved, it's easy to apportion full credit for everything great about that period of Dredd to him alone, but I think Grant deserves credit for the ruthlessness and amorality of the character and the strip's tone during those years.

You're absolutely right of course. How could I exclude Alan Grant. In retrospect the brutality of the strip makes sense when you consider Rage was running at the same time. Again, its the total ruthlessness of Johnny Alpha in his final pursuit of Max Bubba that I remember.

I am right in recalling that I read somewhere that Wagner and Grant were sharing a house at that time and banging this stuff out on an old typewriter in the living room? Maybe its just a little daydream I had!

[Frank]

I am right in recalling that I read somewhere that Wagner and Grant were sharing a house at that time and banging this stuff out on an old typewriter in the living room?

I might have the chronology and geography of this wrong, but I think by 1986 they were both married men, and met up in Wagner's Essex farmhouse (the one Ranson used as photo reference for the original Buttonman) to work. Grant describes their working method as smoking fags and reading the papers, then sitting opposite each other on the floor and throwing ideas at each other, acting out dialogue, and trying to make each other laugh.

They went their separate ways and transcribed the results, with whoever typed up a particular story receiving the writing credit and payment for that strip. So even though it was Grant's name on that brutal Rage storyline, it was one of the dozens of strips Wagner and Grant were churning out at that point.

[TordelBack]

Bloody hell, I've just spent half an hour re-reading that excellent Alan Grant interview that Sauchie linked to on 2000AD Review: they don't make 'em like that any more.

(That applies equally to Grant, the interview and 2000AD Review). 

[Andrew_J]

Bloody hell, I've just spent half an hour re-reading that excellent Alan Grant interview that Sauchie linked to on 2000AD Review

Cheers for that interview, Sauchie. Never saw that before.

[judgerufian]

It was Grant who wanted to kill Chopper, after all.

And considering he also killed off Johnny Alpha, its a pity both characters didnt remain that way as their post-resurrection adventures lacked a certain spark.

Then again I may be bitter as I was part of the shocked audience Alan Grant announced Johnny Alpha's death to as part of a UKCAC 90 panel!

[TordelBack]

And considering he also killed off Johnny Alpha, its a pity both characters didnt remain that way as their post-resurrection adventures lacked a certain spark.

Two of Chopper's best stories came after the point Grant wanted him killed.  Although not much good came of his 'surviving' Supersurf 11.

[judgerufian]

And considering he also killed off Johnny Alpha, its a pity both characters didnt remain that way as their post-resurrection adventures lacked a certain spark.

Two of Chopper's best stories came after the point Grant wanted him killed.  Although not much good came of his 'surviving' Supersurf 11.

When did Grant want him dead? Assumed this was after Supersurf 11?

[TordelBack]

Have a read of the interview Sauchie linked to a few posts back for the full story, but essentially Alan wanted Chop to win Supersurf 10 and then be killed by Dredd.  It was one of the factors in the end of T B Grover.

While that would have been pretty cool, there is something really amazing about Chopper losing after 6 months of build-up, and about Dredd's basic unwillingness to kill him (was he just waiting for someone to intervene?), that says more about the genius of the strip than a plain tragedy would have.

I've often wondering if the Necropolis saga that has (one of) its beginnings there is a bit of a reflection on the end of the Wagner and Grant partnership, and the relationship of the writers and their character.

[judgerufian]

ahhhh, I stand corrected. 

I agree at least one of Choppers best stories comes after Supersurf 10, being of course Song of the Surfer but pray do tell was the other one you were thinking of?

I also shared in the amazement that Chopper did come second (rather than losing!) for Supersurf 10, I even remember the actual issue really well, where after the double page colour spread you were teased yet again by having to turn to the third page of the strip to find out the victor. I always thought of it as a knowing wink by the writers to those Squaxx who turned straight to the middle pages (where Dredd was housed back in those days) to immediately find out who won.

[Frank]

I agree at least one of Choppers best stories comes after Supersurf 10, being of course Song of the Surfer but pray do tell was the other one you were thinking of?

Soul On Fire (594-597) presumably, wherein our man comes in from the radback, befriends Jug Mackenzie, and stages a rerun of Supersurf 10.

Colin MacNeil's first crack at the character, all in glorious black and white - as Song Of The Surfer was clearly originally intended to be, judging by the god awful colour bodging with which the earlier episodes of that story are afflicted. Tim Perkins must have got a good discount on a job lot of lemon and pink inks, because all of the many stories he retrofitted with colour were slathered in the stuff, and the rough quality of his brush work intrudes on the original line art in a way that flatters neither. 

If the monochrome originals still exist, I'd pay good money to own a version of that story which restores the black and white episodes, and leaves the colour sections for when MacNeil starts painting from scratch. That's go to be the most egregious example of the way so many stories were ruined by being hastily reformatted (either in colour or in size) to accommodate the insanely rushed process of converting the comic from being square, monochrome, and printed on bog paper, to full colour and slightly bigger than A4.