Ok Gang,
What are your favorite NON 2000ad related BRITISH comics- past and present?
Why?
Warrior and Deadline. Obvious, but there we are.
ACTION - when it started anyway - just the sort of thing for a growing 13 year old.
POW - For Grimly Fiendish and other brilliant Leo Baxendale creations.
BATTLE - I was a fan of Ezquerra back then and didn't even know it.
WHIZZER AND CHIPS & SHIVER AND SHAKE - Don't know if it'd be a case of "memory cheats" but i loved them when i was little.
Don't remember the titles but i recall being a fan of THE STEEL CLAW, KELLYS EYE, BILLY THE CAT and anything drawn by ERIC BRADBURY - boy, could that guy do some creepy strips.
Okay, not that I read a lot of comics anymore...
Those I do read I have to ask myself if I'm reading it for nostalgia (Battle, Action, Scream, Eagle) where a handful of good strips are actually surrounded by crap, floating like bits in marmalade, but I keep telling it myself they are bygone gems of a forgotten age.
The genuinely good, 2000AD in the eighties, Warrior. Something abut warrior appeals to me, its that big chunky magazine thing that gets me going. The idea that I'm holding in my hand something substantial. So print it big and chunky and I'll read it. I hate American comic book format, it's like comparing album covers to cd covers. One is art, the other is a small coloured square.
Comics I want to like, 2000AD Now and Deadline which are/were obviously not written for me, but I try to enjoy what I can.
Nothing current apart from AD, (and the Megazine, which at the moment scores higher than AD) I keep meaning to try Com.X or whatever they are called, but I forget everytime I go near a comic shop and I'm not buying Gaymes Workshop's Nazi Flavoured Crap.
Oh and Zarjazz, which I wish was out at least every month. It's big and meaty and the british comic I've enjoyed reading the most, and thank god I can read something with some enthusiasm and ideas in it.
Lazarys Churchyard and Tank Girl are all time greats it has to be said. Someone should really release another Deadline/BLAST! type thing. It could actually work with all the comic films doing the rounds at the moment.
Finnigan
Action and Battle are by far my favourites next to 2000AD, but I also had a soft spot for Tiger and Victor in the late seventies. One of my most vivid childhood memories is reading the copy of Action where Hookjaw bites off Rick Mason's head, the obvious hero of the strip being killed. Gave me nightmares for days! The feeling was repeated in the final panels of Flesh Book One where the paeleontologists are having dinner inside the skeleton of Old One Eye and one of them gets killed, but it just wasn't quite as shocking as Action.
By the way, I was under the impression that Eric Bradbury and Ian Gibson were the same artist, just that he calls himself Eric Bradbury when he draws in that style. Anybody know if this is true or not?
No,no,no,no,no! That cannot be true!
luther arkwright, the spiral cage, crisis,
Commando - A British institution. Great war stories and the best value in comics then and now.
Warlord - the first UK weekly that showed a harder edge and introduced a new wave of Uk creators. Paved the way for Battle/Action/'tooth etc.
Action - the original 36 issue run. Superb variety in stories. Looks dated now but really kicked down the door for UK comics and frightened the establishment like no other British comic. Influenced a whole generation.
Starlord - Short lived, but provided us with some classic characters.
Warrior - The best mature British comic ever. V For Vendetta & Marvelman have never been bettered in their respective genres.
Kane - superb cop drama/comedy that stand out in the modern comic book market. No more issues are planned but there will be more OGN's
Jack Staff - (Dancing Elephant Press) Wonderful, fun issue that pays homage to all the classic UK comic weeklies. Moving to Image Comics after Christmas.
The O Men - The best small press super-hero book currently being published. Similar in style to Morrison's X-Men.
Cla$$war (Com.X) - showing the American's that there is still life in the mature, dark, super-hero title. Shame it's only 6 issues long.
Alan!
Battle, great when I was 8, and still holds up now. Ah Rat Pack, how you're missed.
Eagle, lots of distinct phases here photo story mentalism, beautifully painted Dan Dare scripts, the Grant/Bradbury Doomlord, amidst a lot of crap.
Commando, Starblazer complete stories in each issue, satrblazer seriously underated IMHO although the memory may be lying.
Doctor Who magazine strips, there was some glorious black and white art here, and the strip is strangely never mentioned amongst comic fans, despite the fact it was often better than the series that spawned it.
"Starblazer complete stories in each issue, satrblazer seriously underated IMHO although the memory may be lying. "
ISTR that a certain Grant Morrison cut his teeth on Starblazer ...
"Doctor Who magazine strips, there was some glorious black and white art here, and the strip is strangely never mentioned amongst comic fans"
Oh yeah ... I remember when it launched ... Wagner, Mills and Gibbons on the lead strip and some fairly splendid back up stories.
It grieves me to think that there are comic readers who judge Steve Moore on 'Tales of Telguuth' when this is the man who, with Steve Dillon and David Lloyd on art, gave us Absolm Daak: Dalek Killer ...
Not to mention a superbly barking rendition of Tom Baker's Doctor by Mike McMahon, if memory serves.
Great stuff!
Cheers
Jim
Blimey am I the only one here who enjoyed Mighty World of Marvel, Spider Man Comics Weekly, Avengers, Planet of the Apes, Dracula Lives, Superheroes, Savage Sword of Conan, Titans, Captain Britain, Fury, Star Wars, The Complete Fantastic Four, Rampage, Hulk Comic etc etc
Oh I also loved Battle, and a little bit of Warlord, Bullet & Action, but those British Marvel reprints were really what I cut my teeth on, surely it wasn't just me.
Nothing has or will match WARRIOR - it was fantastic. The sooner Des Skinn revives that one the better - I see A1 is returning, it was a sort of Warrior type thing (chech ximoc.co.uk for more info) perhaps this will lead to Warrior returning.
Link: http://www.ximoc.co.uk
I liked the Moore/Delano/Davis Captain Britain, but only read it as reprints. Also liked the first series of Knights of Pendragon, although the sequel was awful. Disliked the Overkill(?) comic Marvel UKs attempt to go toe to toe with tooth. Apart from that I'm quite interested in what the last launch of a traditional adventure comic was in Britain.The last one I can remember was Overkill and before that the woeful Wildcat. Am I missing any out?
I know this is an unpopular view but apart form Marvelman, V and the Bojeffries saga I thought Warrior was pretty ropey, particularly toward the end.
On the subject of V it's always surprised me that the intellectual left in the 80s were always giving warnings of future facist governments whlst seeming to have completely overlooked such kindly Soviet ideas as the Gulag.That said I enjoyed V and found it touching in places, and it's certainly one of Moores best works.
Sonic the Comic, that was the thing. Nine years isn't bad, surely.
I haven't seen much of Warrior,but one of my favourite British comics was The Bogie Man,and I wish I could find my issues of it.
I used to like A1 too,some great material,but some were better than others.
Luther Arkwright as well,that goes without saying.Fantastic stuff.
No; you're not alone.
I had a very similar experience: I read widely but erratically original marvel imports, British marvel reprints, Commando and most of the boy's own from the mid seventies. I espcially remember Marvel Superheroes with the Silver Surfer, which set me up for the Fantasy Masterpieces a few years later - magnificent stuff. I became a more regular reader of Action, Battle, and later Starblazer but 2000AD and Starlord arrived were the mainstay.
R U ready for this from the beginning and in no particular order;
Playhour, Disneyland, shiver & shake, whoopee, cor, cheeky weekly, buster, whizzer & chips, monster fun,warlord, victor, lion, tiger, valient, bullet, battle, star wars weekly, planet of the apes, dracula lives, spiderman comics weekly, mighty world of marvel, superheroes, rampage,action, teen titans, futuretense, captain britain, starlord, warrior, countdown, tv action, tv21, target,
tv comic,pant...pant..., thunderbirds,toxic,victor, look & learn, fury, tornado, look-in,topper,hotspur, Avengers,doctor who weekly/monthly, house of hammer,vulcan,joe 90, aliens, superman, batman,war picture libray, commando,.... phew, and I'm spent.
Many more i,ve missed.
Arn't (were) British comics great!! If I still had this little lot then I'd be worth a mint.
Now where is a definitive guide book to Brit comics?
Dear jdmobius,
Eric bradbury and Ian Gibson is not the same artist. One is dead, one is alive.
Ian Gibson's noms de plume include Q.Twerk Joe king and Emberton.
C.
My all time fave has got to be Warrior.
I liked most of the strips, especially Marvelman, Bojeffries, Warpsmiths, Big Ben and V, but Laser Eraser & Pressbutton was definitely my favourite out of the lot. This also introduced us to the rotund, drug peddling, sexual deviant with a tentacle fetish Zirk.
Pressbutton is one strip that I'd love to be reprinted it the Beyond 2000 section of the Meg, and assuming Steve still owns the rights, I'm guessing that it wouldn't be such a hard thing to sort out.
Wils
"Hubba Hubba"
OK in no particular order - "The Country Bumpkins" from "Whizzer and Chips", "Billys Boots" from "Tiger" (why did he always lose them before every crucial Cup game ??), "Dexter something?" from "Roy Of The Rovers" about a really hard defender, those b&w Spidey reprints, "Captain Britain Weekly" (and "The Daredevils"), Wagners "Darkies Mob" and also "Panzer G-Man" in "Battle", the superb "V For Vendetta", "Marshal Law" and that weird one about the homicidal train driver in "Toxic", "Kal Jerico" and Pat Mills "Redeemer" for GW, "Classwar" for ComX.....
Link: Battle Fan Site
Oh God no! I love the Marvel Weeklies. I have a huge collection of 'em. I just didn't list them as I was concentrating on British strips, rather than UK comics that reprinted stuff from abroad. Even now the UK Marvel titles are excellently produced and give some of the best value in comics. I would also like to add Vulcan to my list, which reprinted classic UK stuff.
Alan!
Yeh and I managed to forget 'Charley's War' !!
Deadline was the only one I ever got into. Although I may have read and possibly enjoyed the one issue of Crisis I ever bought, because I may possibly have been about 13 and there is a small chance that I found a Milo Manara porno reprint in it.
What? Sorry, no, no, I mean I liked it because of its grim political satire.
Actually, Crisis was, in retrospect, patronising tripe, although I suppose PC was hip in the 80s.
I don't think people like Moore overlooked the Gulags. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and it wouldn't be too extreme to call it facsist. The warnings of right wing totalitarianism were simply because that is how Britain (or America) could arrive at this type of state.
After all, someone could very well be detailed to scan this board for subversives.
Andy B.
Yeah, we've lost the right to privacy over e-mails. The only thing they can't do now, is listen to your thoughts and watch your dreasm like in Nemesis. When they can they will and what's worse is they'll say they do it for our own safety.
When V came out, some of the things that seemed unlikely, those street-top cameras for instance became a reality. And Alan Moore did say that all of the events in V happen after normal civilisation broke down and someone else took over. I can't see that happening by a left wing communist idiology, but something which plays to the peoples fears like in V is more likely.
Sorry to interupt paranoid ramblings but bollocks. I know a thing or two about CCTV, and the Data Protection act and you have a lot more to worry about from corporations than you do from "Them". The Government run all the security/police services as a giant beuracracy and even such activities as tracking people using the net for child pornography need a huge amount of paperwork to circumvent the Data Protection act. The Police and Criminal Evidence act and the Human Rights act greatly reduce any agencies powers to spy on you and to be honest as one of "the forces of oppresion" we really don't care what your up to as we hardly have the man power available to perform even routine policing.
However, corporations aren't covered by those two pieces of legislation and can do what the hell they want, and neither our government nor the EU are willing to upset them by tying their hands.
So repeat after me "No one is spying on me, their all filling in forms."
Unlike the equivalent in former soviet nations, but thats by the by.
Action + Battle Picture Weekly + Spiderman Comics Weekly + Mighty World Of Marvel + Captain Britain + Warlord + Bullet = "Happy Days" (and there's lots more where they came from!)
Great Stuff!
Ed
Link: E=mc2
Ooh get me, i'm all fighty. Last message more aggressive then I mean it to, just get fed up of the left and the right misrepresenting whats actually going on to score points against each other and scare the public into believing what ever they want. I have first hand experience of this having seen the home office blatantly lie over something I was involved in for political capital. Grrrr.
Dear jimBob,
You're right about the corporations. Europe is becoming more like the US every day. It's good to hear from someone who has experience and knowledge.
I'm with JimBob, who you fighting with?
C.
I'm probably going to set myself up as a prime sad bastard for suggesting the Beano, but I'll do it anyway.
It might be mostly shite now with too many crap fart gags, but it really is what introduced me to comics. The Bash Street Kids still raise a laugh.
No worries, the thing is, once the power is there, who are YOU to say it can't or won't be misused, now or at some point in the future? And even if these powers havn't been misused yet (we'd be lucky to find out) are you seriously telling me that something hasn't been introduced for reason A. and exploited for reason B.
We are lied to and patronised by governments regardless of their bent, as you've attested to yourself.
It's governments who should be protecting us from corporations, but there is fat chance of that happening.
No, and any one who says differently is naive. What I can say as a fact is that we are being lied to daily. Have you noticed that crime stats have gone through the roof recently? We have a new way of recording crime. Any incident we comw accross is now logged, wether their is a complaint or not now. Crime hasn't exploded, the recording system has changed. However Iive heard a whisper that stats will return to old system before next election, showing a massive fall ion crime.
Successive Govt have promised to cut paper work for police whilst actually continuosly incrteasing it to gather staistics.
the thing to remember is no Western Govy gets to power now without the support of corporate bodies and their media arms, and we are constantly being fed false infomation.
The instruments of the state are not your enemies, but the people you elect and buy goods from just might be.
In my earlier post I wasn't trying to say that we are being spied on by THEM. But there doesn't have to be a them, just the potential. And it doesn't have to extend to the highest level, to the corridors of central power. It can be a single person, at the lowest level. A councillor (do you know who yours is?), a crooked police officer, or with this extension of powers a whole lot more. But these bodies are not our enemies, the intention of the BODY is to fight crime, to responsibly adminstrate the borough etc. The inention of the people involved can be as corrupt as anyones.
Also, while I am not worried about the government abusing the power to, oh, let's say, restrict my right to travel as a suspected troublemaker, or confiscate my earnings because I cannot prove where they come from, or read my personal communications as a matter of routine, I am worried that these powers can act as the foundations of a police state. This doesn't have to be the one party police state of old, but perhaps something more sinister, the police state that looks like a multi-party democracy. We see collusion between business and government, and we are not surprised. Extending the possible powers, well, sooner or later they will be asked to use them.
I appreciate that the police are too busy filing forms to read everyone's e-mail. So why make it legal for them to do so? Why not make investigations of this sort require a warrant. It seems to me either the police will remain underfunded, in which case the laws are toothless, or at some time in the future there will be the manpower to expliot the act.
Andy B.
Interesting arguments, but the earnings policy is very hard to use and requires a lot of evidence. A Police state would not happen in a country with unarmed police, and I find the daily Express's campaign to give all cops jhandguns seriously worrying.
Democracy is always going to end in corruption, but it's the best of a bad lot of ways to run a state.
"and I'm not buying Gaymes Workshop's Nazi Flavoured Crap."
Pardon? What do you mean by this? Please explain for those of us of a less politically-aware sensibility.
Written and drawn by the wondrously talented Martin Eden, the O Men - described by Comics International as "the best comic currently being produced in the UK" - has a website at:
http://www.theomen.free-online.co.uk/
*J*
You are obviously a devotee of the Games Workshop hobby Rius, as you've also questioned another GW comment I made, so I won't expect you to agree to me.
I just happen to feel that Warhammer 40K is a fascist universe and that imperial society is uncritically promoted while actually being worse than Hitlers Germany. Something I find peculiarly disturbing.
I don't expect you to like or agree with my comments, but it's what I feel to be the case.