The Mighty One: My life inside the Nerve Centre by Steve MacManus

[Spikes]

The guy on eBay was selling a few, but I never did save that listing, so can't go back to check.

And yup, no joy on google images for me either. I don't recall seeing these before, and yes, they are definitely of an early 80s vintage.

[Fungus]

Smashing read, his love of the Pleece brothers had me smirking. Felt the same way when I picked up Velocity, tremendous comics. Good taste, that Tharg.

[TordelBack]

Keep meaning to record my response to this book: fascinating, and not a little odd. 

There's a weird contrast between the cataloguing of the comings and goings of colleagues, strip debuts and sales figures and the enjoyable daydreaming sequences, but the American Gothic/Fear and Loathing sequence of 'women I failed to get off with in motels and what they collectively taught me about breaking into the US market' still came out of nowhere!  My favourite bits were actually the non-Tharg endeavours, the stuff about Battle, Crisis and Revolver were noticeably fresher than the 2000AD material, which is largely (interesting) variations on familiar tales (and sometimes quite harsh on various creators).

I came out of it being impressed with the sheer scale of Steve's contribution, his succession of visions for what could work, and the amount of work he obviously put in to realising them, all the time being grounded in the reality that this was both job and career.  His way of acknowledging and incorporating his destructive side by turning it into its own character was clever, but I can't decide whether it felt entirely honest.

It's a quirky read, but full of solid nuggets of info and unexpected flights of fancy.  Recommended to anyone interested in the history of UK comics.  And nice to see maryanddavid getting fulsome thanks in the acknowledgements.