Olde Summer Offensive - Classic Or Dud?

[Al_Ewing]

Way back in the day before every season had an offensive or an attack or an assault, this one belted me around the head and face. Maniac 5 in particular made me forget pretentious big caption bollocks and remember a childhood time when 'thrill-power' was a real force that you felt charging through your blood while you read a prog. Gun-dinosaurs ruled and Ryan Hughes was the man. Now everyone seems to hate it...

Were those mad times classic or dud?

[Devons Daddy]

classic times.
they where not bad in any way.only compared with our greater depth we now enjoy they are not fair comparisons. it would be like trying to compare DR Who with blakes seven. both good in their way but worlds apart in terms of time frame and the creative elements of base foundations of the stroy lines.

but i felt the old thrill power again this year.the summer offensive was to me a return to all that was great.
we have gone over and debated our highs and lows in recent years.but this summer and every prog since has seen a return to high levels of total escapism in both the prog and the meg,

[Mangamax]

Inferno was the one for me that summer

[Oddboy]

That was about the time that I stopped reading 2000AD (because my brother stopped buying it)

Ryan Hughes was NOT the man - his abysmal rendition of Sam Slade is enough to have him hung drawn & quartered.

[Art]

Bring back BIG DAVE!

[Matt]

Must admit to liking Inferno and Big Dave. Hated the dinosaur stuff and Robo Hunter. I reckon its about time the original Robo Hunter team returned to leave Sam on a high note.

[paulvonscott]

I think that 2000AD lost readers (from TPO) during the morrison/millar offense rather than gained them about sums it up.

If instead of just trying to prove how clever they were and predict the next big thing (a subject which gets wearier to my ears every time morrison mentions it) and created the sort of characters that people wanted in the comic, wanted to just tell some good stories, then it might have been a better experience for all.

Perhaps even something that might have attracted old or new readers.  It all seemed to be about Morrison and Millar rather than the comic, maybe I'm wrong, but it all sounds a bit like ***** to me.

Big Dave's is offensive whether you know it's satire or not.  That some people didn't realise it was a satire counts against Morrison rather than for him.  It's got its fans and I suspect had it been pitched at a different market through a different magazine it probably could have been wildly succesful.  The mistake was doing it in 2000AD.

I actually bought that issue of the summer offensive purely on the strength of the bolland cover, I read the comic and bought no more till nemesis book ten I think, it certainly kept me away from 2000AD on the shelf at WHsmiths for many years.  

Having said that I quite enjoyed the dinosaur thing when I read some back progs a while back.  If you wanted dumb fun the psychopaths on killer dinosaurs armed with missiles was probably the way to go, and it had a half decent story as well.

[2000AD Online]

i think i was gone by that time i quit not that long after zenith 4 finished

[Matt]

I think Big Dave worked well during that period of the 90's because it reflected how the media, especially the tabloid press, reacted to the news of the time. Take the Bulger killing for example, although the press deplored the actions of Venables & Thompson, the horrific details of the case were splashed across half the news paper in a style of journalism that was more suited to a Victorian Penny Dreadful. For weeks we were subjected to headlines that verged on the hysterical. Remember The Sun urging the nation to burn copies of Child's Play 3, which it blamed for influencing both the killers? "For the sake of ALL our kids ... BURN YOUR VIDEO NASTY".

I think Big Dave was just a comic incarnation of the reactionary press of the day. His sadly black & white view of the world shared theirs, from Saddam Hussein to Pit Bull Terriers, Big Dave was just a concentrated version of the gutter press brought to life in human form.

Yes, I don't doubt that it caused a lot of offense, but it was no more offensive than the style of journalism it aped.

[paulvonscott]

Yes, that's Morrison's view.

[mongor2003]

What surprised me, was the revelation in this months TPO, from Morrison that the next scheduled Big Dave story was th feature him being miniturised and injected into the corpse of Jamie Bulger, Morrison seemed somehow surprised that this idea was vetoed, as if something like that wouldn't stir up one hell of a hornets nest. If that strip had been run 2000 ad would most likely been banned and closed down, especially in that climate of reactionary press and dwindling sales for the prog. I can almost see the sun headline now "EVIL KIDS COMIC SNUBS DEAD TODDLERS - BAN THIS EVIL FILTH", what was he thinking ? Seems to me morrison was merely trying to cause a controversy in order to masturbate his ego.

[Matt]

As much as I enjoyed a giggle at Big Dave I was shocked to read of the proposed "Battle of the Bulger" storyline in this months TPOL. I can't believe such an idea was even mooted amongst the editorial staff of the time. Had that story gone to print, it would have made the mass burnings of The Sun on Merseyside in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster look relatively tame.

[paulvonscott]

If you want to support the parodying of tabloids through material which is offensive it seems somewht hypocrytical to then draw your own lines in the sand when you come across something you think is beyond the pale.

It was a bad idea for 2000AD as far as I'm concerned.  I think you could probably make a better comment on the behaviour of tabloids in something like Judge Dredd.  There's no need for a heavy handed strip like Big Dave.  As I said, maybe somewhere else eh?

[Matt]

PVS, we always seem to be at loggerheads! I never actually found anything printed in Big Dave to be offensive, and yeah I do support the strip. When you look at the storylines involved in Big Dave they were all drawn from tabloid stories, Pitbulls, Saddam Hussien and adultrous royals. As for the suggestion that I'm being hypocritical by not finding the proposed Bulger storyline funny, I don't think I am. Had Big Dave been set into action against the film industry in the wake of the Bulger killing then that would have been satire. As it is, the context of the proposed plotline has nothing to do with aping the press, it's simply used to shock and that I don't support.

[paulvonscott]

Yeah, you and Wood ;)  Both eedjits!  

Well, I don't find that argument convincing, but there you go, thats what you believe and I din't think I can convince you :)

Possibly two of my biggest bugbears are 1.  grant morrison doing things because he thinks they are clever or about to pre-empt some new wave of comics (neither of which makes for great stories in my opinion in themselves) and 2. garth ennis realising his strips were crap after the event.  I'm afraid both are somewhat of a red rag to me, so I'll pack in.