Olde Summer Offensive - Classic Or Dud?

[GordonR]

>>Bring back BIG DAVE!

As far as I understand, the rights for Big Dave were given back to Grant & Mark several years ago, so his reappearance in 2000AD seems reasonably unlikely.

On a related note, Grant's comments in the TPO article that "Big Dave had the potential for mass appeal but 2000AD was scared of him and didn't know how to market or exploit what they had, it could have been like South Park" seem slightly self-serving.

If, as I believe, they have the rights to the character back, and lad culture still seems to be in vogue, then why haven't we seen any creator-owned attempts to tap this mass market appeal that's apparently just waiting to happen?

Easy to talk up a character's potential, as long as you tag on "ah, but the publishers never understood..." onto the end of it.

[Matt]

I reckon a new run of Big Dave would probably hurt both authors appeal with american publishing giants if it were taken to the extremes that morrison suggested. It seems they are far too cosy writing for lame superhero titles now as opposed to shaking up the industry. Ironic that two authors who once claimed to 'gob in the eye of tradition' have been absorbed by it.

[GordonR]

I must say, I find the idea of 'Battle of the Bulgers' pretty indefensible.  

You can wank on about catching the zeitgeist and parodying tabloid press attitudes, and you can revel all you want in your own self-proclaimed contraversy, but at the end of the day here's what you're doing...

...you're making jokes about a young murdered child.


I suspect that story idea was submitted as a secret piss-taking  exercise at the editors' expense, or was deliberately designed to be rejected on grounds of taste, thus upping the contraversy factor a little more.

[Matt]

I hope I haven't misrepresented myself in this thread. Just in case anyone thinks I can find humor in the murder of a child, I can't. I liked Big Dave, and although its natural home should have been Viz and probably not 2000ad, I don't think that should detract from the story. On the whole I think the majority of the Summer Offensive was wank & I wouldn't welcome back either Morrison or Millar with open arms, but Big Dave I liked.

[paulvonscott]

No, that came across fine Matt, any problems I have aren't with you!

Anyway all of Grants words may sound very believable, but its all a load of gabber designed to make himself look good (and oo-er - style  precognitive) for what was at best a failed experiment.  

Pick a random handful of messageboarders and you'll get a bunch of ideas for strips you could do, whether you should do them is a different matter entirely :)

I also happen to think Viz is far better at tabloid parody than Big Dave has ever been and has more incisive minds at work :o

I wouldn't be against doing something like that summer offensive again, but not for the same length (Johns Smith said it was only eight weeks, but two months of potentially shite progs isn't something I'd look forward to) I think the trick would be to pick your creators very carefully indeed (certainly I liked Smith's strip) and do it on a more limited scale.  A whole prog of experimental rubbish is only ever going to lose readers.  Hopefully we don't need the endless renivention and bollocks of yankee comics.

Then again, its an anthology comic, new strips turn up all the time, so it probably IS a bad idea unless there is a serious rut.  And even then just chucking four new strips into the pit isn't probably going to be succesful.

It's very easy for this sort of thing to be about the creators and not the comic, and of course they bring their own agendas to the comic whether it's compatable with AD or not.

[Matt]

I once read a comment in a newspaper from a TV producer after the sacking of Julie Goodyear from Coronation Street, that basically went said that when the star felt that they were bigger than the street then it was time for them to go. I reckon the same can be said of 2000ad, none of it's creators should feel that they are bigger than the title itself. Morrison & Millar did and almost fucked it up.

[mongor2003]

I've always found Grant Morrison to be guilty of self agrandising (is that a real word ?),or self promotion anyway - look at the whole shambles where he tried to sue the makers of the matrix because he reckoned it ripped off the invisibles, he even had the gall to say that lawrence fishburnes outfit in that movie (shaved head, shades,black leather trenchcoat) was ripped off from his own dress sense. I agree he's written some good stuff (zenith) and I have no problem with writers bringing thier own agendas to thier work - afterall what would be the point otherwise. What I do find objectionable is Morrisons apparent self importance, he comes across as somebody who believes himself to be bigger and more important than the field he works for, and to me that just smacks of slowly dissappearing up one's own ringpiece and not doing it particularly quietly at that.

[Art]

Ah! But Morrisons also done some fantastic stuff for 2000ad. Millar on the other hand...

[Al_Ewing]

Whew... teach me to check messages only once a day...

Millar has too done good stuff! Maniacs 5 and 6 were fun, both Canon Fodders were excellent and things of beauty, and Silo was magnificent. I also liked the first Robo Hunter serial he did, but I knew it would always be second to Wagner. Didn't despise it, though. And what about Tales From Beyond Science? That radio one chilled my bones.

I'd totally forgotten Ryan Hughes' Robohunter was around this time, and yes, it sucked turds out of a dead dog.

Everyone's already said all my views for me on Big Dave - hit and miss, done better in Viz, more suited to The Face or something - so I won't bother going 'me too', and the Bulger thing sounds like something that's been made up for the interview in an attempt to squeeze a little more juice out of Dave's corpse. Forget burning the progs, they'd have burnt Kings Reach Tower and everybody inside.

(Sorry about this immense post of crap late at night - seems I'm doomed to be a background prescence if I want to get work done...)

[MOONSHINE]

Millers work classics?!? Silo was a generic patchwork of ripped of story ideas (exhibit A - main characters bleeding feet after running barefoot through broken glass - Die Hard any one).

Morrison is certainly a bit of an egotistical twat, but hes written a lot of interesting stuff.

Smith, despite his liking of purple streams of conciousness dialogue, has also produced numerous excellent and thoughful ales.

Miller likes lumping himself in with these guys, but I reckon his just riding their coat tales.
All big ideas with poor execution.

[MOONSHINE]

Though John smith may in fact have a fine collection of home brews, I meant Tales, not ales.

[Art]

Hmm... Perosnally I htought Maniac 5 was a complete waste of space. But maybe I'm being harsh: Millars certainly got a knack for a certain kind of brutalist superhero action, which he's pretty much perfected over the course of The Authrity and The Ultimates, but he's a bit one note and note a tenth as diverse or imaginative as Morrison.

[Al_Ewing]

Silo looked terrific to me. First time I'd ever seen his particular style, and it struck a big chord. And the bleeding feet thing was fairly refreshing in that it seemed to actually hurt in Silo... but he did stuff later that knocked spots off that.

[mongor2003]

I loved silo, thought it was very atmospheric and well done, true it did rip off both die hard and the shining but that didnt bother me overly.