Nothing to see here

[Colin YNWA]

Much better... though do I detect a hint of snark... nah I'm just being grumpy there aren't I.

[Skullmo]

 


But in all seriousness, I would never suppose I know why someone feels something.

[Jim_Campbell]

But in all seriousness, I would never suppose I know why someone feels something.

It's because they enjoy being wrong. ;-)

Cheers

Jim

[Frank]

No GFD-bashing from this quarter. My reaction to reading the progs where his work was a regular feature was exactly that suggested by the comments made by Mills which are referenced above. A lot of the first few years of 2000ad is made up of insipid writing and art which feel like they owe more to the previous few decades of comics than the brash and dynamic vision of Mills and Wagner. GFD's strips exhibit the same energy, humour and incident-packed form as those two, and I held him in similar esteem.

The distinction I'd make between the three is that while Wagner and Mills continued to refine their style and expand the scope of their work, GFD continued to plough more or less the same furrow. Nothing wrong with that, but - as Mills pointed out in the last podcast he did for ECBT2000ad - it meant he ended up out of favour once the editorial department became the preserve of fashion victims who bought into the hype around comics growing up. I still enjoy the many tales (from various sources) of GFD's unique means of self expression, though.

[Greg M.]

The distinction I'd make between the three is that while Wagner and Mills continued to refine their style and expand the scope of their work, GFD continued to plough more or less the same furrow..

Can't argue with that – a fair and astute comment. Wagner and Mills slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies; Finley-Day reached a successful plateau and kept plugging away.

[Jim_Campbell]

Nothing wrong with that, but - as Mills pointed out in the last podcast he did for ECBT2000ad - it meant he ended up out of favour once the editorial department became the preserve of fashion victims who bought into the hype around comics growing up.

I don't think that's entirely fair. Even by Mills' own admission, GFD was (is?) a "rough draft" kind of writer whose scripts needed a lot of polish.

As the 2000AD budget was squeezed and the editorial department dwindled from an actual department to two guys and the lad who made the tea* I think employing writers whose scripts needed the degree of (charitably) polish that every editor who's ever passed comment on them has said they required may have looked like something of a luxury. Particularly when there was no shortage of eager young things who would fall over themselves to submit a script that was already so polished you could see your face in it.

Harsh, but the way of things, I'm afraid.

Cheers

Jim

*AKA: Andy Diggle.

[Frank]

If we're talking writers who cause a ton of headaches for editorial and make demands upon their time, another writer we've both mentioned is probably a better example. If being more trouble than he was worth was the reason GFD stopped getting the cheques, all it would have taken was another hour long phone rant and we'd all have been reading Alan MacKenzie's Nemesis: book ten and Simon Bisley would have illustrated Hilary Robinson's take on The ABC Warriors.

[Jim_Campbell]

I've never read anything, anywhere, that suggests any 2000ad editorial team has ever done any significant re-writing of a Pat Mills script.

Cheers

Jim

[Frank]

If we're talking writers who cause a ton of headaches for editorial and make demands upon their time ... all it would have taken was yet another hour long phone rant and we'd all have been reading Alan MacKenzie's Nemesis: book ten and Simon Bisley would have illustrated Hilary Robinson's take on The ABC Warriors.

[Jim_Campbell]

If we're talking writers who cause a ton of headaches for editorial and make demands upon their time ... all it would have taken was yet another hour long phone rant and we'd all have been reading Alan MacKenzie's Nemesis: book ten and Simon Bisley would have illustrated Hilary Robinson's take on The ABC Warriors.

I'm assuming you're quoting yourself in an attempt to show that I've somehow misunderstood the passage you re-quote. If so, you're going to have to explain to me again, using shorter words.

You say:

If we're talking writers who cause a ton of headaches for editorial and make demands upon their time

Well, I wasn't. I was talking specifically about writers — more accurately, one writer — whose work was notorious for requiring extensive re-writing. You can tell that's what I was talking about, because that's what I wrote, and then reiterated. As such, comparison with Pat Mills' reputation for a certain —ahem— volatility seems to be rather missing my point.

You could argue that GFD fell out of favour under a fairly capricious editorial regime, but he wasn't alone by any means in suddenly finding the doors at 2000AD seemingly barred under the Burton/MacKenzie tenure. The vast majority of those creators found the doors un-barred when the title came under new stewardship and I would suggest the fact that GFD didn't is as much about the sheer level of editorial work his scripts required as some supposed disfavour in the eyes of "fashion victims".

Cheers

Jim

[Frank]

The same editorial staff who considered GFD to be a pain in the neck thought of Pat Mills in the same way, for different reasons. Ergo, being a pain in the neck - taking up their time and mental effort - was not the sole reason GFD's calls stopped being returned. Ron Smith provided no such headaches, but disappeared from the prog for similar reasons to those which saw GFD sidelined.

[Jim_Campbell]

Ergo, being a pain in the neck - taking up their time and mental effort - was not the sole reason GFD's calls stopped being returned.

No, he also wasn't the title's founding father.

Honestly, I have no idea why you're arguing this point with me. Your original post asserted that GFD fell out of favour because of the pretensions of fashion victims in the editorial chair. God knows, I'm no apologist for the Burton/MacKenzie editorial team — I wasn't specifically referring to them, but confronted with a choice between Writer A, whose scripts will need extensive re-writing in order to reach a basic standard of useability, and Writer B, whose scripts come in requiring little more than a once-over for typos and grammar, any editorial department whose budgets are being squeezed will go for Writer B.

I'm not suggesting that was the sole reason for GFD's fall from favour, nor am I arguing any wider point, but there is a practical component to the editorial unwillingness to commission further material the causes of which are at least partly of his own making.

Cheers

Jim

[Skullmo]

Ergo, being a pain in the neck - taking up their time and mental effort - was not the sole reason GFD's calls stopped being returned.

No, he also wasn't the title's founding father.

Honestly, I have no idea why you're arguing this point with me. Your original post asserted that GFD fell out of favour because of the pretensions of fashion victims in the editorial chair. God knows, I'm no apologist for the Burton/MacKenzie editorial team — I wasn't specifically referring to them, but confronted with a choice between Writer A, whose scripts will need extensive re-writing in order to reach a basic standard of useability, and Writer B, whose scripts come in requiring little more than a once-over for typos and grammar, any editorial department whose budgets are being squeezed will go for Writer B.

I'm not suggesting that was the sole reason for GFD's fall from favour, nor am I arguing any wider point, but there is a practical component to the editorial unwillingness to commission further material the causes of which are at least partly of his own making.

Cheers

Jim

Surely this is an exercise in dialectical method!

Now let's work out how many Thargs can sit on the head of a pin?!

[Jim_Campbell]

Ron Smith provided no such headaches, but disappeared from the prog for similar reasons to those which saw GFD sidelined.

Worth reiterating my point about the majority of creators finding 2000AD more welcoming once the editorial regime changed. This was certainly true for Ron Smith, who was invited to return to the Galaxy's Greatest by David Bishop but who had, by then, filled his schedule with far more lucrative work for advertising agencies and whose response to the invitation (according to Bishop) was "Not bloody likely!"

Cheers

Jim

[TordelBack]

This all comes back to the nature of comics as a commercial medium. When GFD was feeding the Command Module with iconic characters and distinctive setups, pop-culture puns and fast-paced boys' adventures, it was as part of a collaborative process, with great editors and an incredible team of artists (Gibbons, Kennedy, Wilson, Ewins, Ortiz, hootin' heck!) all doing their thing with his scripts to produce the weekly comics equivalent of ambrosia.  When it was pared back to 'give us a script we can use straight out of the drawer and we'll stick whoever's free on it', the dynamic changes in favour of, oh let's just say, Fleisher.  To quote Truman Capote, 'that's not writing, that's typing'.