Big Dave

[Frank]

To be fair, I'd agree with Leigh's characterisation with regard to Millar strips like Babe Race 2000 and his work with Morrison on Dredd stories like Crusade. There was definitely an air of condescension toward the readership and the material in the half hearted way they hacked out those strips.

[NapalmKev]

I thought BIG DAVE was hilarious to be honest!

I'm what would be considered 'white working class' by popular definition (not my own opinion). I could also be 'classed' as extremely Left-Wing, a hippie, a pot smoking metal head, or any other Bullshit label.

And I still thought BIG DAVE was funny!


Cheers

[Frank]

Big Dave is not teh hero of a Sun strip - he is the benefit scrounger the Sun hates - the angle of the strip that is attacking the EMdia, that's fine, but it's is a blunt attack when the hero should be the strips villain

I don't know about you, but I've found those who complain loudest about scroungers and immigrants are often those who are most dependant upon the state or contribute least to the Treasury themselves. That applies just as much to those at the top end of our social hierarchy as it does to those at the bottom or middle, and they usually appear entirely unaware of the irony.

[TordelBack]

I'm not saying there isnt a great idea in Big Dave.. but its a garbled one

That mirrors my own feelings about Big Dave: it's inconsistent.  I liked the strip, some of it is very funny and cleverly satirical, but other parts just seem to undercut the satire with, well, run of the mill LCD mockery.  I don't think Morrison and Millar really had a grasp on what the joke was supposed to be, at least not all the time: they're so busy coming up with funny stuff and out-Vizzing Viz that the target of the humour drifts uncomfortably.  The amazing Colin Smith explored these and similar issues at his usual far greater depth over at his much missed blog.

All that said, there are images and sequences in there that are among the finest and funniest in 2000AD's history.

[Fungus]

Read absolutely no Big Dave as yet and frankly was dreading it. But when the slog gets there (it's a read as opposed to a re-read) I'm now intrigued 

Aside. Button Man 1 is - I can exclusively reveal - sensational.

Fungus (22 years behind the curve)

[Colin YNWA]

I find Big Dave the exception that proves the rule. I normally think 2000ad is robust enough a format to hold just about any strip in context of what surrounds it. Big Dave just didn't seem to fit though, I think because it so clearly that another home that it seemed to be hankering after. Like it was being snuck into 2000ad 'cos the creators didn't have an in on Viz. Or maybe that it was taking a Viz strip to what they thought was its natural conclusion that Viz of course wasn't the place for... whatever didn't fit for me.

Should say I like it, after all Steve Parkhouse, just not as a 2000ad strip.

[SuperSurfer]

Must say I am rather surprised by a lot of the comments on this thread as I thought reader opinion was more divided on Big Dave.

Agree with Colin. I just can't see what Big Dave had to do with 2000AD. I can handle the odd strip veering from the comic's usual themes but I wouldn't have liked Big Dave wherever it was published. And I don't think it would've been good enough for VIZ, especially in those days.

For me, it was one dimensional and completely unfunny.

I do like risqué humour if it is making a point. But I really don't believe there was much of a point to Big Dave other than trying to shock.

To quote Colin Smith: "Rather than illuminating bigotry with any wit or depth, they'd often ended up appearing to connive with it". Sums it up for me.

http://sequart.org/magazine/30320/two-tickets-for-my-next-performance-mark-millar-shameless-part-32/

[Toni Scandella]

Speaking as a white working class guy (albeit a queer gothy one) who grew up on Action and 2000AD, I liked Big Dave. 

I totally understood it was a satire on the way the Press pretends to be for and by the working class while upholding the values of the - lets face it, pretty far right. 

I knew it was not making fun of people like Dave - there aren't any people like dave, just as there aren't any peole like San and Tray or Buster Gonad.  There are people with some of his attitudes, but they don't represent everyone else, even on the estate where I live, and they are generally more like petty minded bullies than scourges of estates.  They tend to grow up eventually.

Big Dave was very clearly an attack on the press (and the royal family, and establishment) and - while not brilliant - was sometimes fun, like Viz mostly is.

[Proteus4]

I've always felt that big Dave diluted the name of 2000ad, as if it was trying to grab readers from loaded, or viz - but if I wanted to buy a viz story I'd have bought viz.   when twothy made it in the news in those days it was always for something like big Dave or Blair 1 - ooh controversial - but that only damaged the name of twothy as it actually bore little resemblance to the intelligently written, fantastically drawn, eclectic strips of the galaxy's greatest. I have no interest in big Dave as a strip and it don't hate it per se, but I do hate the fact that it was in 2000ad and Morrison and miller were idiots for putting it there.  It made me extremely angry at the time that a childish and idiotic strip like this got into the prog. I say we take off, nuke the strip from orbit. Only way to be sure...

Dave

[Frank]

Big Dave was very clearly an attack on the press (and the royal family, and establishment)

I'm not sure that it was. Like you, I enjoyed Big Dave, but the negative comments upthread about folk not understanding where the target of the satire lay - where the authors were coming from - is probably valid. That's one of the things I ended up liking most about it; that there's no coherent ideological agenda being pushed on the reader is a strength, as far as I'm concerned, and it points up many of the contradictions inherent in the world view expounded by papers like The Sun.

Big Dave was taking the piss, on every level and of everyone.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've always felt that big Dave diluted the name of 2000ad, as if it was trying to grab readers from loaded, or viz.................................... but I do hate the fact that it was in 2000ad and Morrison and miller were idiots for putting it there. 

To be honest I don't think Loaded actually existed when Big Dave was first published.  I thought 2000ad flirted far more shamelessly with the Loaded readership during the Bish-OP years; and that sat a bit uneasily with me.  Viz was going strong during Dave's time, of course, and you're probably right about that.  Personally speaking though, I've always been a huge Viz fan and really didn't mind seeing its influence in 2000ad (it was a bit better than the influence of Spicemania, for example).

I don't think any creators are idiots for putting something non-2000ad-like in 2000ad.  I think there should always be room for something new and unformulaic.  It may not work all the time (Dave worked for me, but that's a personal preference), but I like the fact 2000ad is brave enough to give it a shot.

Also, as I've said before, Big Dave got some of my nonscrot friends into 2000ad, which is a good thing in my book.  They started reading it for the same type of cheap, bad-taste laughs* they got from Viz, and then started noticing the quality of the other strips.

*In Viz's case, at least for me, those cheap and bad-taste laughs are served up beautifully and provide many hilarious conversation topics.

[Frank]

I've always felt that big Dave diluted the name of 2000ad ... if I wanted to buy a viz story I'd have bought viz  ... that only damaged the name of twothy as it actually bore little resemblance to the intelligently written, fantastically drawn, eclectic strips of the galaxy's greatest. I have no interest in big Dave as a strip and it don't hate it per se, but I do hate the fact that it was in 2000ad and Morrison and miller were idiots for putting it there.  It made me extremely angry at the time that a childish and idiotic strip like this got into the prog

I don't think any creators are idiots for putting something non-2000ad-like in 2000ad.  I think there should always be room for something new and unformulaic.  It may not work all the time (Dave worked for me, but that's a personal preference), but I like the fact 2000ad is brave enough to give it a shot

Many folk's favourite strip of the last few weeks has been about an Iron Age hard man trying but failing to kill anyone. See also Button Man, Zenith, Al's Baby, Sooner Or Later, and Fiends Of The Eastern Front, none of which are 2000ad. I'm not sure they're any less childish or more fantastically drawn than Big Dave either.

[ZenArcade]

To all super villans if you capture James Bond, do not devise some convoluted, improbable execution scenario and then leave without witnessing his actual death, instead kill him immediatly.....I am paraphrasing a Top tip from zonks ago in Viz. 

[Spikes]

Never did like Big Dave, and I don't think he should have appeared in the prog. Juvenile stuff, and poorly conceived.

[NapalmKev]

While I'm not sure I would like to see the return of BIG DAVE (as much as I enjoyed it, it has had its day) I still think it was a worthy inclusion to the Prog.

For me '2000ad' means diversity, pushing boundries, and trying new things. Not every strip can or should be the likes of 'Slaine' (which is ok) or 'Dante' (I wasn't a huge fan) or any other long running fan-service tripe!

Ulysees Sweet is probably the closest any strip can come to the likes of BIG DAVE, on a modern level. And I enjoyed that as well.


Cheers