Picking up the pieces
Picking up the pieces |
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Page 30 of 38  A selection of minor characters and one-offs from the post-1985 period. Art/script: Viz team. Pathetically juvenile, they still manage to raise a titter. However, it would be wrong to see this phase as entirely devoid of interest. There were significant moments, and these in many ways heralded the reshaping of the market in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, it was the superhero genre that was initially the focus of activity, since by 1970, the wave of interest sparked by the Marvel superheroes was seriously on the wane, and stories were tending either to get bogged down in endless fight scenes (the Kirby formula minus imagination), or to go 'camp': the 1960s Batman TV series had started a trend for tongue-in-cheek stories, and the period thereafter was notorious for un-thrilling plots about heroes getting married", being transformed (shrunk, enlarged), battling ridiculous monsters (rather than criminals), travelling through time warps and meeting pop stars. Marvel was first to come up with a solution. Ever the opportunists, they realized that there was a revival of interest in the novels of Robert E Howard, and especially in one of his characters, Conan the Barbarian, and that this was something they could capitalize upon. The Conan stories were set in a mythological, prehistoric past, and involved the incredibly gory adventures of a none-too-bright hero - impossibly muscular, and armed to the teeth with broadswords and axes - and his quests to save comely princesses and do battle with evil magicians and fanciful monsters. They had originally appeared in pulp magazines in the 1930s, but were republished in paperback form in the mid-1960s, and were garnering a new and enthusiastic readership -thus signalling the start of the rise of modern 'sword and sorcery'. |