Picking up the pieces
Picking up the pieces |
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Page 6 of 38  Cover, 2000 AD (Fleetway, 1979), featuring a revamped Dan Dare and his enemy, the Mekon. Art: Dave Gibbons. However, these characters' future was in the past and they were dropped after a few issues. This last point may seem like a subtlety, but in fact it dictated the tone of the comics in a way that was every bit as important as the underground's links with the hippie scene. Defining that sensibility is a little more difficult, because although punk was certainly an ideology that extended beyond Johnny Rotten screaming his head off, it had no set goals in the way that hippie culture did. All we can say is that, at its core, it stood for a distrust of any kind of authority; a romanticized belief in working-class culture (street credibility); the worth of rebellion for its own sake; and the fetishization of violence (real or imaginary). It also started out as a peculiarly British phenomenon, only to be taken up in America and other parts of the world later. 2000AD was by far the most influential of the British threesome, and exhibited a definite punk edge, despite being science fiction based. It would be a flagship comic for IPC/Fleetway through the 1980s and 1990s, and borrowed much from its predecessor, Action (IPC, 1976) - a comic founded with the intention of adding some zip to the traditional adventure formula, which in some senses succeeded too well. Action strips were typically based on themes popular in films and on TV, but given a violent and anti-authoritarian twist: the saintly heroes of yesteryear were now more complex characters, often bitter and morally ambiguous (even the obligatory war strip featured a sympathetic Nazi). For these reasons, the comic tapped into the very earliest stirrings of punk, and was soon selling over 100,000 to a readership that stretched into late teenage.  Wraparound cover to 2000AD (Fleetway, 1981) featuring Judge Dredd, a preferable hero for readers in the 1990s. Art: Brian Bolland. (Cover depicts Dredd in a riot situation: many British inner cities rioted in the same year.) |