Picking up the pieces
Picking up the pieces |
|
Page 7 of 38  Cover to 2000AD (Fleetway, 1980). Art: Brian Bolland. The secret of the comic was that it remained topical without ever taking itself too seriously. Inexorably, Action ran into problems with parents, and with the media: The Sun branded it The Seven-penny Nightmare', and led the campaign to have it banned. Calls for censorship were ostensibly predicated on the quantity of violence, but in fact there were more political objections: this was, after all, a subversive comic in more ways than one. IPC eventually buckled under the pressure, and neutered Action amid much protest from fans. It died a lingering death a few months later.7 2000AD was intended to plug the gap left by Action, and was launched in 1977. It would have the same punk attitude, but would be set in the future so as to avoid the possibility of a similar controversy. The science fiction angle had two other advantages: first, it meant the title could borrow movie ideas in much the same way as its predecessor had done (roughly contemporaneous Hollywood hits included Rollerball, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars). Second, it made it more possible for artists to imitate American comics, which at the time were more popular than British product: 2000AD is remarkable for the fact that it was the first mainstream comic to exploit Kirbyesque splash-panels and dynamic rendering.  2000AD |