Hey guys and girls, sorry for being AWOL for the past two weeks but I’ve been busy with a broken foot, insomnia and writing Iain’s wrestling column J. However, I’m back and in what is fast becoming a habit I’ve been up all night, so let’s hope I can get this done and then get some much needed sleep.
Our topic today is (drum roll please) is AARGH, Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia, which I have just decided is the first in a series of columns on Gay Comics NOT Starring Northstar.
The Politics
It’s the eighties; male musicians either wear make up or hair spray whilst Personal Best is released in cinemas across the world. You’d think it was a wonderful time to be gay but in fact it wasn’t. Nope, it was a bad time with the outbreak of AIDS leading to a wave of bad press and the resurgence of homophobic attitudes amongst the press and politicians. To compound the problem, in Britain LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual trans) issues got mixed up with the general tabloid campaign against loony left councils who were spending wacky sums of money on wacky campaigns like gender identity, supporting the IRA and caring for welsh, black, disabled Muslim lesbians. This predictably leads for calls for SOMETHING TO BE DONE and that something was the infamous ‘Section 28’ of the Local Government Act 1987, that banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality. Naturally, outrage ensued from such a blatantly homophobic piece of legislation with many famous people and not so famous but ever so serious artists and even some politicians being upset.
And one of these people happened to reside in Northampton…
The Comic
At this point in his life Alan Moore was living in a three-way relationship with his wife and her girlfriend. Due to this Moore felt the act striking against him and so was moved to action against what he saw as typical Thatcherite fascism. So he rang round such esteemed creators as Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Brian Bolland, Frank Miller, Robert Crumb and Dave Sim and organised a campaign anthology against ‘Section 28’. He even managed to get mainstream figures such as Alexi Sayle (British comedian) to contribute. Moore also decided that he wanted all proceeds to go the Organisation for Lesbian and Gay Action so he set up Mad Love Publishing and got all the creators, publishers, distributors and retailers to donate their services free of charge. He even gave it a funky name-AARGH; Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia.
Also sounds pretty impressive, huh? Well there’s a catch….
The Review
The main problem with AARGH is that to be to blunt, a lot of it is pretty bloody awful. The main problem is the lack of any editorial guidance and vision; naturally as creators were giving their services free then they were given carte blanche with what they submitted. This results in an over saturation of stories that can be boiled down to a loud F*** You Thatcher, F****** homophobic straight society. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, it has proven the inspiration for many fine pieces of satire but as we get story after story that are not only politically unsophisticated rants but completely boring to boot! It’s just boring to read an anthology that has five different stories about a poor noble gay being beaten up for being gay, especially when all but two are boring and formulaic. And indeed that’s the problem with a good half of AARGH, in that we see writers and artists basically playing safe and trying their best not to rock the boat. So we can read nice, self satisfied lectures about why ‘Section 28’ is wrong and homophobia evil without any evidence of deep thought or even inventive use of the comic book format.
That said there are some gems in AARGH, and almost all have one thing in common-originality and daring. Frank Miller, Harvey Pekar, Brian Bolland and Neil Gaiman actually do something with their strips that’s different to Peter Tatchell’s talking points being cut and pasted onto comic strip. Miller produces a crazy and OTT satire of Robo-Cop in RoboHomoPhobe, whilst Bolland brilliant satirises straight men’s discomfort with the whole gay issue. Pekar gives us a strangely sweet story about a pedophilic priest whilst Gaiman shows everyone how to do a didactic story, as with Mark Buckingham and Bryan Talbot he produces a concise and interesting analysis of the LGBT contribution to civilization.
Next to these gems are two pieces of solid gold! One is a wonderful piece of observational comedy entitled A Kind of Liberation by Posy Simmonds about the conversation between the straight home-husband and his gay friend after they’ve finished doing their shopping. It has a character and heart to it that many of the other stories lack as the straight friend tries to explain why his friend ‘camping it up’ to tell the shopkeeper ‘yes I’m gay’ has made his life more difficult. The brilliant thing is, that the story doesn’t pass judgement and doesn’t tell you whom you should side for; it just lets the story speak for itself.
The second story is by Jamie Delano and Shane Oakley (based on a story by Mark Vicars, which I’m assuming is a Real Life story) and is called Growing Out of It. This is the fifth ‘gay guy gets beat up storyline’ and is the first to actually pack an emotional punch. The problem with the other four is that all felt like straight guys imagining how awful it would be to be picked on for being gay; this actually felt like a gay man’s story. The story is far more nuanced and understated than the others and is all the better for it as Delano allows the ‘character’ to develop naturally. The things Mark goes through and the emotions he feels don’t sound like they were put there to make a political point.
Then of course, there’s Alan Moore’s The Mirror of Love, but we shall get to that in a bit.
The Aftermath
AARGH quickly became a collector’s edition primarily due to the roll call of artistic talent collected in one comic but also because of the kudos it achieved for trying to change the world, etc. The Organisation for Gay and Lesbian Action got a sizeable donation although Moore in an interview (which annoyingly I cannot find the link to anywhere, I hate it when that happens) complained about their poor attitude to bisexuals. ‘Section 28’ proved a baleful influence for another 15 years, and although no successful prosecutions were ever made, the threat of prosecutions created a climate where teachers felt unable to discuss LGBT issues or offer full help to LGBT students who asked for support (something I know from my own experience). Tony Blair’s Labour Government finally repealed it in 2003.
And in 2004, AARGH’s opening story the Alan Moore poem ‘The Mirror of Love’ got a make over courtesy of Jose Villarrubia. However, that’s a story for next week…
