What’s it like where you’re at? Do you read your comics under huge snow-drifts or on arid prairies? Here in sun-bronzed Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, everyone is worried about the lack of water. It’s been a long time between rainy seasons here and some of our country towns are set to run out of water completely. If it goes on like this much longer Australia will become like the Dune movie and we’ll have to set locks on the toilet bowls and start using those ‘water draining’ devices from Tank Girl.
(n case you’re one of the lucky many who didn’t see it, the water-draining thingies was a fish bowl with a big spikey thing attached. The bad guy jammed it into people’s bodies and proceeded to suck all the water out of them, leaving him with a large bowl of water and a dessicated corpse. Anyone who’s seen pictures of our PM would see this as an improvement)
Anyway, in Australia, all is scarcity and if you’ve got any half-way decent water you don’t need, email it at once.
In the world of comics, however, all is abundance, as libraries continue to buy hardback collections that I could otherwise only dream of, and online registration gives me access to Marvel comics that I’m too cheap to buy and too picky to read standing up in the shop. When I’m not luxuriating in Neill Gaiman’s ‘1602’ (see last column) or Eisner’s ‘Contract with God’ I have a choice between the plethora of good stuff in my regular 2000 AD subscriptions and cautiously dipping my toes into the vast pool of Marvel comics.
2000 AD is so good these days that it should be compulsory reading in schools. A really good government would give it away at railway stations. It’s an election month in Melbourne now and the government is going to pay me $150.00 just for sending my son to school. I was going to send him there anyway, since we don’t have any chimneys that need cleaning, but that’s politics for you. The electorate is faced with a centre-leftie type, Mr Bracks, who is scared of antagonising Rupert Murdoch and a rich creep, Mr Bailleau, who is pretending to be nice for the election and is scared of antagonising Rupert Murdoch.
(Steve Bracks wonders which comic to bribe the people of Victoria with)
The latest bidding war is over who will buy the police the nicest weapons. If the pols are going to buy my vote by paying for things I’d do anyway, why not comics? Here’s my pitch.
(Judge Dredd ummm strides a bit)
Judge Dredd; Origins: Dredd is riding through the Cursed Earth with a bunch of other judges looking for the original corpse or person of Judge Fargo, the man who started it all and from whom Dredd was cloned. They’ve just gotten away from a town of Fargo-descended mutants with huge chins (one of Dredd’s defining characteristics).
Sounds pretty silly doesn’t it? I don’t think either party would go for that. However almost all comics sound silly in summary. The basic story is a very well-told Western. A diverse gang go out into the desert, lead by a laconic, cool, unkillable older guy. The Cursed Earth usually fills in for the Wild Wild West, albeit with more mutants and flying rats than are found in Sergio Leone movies. Bags of fun.
Sinister Dexter are back. Well, I should say ‘is’ back, since one of them was killed a while ago and we’re still waiting for him to reappear via cloning, alternative universe or act of God. This strip started as a bleak European version of the killers from Pulp Fiction eleven years ago. Like all anti-heroes, the fun future assassins soon became lovable and decent. In fact one of my first letters to the comic was one complaining about the inconsistency of Sinister and Dexter killing anyone for money, but spending increasing amounts of their time worrying about ‘the shark’s code’. That’s the code whereby gunsharks can kill anyone except for police officers, beautiful women on the run from cold hearted gangsters, hookers with hearts of gold, ….the list kept growing. Nonetheless, it was fun still, with lots of pun-laden byplay between the characters and some nice kooky settings, like an artificial Jamaican island somewhere near Russia and Mangapore, where all is Japanese-ish. The turgid part of the plot came to a head and it seemed as though the thing was completely finished. Then, recently, one of the heroes came back, via a ‘new’ story, called ‘Malone’, which was quite brilliant – we thought it was a new story until the very end (or, in my case, until the 2000 AD message board spoiled it for me).
(Sinister Dexter rip off The Matrix line about kung-fu)
Simon Spurrier is back with a story called ‘Chiaroscuro’. Usually with Mr Spurrie’s work, I write in the future tense, because he is developing so fast that every story makes me wonder how he’ll develop next. He’s known for clever-clever wordplay and stories which are not so much clever as cute, with a certain over-reliance on grotesque details to provide atmosphere. He has turned in some brilliant work; Lobster Random, the torturer for hire is a genius creation. If you haven’t read him, imagine a more functional version of Doonesbury’s ‘Duke’ character, plus giant lobster claws and a penchant for sex with machines. The Simping Detective was also good stuff, a Marlowe-like character in the Judge Dredd world.
Chiaroscuro is something else. It feels like a very old style story, a young film industry type on the trail of a movie which kills everyone who has had anything to do with it. Sounds cheesy, I know, but like the best jokes, it’s how he tells it. I have no idea what Spurrier wanted to do with this, but the effect is like reading a great European comic of the 1960s that has been buried in a vault undiscovered.
Robbie Morrison’s ‘Nikolai Dante’ is back. This is a simple pleasure, as are most comics. He fights, he swashbuckles, he romances women in an innocent Bond-ish way, all in a future world dominated by old style Russian Imperial familes. I wouldn’t crawl over ground glass to get to this story, but it’s enjoyable, a ripping yarn.
Red Seas is back. Ian Edginton shows so much restraint on this series that I can’t believe it’s the same person who bought us the brilliant ‘Scarlet Traces’ or the deeply odd ‘Xtnct’. Red Seas is another boyish thrill, although it is much more self-consciously so than Chiaroscuro or Dante. It gets a big rap from the somewhat retro-minded 2000AD buffs. Myself I can take it or leave it, although I’m warming to it and Steve Yeowell gets to do the occasional splash page of great beauty. A group of jolly pirates with hearts of gold wander around in days of yore getting involved with lands beneath the earth, mythical beings, Satan and that kind of thing. It’s never what I’d call gripping, but is always worth a read.
All up, I’m feeling very lucky to be getting this lot through the mail-box. I haven’t even mentioned the art, which can be summed up by the word ‘variety’. There isn’t really a house style in 2000 AD, just a lot of different artists telling stories in the ways they like. Yeowell does elegant black and white stuff, Dredd is drawn by his original creator, Ezquerra, for whom no praise is too high (in case you wonder what Equerra’s funny stuff is like, check out John Kerry. It’s uncanny). Sinister Dexter are a bit cartoonish, not that there’s anything wrong with that and Chiaroscuro is elegant shaded black n white. One copy of ‘tooth’ has more visual interest and variety than six months of DC and Marvel put together.
Go on Mr Bracks! Say you’ll give the police tasers and ray guns AND 2000 AD for free on the trains. You know it makes sense. My theory is that if some greater power could step in at the very last minute and delay the election by an extra month, the two exhausted leaders would step up the bidding war to an insane degree and free comics on trains would be the least of it. We’d be hearing cries of “Ray guns for the police, your child chauffeur driven to school and free 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine”, versus “A cop in every home, free public transport and Alan Moore to finish Halo Jones”
Oh and the Marvel comics I’m too cheap to buy? I checked out some of the Civil War stuff via the net and nearly fell face forward onto my computer. All my teenage favourites are in there, giving each other grim adult looks and rabbiting on about their loyalties, without ever noticing how Byzantine their lives are. Someone who’s read the thing properly free free to write in to tell me how much fun it really is if you just pay attention, but for the time being I’ll keep reading house of Tharg stuff and won’t spoil my Marvel memories.
