More Tea, Mr. Doomlord?
Until I discovered the very…em…groovy Groovy Age of Horror blog the other day, I'd never heard of the term 'fumetti' (despite being a lifelong comics fan). Here's the handy Wikipedia definition:
Fumetti or photo novels are a form of comics illustrated with photographs rather than drawings. This kind of graphic storytelling has experienced the most popularity in Italy. Italian weeklies such as Grand Hotel and Bolero Film sold millions of copies in the 1940s and continue to sell well today…Fumetti are also popular in Spain and Latin America, where they are called fotonovelas, and in France. Fumetti have never been widely appreciated in the United States.
Though US readers may not have embraced the joys of the fumetti, photostrips did enjoy a brief period of popularity in the late 70s/early 80s in the UK. Though most popular as a device for telling tales of teenage romance (in titles like Jackie etc), photostrips also featured heavily in the early years of the relaunched (1980s) Eagle.
Easily the most memorable of the Eagle photostrip stories was "Doomlord" (written by British comics legends Alan Grant and John Wagner):
Sent from the planet Nox to destroy humanity, Doomlord rejected his mission, believing humanity had enough potential to make them worth saving, and instead battled for the survival of humanity against both his own people and mankind itself. Like most British comics characters, he was a definite anti-hero – he not only killed his enemies, but regularly slaughtered innocent human beings too, either for information he gleaned from absorbing their identity or simply as a personality with which to disguise himself.1
Though the photostrip format served the telling of 'soapy' romance stories quite efficiently, its limitations were fairly evident when it came to satisfying the more fantastic demands of science fiction.
Over at Comics International, Lew Stringer offers his tuppence worth on the issue:
1) Photostrips were fine for character-based soapy drama (and most girls I knew at school only read 'em for a laugh anyway), but not for action-orientated stories. 2) It cost more to hire actors and photographers than to use artists and writers. 3) They were completely naff. (That last one's just my opinion. Well, mine and enough people who stopped buying Eagle so that IPC had no choice but to turn it into a comic again.)
As point number 3 makes clear, Eagle eventually dropped photostrips entirely and (wisely) returned to standard comic book illustration. The death of the Eagle photostrip was not, however, the end of "Doomlord", and the series continued until 1991 (when it was abruptly discontinued).
For all the failings of the sci-fi photostrip, the technique did succeed in generating a rather bizarre (and unforgettable) atmosphere: part kitchen sink drama, part Doctor Who, part Coronation Street etc. My memories of Doomlord sitting round his digs drinking tea and watching telly with his landlady ("More tea, Mr. Doomlord?") may be somewhat flawed and inaccurate, but they definitely capture the curious ambience of the strip.
Co-creator Alan Grant describes the appeal of the character quite succinctly:
Because Doomlord was like Dredd. His philosophy is Platonic, socialistic and fascistic at the same time–the fate of the individual is unimportant, only the fate of the species matters. This makes it right and inevitable that an elite will arise to supposedly safeguard the rights of the majority (and keep them in line). And you can see the logic in his conclusions–mankind is polluting Earth to death, we're slaughtering each other with ever bigger bombs, we're on the threshold of space travel with ships bearing nukes. Shit, if I was a Doomlord I'd be putting the kibosh on the species too.
But there's another side to the tale: ordinary people are, by and large, honest and decent. It is the elites themselves which, corrupted by the power we gave them or they stole from us, are leading man to catastrophe after disaster after apocalypse.
Doomlord also had a softer side: his Coronation Street-type soap opera existence in Mrs Souster's boarding house was quite surreal, given that he'd hypnotised the landlady and her children and was murdering his fellow guests.2
For those that remember (and enjoyed) the strip, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that there seem to be no reprints available from the old photostrip days (and hardly a single image to be found online). The good news, however, is that a small Irish publisher (Hibernia) has seen fit to produce a reprint of "The Deathlords of Nox", the fourth Doomlord story to be printed, and the first to abandon the fumetti style. Details on how to obtain a copy can be found here.
It also appears that Mark Millar is set to attempt a fumetti revival with a new strip for Marvel entitled 1985. We'll wait and see, but unless it features the Hulk eating Jammie Dodgers and sipping tea in a grotty bedsit, then I'll be giving it a miss…
January 8, 2006
13 responses to More Tea, Mr. Doomlord?
Didn’t Doomlord wear a wooly tanktop and wasn’t his bedroom made toasty warm with a three-bar electric heater?
On the subject of reprints from the 80s, it was wonderful recently to get reacquainted with Pat Mill’s Charley’s War [Titan Books] from Battle comic, not to mention Rogue Trooper of 2000AD which featured the outstanding work of Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons.
The three-bar electric heater wouldn’t be (at all) out of place in a Doomlord photostrip.
As for recent ‘classic’ reprints, it’s great news for fans of British comics from the 70s & 80s (the less said about the 90s the better). I bought the (beautifully presented) Titan hardback of Charley’s War and thoroughly enjoyed it (again).
Hopefully such reprints are selling well enough to encourage more of the same.
Vol. 2 of Charley’s War has just been released.
These fumettis are alive and well in the problem pages of the tabloids every day. Here you’ll see everyday stories about repressed lesbian housewives and ‘hubbys’ who watch too much football and occasionally fondle the stepkids. Surely a compendium of these is in order. I thought they were always parodied quite well in ‘Viz’. Also, doomlord used to scare the crap out of me. I think it was because it looked like he lived in my nan’s flat. Haven’t read that for ages and it nearly gave me a ‘Nam flashback.
Yes indeed Devo. The tabloid fumetti tradition is one I should have mentioned, and the Viz parodies were indeed absolutely spot on.
Part of the reason Doomlord, and things like Doctor Who, were so disturbing was (as you suggest) that the mega-low-budget, gritty, ‘kitchen-sinky’ qualities tended to make the scenarios they suggested seem like nightmarish possible realities (as opposed to outright fantasy).
I’ve always felt that the very ‘stagey’ artificiality of such things makes them seem, in some ways, more like dreams/nightmares than anything else (think David Lynch). There’s an uncomfortable claustrophobia to the proceedings that really resonates with a child’s imagination I reckon.
Doomlord wasn’t ‘out there’, in some far flung (reassuringly distant) fantasy world. Instead, he was quite possibly under the bed, or lodging in your “Nan’s” guest house!
My favourite Viz fumetti image is of a guy getting ‘run over’ by what is clearly a parked car. The look on the driver’s face is priceless.
Doomlord – what a blast from the past! I remember it well (how many times did he die and become resurrected, again?).
You’re right – British comics of that period were fantastic, and a stark contrast to the American alternatives (whose height during the period was with the X-Men). Compare the British ‘Transformers’ (at least the first couple of hundred) to the appalling American version.
Welcome to the blog EWI.
There were 3 Doomlords, as far as I recall: Zyn, Vek, and Zom.
Vek was the second Doomlord and the one people probably remember best. The reprint I mention covers the period after the original Doomlord (Zyn) ‘died’, with Vek as the main character.
By the way, the reprint only costs 7 Euros and was complied (with an Alan Grant introduction) by an enthusiast from Mayo. Impressive stuff and well worth the price.
(Thanks!) There were some fantastic strips from Eagle – Dan Dare (the flagship story) was another I remember.
Where can one buy the reprint, by the way?
The 80s Eagle Dan Dare never quite captured the public imagination in quite the same way the original Dan did. Titan have released a number of very nice looking reprints of the Dare stories from the original Eagle, and I’d recommend checking those out for a flavour of the ‘real’ DD.
If you fancy getting a copy of the Doomlord reprint then simply mail David McDonald at Doomlord@eircom.net for details. Money well spent.
I remember there was an original/descendent Dan Dare crossover at one point.
It involved trials (a la Kirk), as I recall.
Grand – I’ll drop him a note. Well worth the money.
Doomlord was indeed cool, Like everyone else the living in a guest house element was and still is my favourite and most vividly remembered aspect of the story although the second best oart is surely when Howard Harvey kills Zyn in the final episode of the original strip only to be refered to as “some nut who thought an alien was trying to destroy the world” seconds later by a pair of goofy lab technicians! Aged 9 I found the pathos in this to be very heavy and upsetting!
“Eric Plumrose” above, was of course Vek’s alter ego. My personal favourite scene was when Plumrose’s wife showed up at the guest house. Doomlord had to get rid of her and deicided instead of killing her he’d just break her heart whilst in Plumrose form by telling her she was a greedy old cow and he hated her! Wife then runs ti the hills in tears never to return. As a kid I thought this was hilarious! Also I loved the fact Doomlord would tell his land lady all the troubles he was facing regarding world destruction and his problems with his bosses (the high council of Nox) and she would just offer him another cup of tea whilst a thought bubble would show her thinking “Poor Mr Plumrose, he’s away with the fairies” or something! It was a kind of proto care in the community thing going on from her point of view!
Genius stuff all round it must be said. A great imaginative strip and my personal all time favourite. But funnily the humours aspects like the ones I’ve mentioned seem to get overlooked when discussing it usually.
Personally I think Doomlord is a great british sci fi thriller waiting to be made (I mean in the spirit of the more gritty photostrip rather than the fantastical comic version. Get Alan Bennett or Mike Leigh to do the script, Jim Broadbent or Timothy Spall as Doomlord…maybe not!)