Here's a close-up…

Goggle-eyed, orange mouth askew, blonde locks shooting off at wild angles – it was obviously hand-made, by someone moved by a strange need to create this. My first thought was that it was some sort of crude/offensive take on a Golliwogg. Or some sort of crude/offensive spin on a Rastafarian/Jamaican stereotype. But the more I look, the more boggled my mind becomes.

Its colourful/ragged hot pants cling upsettlingly tightly to its woollen bum cheeks.

And, um, they're removable…

As is the mega-crude, falling-to-bits, "Aran Jumper" thing it's wearing. Throw in a little (non-removable) beanie hat and we're left with a knitted melange that is hurting my brain.

Still. Bargain.

[Hey ho. Apropos of nothing much, just thought I'd reprint the Doomlord piece I wrote for SFX #200. Enjoy, earthling scum.]

March 27^th, 1982. Midnight. A fireball flashes across the skies over “the sleeping town of Cranbridge”. In nearby “Gallows Wood“ it crashes to Earth. The sole witnesses – P.C. Bob Murton and Cranbridge Argus reporter Howard Harvey – rush to the scene. Out of the Stygian gloom, a terrible figure (clad in ornate, ceremonial robes) emerges. A hideous skull-like face is seen. The creature begins to speak. “I AM DOOMLORD… SERVANT OF NOX… MASTER OF LIFE… BRINGER OF DEATH!”.

Thus began the dread (and often-times hilarious) adventures of the “Doomlords“. “Servitors” of the “unnatural world of Nox”, whose “ageless duty [was] to scour the cosmos” and “seek out worlds in danger from the ravages of their own inhabitants”. Yes, fellow earthlings, they were here to judge us…and (*gulp*) they didn’t much like what they saw.

The site/occasion of this startling debut appearance was the relaunch of classic British boys’ comic the Eagle – Issue No. 1 of which came with a free “Space Spinner” (a pound-shop Frisbee) and a cover that intriguingly promised “Dynamic Stories – Told in Exciting Photos and Pics!”. Photos? Over to Eagle editor David Hunt: “When the New Eagle was given the green light…all of us concerned in its development felt it needed an added ingredient to make it different from other mainstream comics of the time”.

This “added ingredient” turned out, controversially, to be the use of “photo-strip” – black and white photographs, speech bubbles and some very basic effects – in place of conventional illustration for the majority of the comic’s stories. A bold decision arrived at largely because, Hunt explains, photo-strip had been “proving…a big plus for the teenage girls' market".

Though reader reaction was far from unanimously favourable (with letters as early as issue 10 begging for a return to “comic-strip drawings” and “cartoon versions”), Doomlord’s writers and creators – John Wagner and Alan Grant (whose glittering CVs encompass Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter etc.) – retain nothing but the fondest of memories of the experiment.

“Photo-strip gave the story an off-key, weird feel”, Grant recalls. “I loved it. I remember being shown the photo-art for the very first episode, in Dave Hunt's office. It was so different from what we were used to…we were blown away by the quality”. Off-key and weird it most certainly was, but there were inherent (fairly obvious) limitations. “Our main consideration”, says Wagner, “had to be what could be achieved with a camera, actors and minimal budget and still look good”. What this meant, in practice, was that alien “invasion“ narratives were fine and dandy as long as there was “just one alien who happens to spend most of his time in typical, run-of-the-mill British settings”.

Yet, arguably, it was this very necessary grounding of the narrative in the banal and the everyday that made Doomlord so distinctive and memorable (unsettling and blackly comic in equal measure). Unlike ostensible flagship story Dan Dare (the adventures of “a really boring good guy…from a different age”, according to John Wagner) Doomlord was, at least initially, neither space-operatic nor futuristic. It felt real and immediate, like it could be happening in your hometown. On your street. Hell, if you lived anywhere near King’s Reach Tower (IPC’s iconic London HQ) in the early 80s, then it probably was happening on your street.

“The main characters were played by hired actors and several leading actors’ agencies were used”, David Hunt explains. “Many of the guys selected were extremely grateful for the money photo-strip afforded them because of the vagaries and uncertainties of the acting profession“. The performers chosen may not always have been, as John Wagner recalls, of the “matinee idol” variety -  “[They] specialised in odd-looking people – I think it was called 'The Ugly Agency'” – but this absence of glamour only added to Doomlord’s weird charm.

The first of these low-budget, solitary (“Ugly Agency“) aliens was Doomlord Zyn. A relatively conventional villain who routinely sucked dry the brains of total innocents (absorbing their knowledge and hijacking their physical forms) before disintegrating their corpses with his multi-purpose energiser ring. All this in the name of a research project whose goal was to test the fitness (or otherwise) of humankind as stewards of the Earth. The rather limp protagonist/hero of the piece was crusading journalist Howard Harvey – out to expose Zyn’s true identity and intentions (ultimately, “the annihilation of the whole human race“) to superiors and authorities who viewed him as a lunatic crank.

Harvey eventually succeeded in preventing Zyn from carrying out his apocalyptic sentence, but only at the cost of his own life (and professional reputation). Zyn’s disappearance did not, however, go unnoticed or uncommented on. Back on Nox, the “Dread Council” (three cowled figures standing round a table in a tin-foil-walled room) were preparing to send a replacement Earth-ward. Enter Doomlord Vek – he who would become, right through to the strip’s abrupt end in 1989, the definitive Doomlord.

Vek’s initial (unimpressed) take on the human race was not substantially different from that of Zyn (“Their petty ways. Their primitive emotions. A  race of buffoons“),  but he soon moderated this Noxian disdain for human weakness and idiocy. A key development in this regard was his taking up of residency in the “Bradfield” boarding house of Mrs. Souster and her two sons – disguised as "commercial traveller" Eric Plumrose, a hapless passer-by he’d mercilessly zapped.

Exposed to the unpretentious, homely decency of the Sousters, Vek would come to a realisation that had eluded his predecessor. One that would inexorably shift the focus of his character from fearsome “bringer of death” to quasi-heroic “protector of Earth”. Vek’s simple epiphany was, Alan Grant explains, that “people are, generally, quite likeable, especially as individuals and families”. And that “it's only when humans gather in abnormal groups – a clutch of politicians, a bevy of military planners – that they start to become insane in their thoughts and deeds”.

Not that this meant, in the short term at least, that Vek refrained from all that jolly brain-sucking and body-disintegrating. He didn’t  – carrying on much as before, endlessly repeating the Noxian mantra (or excuse) that “the fate of the individual is unimportant when the survival of the species is at stake". This rather cavalier attitude to human life initially presented certain challenges in selling Vek as protagonist and “hero”. “I suppose we hit on the formula the first time it became necessary for him to kill”, says Wagner. “Won’t he look bad? No. To a Noxian our little lives were about as valuable as a blade of grass – the readers understood that and didn’t hold it against him”.

Unlike more conventional alien “invaders”, the Serivtors of Nox were neither here to a) colonise the planet, or b) enslave (and eat!) us. Equally, they had little interest in the threat a warlike species on the verge of space travel posed to the galaxy at large. Their chief concern was for the welfare of planets themselves - as ecosystems, as entities. The cataclysmic plague Zyn had planned to release would, for example, have targeted human beings only. Blameless “lower species” would have been spared: allowed to live on in an Eden untainted by man.

Under Vek’s watch Doomlord would flower into something approaching a radical  environmentalist/socialist fantasy – with the burgeoning ecology movement an acknowledged influence (Alan Grant: “It was on TV and in the papers constantly, a sort of background noise for everybody”). Polluting captains of industry would be forced (through hypnosis or plain old violence) to mend their ways. Corrupt judges and MPs were shamed and exposed. Vek even had his own TV show to promote and propel major societal changes (a slightly more extreme – but less crazy – forerunner to Noel’s HQ).

Vek’s most dramatic interventions centred around the campaign for nuclear disarmament – a utopian cause he pursued with no little vigour. Impressive results were achieved through such hard-core, zero-tolerance tactics as: deliberately launching an American ICBM at the USSR (to bring the super-powers to their senses) and completely wiping out the small market town of “Prattlewell” (to demonstrate his awesome “Don’t mess with me, Earthlings!” power).

As the years rolled by, however, and Vek grew further into his role as Earth guardian (saving the planet from countless perils/invasions), something of the delicious amorality of the early stories was lost. Vek had, basically, become too damn nice. A Superman-esque hero who even had his own "Fortress of Solitude" (sorry, “Isolarium”) on the moon. A worthy antagonist was badly needed. Someone who embodied the blackly-comic brutal essence of the old days. Enter Enok – Vek‘s deeply troubled offspring and one of the nastiest, angriest and most memorably demented “bad son” characters in comic history.

Born from a fusion of a human egg and Vek’s Noxian blood (and born out of Vek’s desire to experience the human feeling of familial love), Enok soon became an extreme poster-child for moody, pissed-off adolescence. Like Spock his mixed (alien/human) heritage would cause him to feel confused and conflicted. Unlike Spock, he responded to this confusion by murdering his own father, attempting to kill a school bully (who had unwisely harassed him), and creating a doomsday device to melt the polar ice-caps and flood the earth.

Oh, and that was just for starters. In an alternative dimension he became tyrannical overlord of the entire planet. Ruling with a seriously iron fist from his “Palace of Torture” in Trafalgar Square (where he even mercilessly tormented Vek’s beloved Mrs. Souster). He did, in fairness, eventually turn out a fairly well-balanced adult – but only after Daddy Vek had marooned him on an asteroid in the depths of space (a no-nonsense Noxian take on sending someone to their room).

By this stage (late 1986), the photo-strip experiment had long since been abandoned – having proved “extremely labour intensive” and “impractical” according to David Hunt. Though veteran artist Eric Bradbury (a master of shadow and texture) produced some strikingly beautiful work for the strip, John Wagner, for one, mourned photo-strip’s passing: “Doomlord was special in photo-strip – afterwards [though still good!] it was just another story“.

Bradbury’s glorious black and white art may have “liberated” the story – allowing it to become far more epic in scope – but it’s probably the incongruous kitchen-sink/SF charm of the early days that people remember most (and most affectionately). Images of a rubber-masked Doomlord Vek perched on the couch in the Souster’s chintzy front room (watching his favourite Earth show…Coronation Street) are potent and evocative ones for readers of a certain vintage. At a time when the (tedious) default mode for superhero stories is “dark”, gritty, and ever-so-serious (thanks a lot, Frank Miller) – we could do worse than pray for the resurrection of a Noxian who‘d routinely utter immortal lines like: “They are my….friends! They want me to go to Butlin’s with them – you must not hurt them!”.

Here to doom us, he came to love us…and we him. Happily forgiving the often brutal and murderous manifestations of his “love”. Why? Because maybe (just maybe) readers secretly felt that the Doomlords were right. That even if, in John Wagner‘s words, “some of us could be likeable on an individual basis…humanity, as a whole, had it coming”.

——-

Little extra bits…

Coronation Street

Fittingly – given the story’s zero-budget, kitchen-sink charm – Doomlord Vek’s favourite terrestrial TV show was Coronation Street. Earth cynics may have regarded it as just another soap, but for Vek it was: “A most excellent human drama!“.

Rarely missing an episode, and often eulogising its importance (“Ah, Coronation Street! All Human Life is Here! The Species in Microcosm!”), Vek’s love of “Corrie” was referenced frequently. Rarely more entertainingly than when, as he dashed out to battle a reborn Zyn for the fate of humankind, Mrs. Souster warned “Don’t be long now. Coronation Street is just about to start!”.

The Doomlord Mask

The relaunched Eagle’s most iconic image? Not the Mekon’s bulbous head – nor the arched eyebrows of Dan Dare – but (clearly) the fanged/skeletal rubber-masked face of Doomlord.

Though the mask may not have afforded the actor underneath much opportunity to emote, its unsettlingly “alien” blankness burned itself into the brains of sensitive readers (causing untold sleepless nights). Its designer remains unknown (perhaps  unknowable) as it was bought, along with the glitzy robes and deadly energiser ring, “off the peg” in a London theatrical outfitters. David Hunt, John Wagner, Alan Grant and (Group Editor) Barrie Tomlinson appear to be the responsible/guilty parties.

1) Spirits of the Dead (Fellini segment "Toby Dammit") (Solved by @fearganainim on the Twitter place).

2) Les Yeux sans visages (Eyes Without a Face) (Solved by @fearganainim on Twitter).

3) The Hitcher (Solved by @bettyoctopus,¹ on Twitter)

4) This is Spinal Tap (Solved by Ann Byrne,² on Facebook)

5) Escape to Victory (Solved by @fearganainim on Twitter)

Result: @Fearganainim: 3, @bettyoctopus: 1, Ann Byrne: 1. @Fearganainim wins again. Who among you can stop him? Can anyone stop him? Are we all to be doomed?! Congrats.

1. Whoever she is… [back]
2. The sister. [back]

So, I was on the wireless-radio-box last night talking about Adam Abraham's fantabulous new book When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA. While the animation histories of Warner Bros and Disney have been rehashed ad nauseam, UPA's significant contributions to the art have been somewhat overlooked (though they're adored by the cartoon cognoscenti). Abraham's timely, and exhaustive, effort might (hopefully) go some way to setting that right.

The studio may have burned at its brightest for a brief span,¹ but their minimalist/modernist aesthetic proved hugely influential (and that influence is still being felt today). Perspective was turfed out the window. Backgrounds were monochrome and flat. Characters were emphatically two-dimensional, and often wholly transparent. Scene changes would be executed not by cuts, but by backgrounds being erased and then drawn back in around the characters. As Adam Abraham says, the key feature of UPA characters was that they were unequivocally drawings. Not attempts to approximate boring ol' reality.

Their first Oscar winner (in 1950) was the magical Gerald McBoing Boing (based on a sound recording made by Theodor Geisel/Dr. Seuss).²

One of the main men behind Gerald was Robert "Bobe" Cannon, who in partnership with T. Hee made some of "purest" UPA cartoons – in terms of that flat, bare-bones, modernism. One of their best is Christopher Crumpet – the tale of a boy who would imagine himself into a chicken when he didn't get his own way.

The absence of a rigidly imposed "house style" meant UPA could range from delightful whimsy like the above to the Gothic gruesomeness of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (narrated by James Mason).

Oh, and then (of course) there was the indefatigable Mr. Magoo – an odd-ball Victorian gentlemen adrift in the modern world. One whose near-blind misapprehensions are almost wilful. As Abraham says, the cartoons are not so much about his inability to see the modern world around him, but his dogged refusal to see or acknowledge it.

Complimenting Abraham's book are two new DVD releases. TCM's UPA Jolly Frolics (3-disc) set, and The Mr. Magoo Theatrical Collection (1949-1959). Buy them. Then give them to me.

1. Undone, partly, by persecution from the House Committee on Un-American Activities [back]
2. Gerald McBoing Boing's Symphony (1953), and How Now Boing Boing are also fabulous. [back]

Grab your disco boots. 5 films from the 1970s. Start your guessing.

#1 Chinatown (Solved by @nyderoleary, on Twitter).

#2 Carrie (Solved by @nyderoleary, on Twitter)

#3 The Sentinel (Solved by @maoiliosak, on Twitter).

#4 Impulse (Solved, astonishingly quickly, by Jason Hyde, on Facebook).

#5 Sleeper (Solved by @maoiliosak, on Twitter)

Result: @nyderoleary: 2, @maoiliosak: 2, Jason Hyde: 1. I threw this tie-break image at the joint-leaders, and then this, and then this, and then this before they got there (Dracula AD 1972), almost simultaneously. So I dare not separate them. It wouldn't be right. Let them share the film-nerd glory.

#1 House of Wax (Solved by @Fearganainim, on Twitter).

#2 Creator (Almost simultaneously solved by @lexia and @Kevnmur on Twitter. They get a point each)

#3 Gorgo (Solved by Dan Smith, on Facebook).

#4 Deep End (Solved by @MissusVee, on Twitter).

#5 A Star is Born (Solved by @Fearganainim, on Twitter).

Result: @Fearganainim: 2. @MissusVee, Dan Smith, @lexia and @Kevnmur: 1.

#1 Scream Bloody Murder (Unsolved! It was brutally tough, in fairness).

#2 The Curse of the Cat People (Solved by Jason Hyde, via Facebook)

#3 Assault on Precinct 13 (Solved by @Fearganainim, via Twitter).

#4 The Skull (Solved by Jason Hyde, via Facebook)

#5 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Solved by @Fearganainim, via Twitter).

Result: Jason Hyde: 2, @Fearganainim: 2. A deeply unsatisfying draw. Boo.

Borag Thungg. In honour of 2000 AD's 35th anniversary, I'm hereby reprinting a piece I wrote for SFX a while back about my own favourite series: Zenith.¹ Here it be…

May 13, 1989. A beach, on Alternative Earth 666. Lying face-down in murky waters (with trousers round his ankles and broken toys strewn poignantly about him) is a young boy. And not just any young boy. Though he’s never explicitly named, the visual clues lead fans of vintage comics to conclude that this, shockingly, is none other than “General Jumbo” – the titular hero of The Beano's long-running tale of a child and his remote-controlled toy army. The unfortunate victim of (we’re forced to imagine) an unspeakable violation by trans-dimensional demonic super-beings. What’s going on? How did we get here? It’s a long story…

A long story that has its beginnings in the summer of 1987. Thatcher's Tories had just won their third consecutive general election; The Firm's StarTrekkin’ was setting the charts alight; and Grant Morrison (a young Scottish writer who would, over the next 20 years, become one of the most influential names in comics) had been tasked with creating Zenith – 2000 AD's first foray into the (previously-shunned) world of superheroes.

Hard as it may now be to believe (in an age in which superheroes have been endlessly reinvented and "re-imagined"), but there was a time when revisionist superhero tales felt bold, refreshing and novel. By 1987 the comics world was rapidly reacting to the game-changing influence of Alan Moore’s seminal work on Marvelman (a.k.a Miracleman), Captain Britain and Watchmen (not to mention Frank Miller’s turn on The Dark Knight Returns), and it was into this potent flux of new creativity that Zenith was born.

Though it would owe a considerable (and acknowledged) debt to the pioneering work of Moore, Morrison intended Zenith as a conscious rejection of the kind of grim and gritty, "tormented superhero" narrative then very much in vogue. This was to be a strip firmly anchored to its time and place. One that would, in Morrison's words, "reflect the eighties' obsession with style over content", fronted by a character who would embody his "worst, most venal traits".

To help capture the shallow, avaricious mood of late-'80s yuppie Britain, Morrison turned first to the inimitable Brendan McCarthy: an artist/designer whose exuberant and wholly-distinctive work occasionally graced the pages of 2000 AD. McCarthy would go on to design several key characters, before standing aside to let (the brilliant) Steve Yeowell take sole charge of Zenith's art duties. Though his involvement may have been short-lived, the originality of his designs (which owed more to contemporary couture than traditional superhero aesthetics) lent the strip precisely the right flavour. More significantly still, Zenith himself (Morrison's deliciously vain and self-centred protagonist) was actually modelled on a figure close to McCarthy’s heart: "Zenith was essentially based on my own superhero, Paradax, from a few years earlier – all that media-brat, superstar stuff. It felt a bit weird designing something so derivative of my own work."

Whatever his roots may have been, Zenith (a.k.a. Robert McDowell) proved the perfect (cynical and sneering) anchor for an epic narrative that would, over four "Phases" and five years, touch base with everything from Nazi-engineered superhumans, to cosmic (Lovecraftian) horror, to apocalyptic inter-dimensional warfare and beyond. With a more traditional hero at its centre, these grandiose elements might have risked overwhelming the story, seeing it stray into, what Morrison has called, the "pompous and concept albumy" territory of other revisionist comics. Zenith (the strip), however, neatly avoided the pitfalls of taking itself too seriously, largely because Zenith (the character) took absolutely nothing seriously. So who exactly was he?

When first we meet him (Prog 537, 2000 AD) Zenith is flying (and crashing) drunkenly through the window of his London apartment. He’s 19-years-old, a successful pop star, utterly vacuous, and (we're told) the "world’s only active superhuman". As the story slowly unfolds we learn that he’s the son of Dr. Beat and White Heat – two (presumed dead) members of a 1960s' superhuman team called "Cloud 9″. In the Zenith universe (a slightly askew version of our own reality), the origin of all superhuman powers dates back to a serum secretly developed by the Nazis, which they used to create a super-soldier called "Masterman".

Britain reacted to the Masterman threat by using the same serum (given to them by Nazi defectors) to create a patriotic superhuman of their own: Maximan. As a result of Maximan's intervention (oh, and the nuking of Berlin by the American air-force!), the allies won the war (with Maximan and Masterman both perishing in said nuclear conflagration). The superhuman experiment did not, however, end there. In post-war Britain, a Dr. Michael Peyne labours, with official sanction, to artificially create a superhuman team called "Task Force UK". Intended as patriotic defenders of the British establishment (in the Maximan mould) they soon reject the duties imposed upon them and re-brand themselves as the aforementioned "Cloud 9″: hippy-ish, superhuman radicals.

Cut to the mid/late-'80s. Cloud 9 is no more – its members either dead, missing, (apparently) powerless, or (in the case of Tory MP Peter St. John) diverted into politics. Zenith survives as the sole progeny of a superhuman couple, and such is the state of play and status quo when the story opens. It soon gets much more complicated. The originators of the superhuman serum were not, we learn, Nazi scientists but, rather, “The Lloigor” (name borrowed from Lovecraft): formless, trans-dimensional, demonic beings who wish to create and possess superhuman "vessels", thus becoming incarnate on our physical plain. Over the next four "Phases" they do just that (aided by their earthly disciples, the "Cult of the Black Sun"), and the conflict between them, and Earth’s surviving superhumans, forms the basic core of the Zenith drama (with dozens of twists and turns spinning the narrative in unexpected directions along the way).

Said drama reaches its crescendo in the epic (twenty-five episode) "Phase Three", which depicts a catastrophic inter-dimensional war between the Lloigor and superhumans from a host of alternative worlds. Since the sprawling conflict called for a massive ensemble cast of superhumans, Morrison opted to expand on similar work Alan Moore had done in Captain Britain and revive legions of heroes from Britain's rich comic past. Series artist Steve Yeowell explains: "That was always part of Grant's grand plan. The third series was going to be our equivalent of [D.C.'s] Crisis on Infinite Earths. He wanted to use all these old British comics characters but obviously, for copyright reasons, we couldn’t use, say, D.C. Thompson material directly. So we had to come up with our own alternatives".

The delicious pleasures offered by Phase Three are both train-spottery and perverse. Train-spottery, because Yeowell's art rewards close, nerdy examination – as one tries to figure out precisely who dim figures briefly glimpsed in the background might represent. Perverse, because most of these figures (versions of beloved childhood icons) invariably die horribly at the hands of the merciless Lloigor. Look there's Lion's jolly muscle-man Typhoon Tracy…sprawled dead in rubble. Oh, and over there I see, yes, Valiant's Steel Claw…having his arm ripped from its socket. And isn't that Tanya, from Jackpot's "Amazing Three"…getting her head punched clean off? On and on the slaughter goes (with the poor, aforementioned, General Jumbo being yet another casualty).

While all this gleeful and murderous fun might strike readers as somewhat gratuitous, it actually serves to (neatly) address issue of heroism, altruism and self-interest at the core of the Zenith story. The revived old-school heroes are, almost without exception, selfless and well-meaning. Bumbling, jolly and full of old-fashioned pep and vigour. They want to stop the Lloigor because, well, that’s just what heroes do: beat the bad guys. Unfortunately, the bad guys, in this case, are monstrously evil, god-like entities who wipe out whole worlds without a second thought. In the face of such a foe their quaint and naive assumptions about a good ol' fair fight are brutally exposed. And they die. In their droves.

The real winners, and survivors, in 1980s Britain are (Morrison shows us) those driven by pure self-interest and cynicism. The key figures, over the whole four phases, are, after all, Zenith and Peter St. John – self-centred "heroes" who thrive and prosper while others fail and perish. St. John (who turned his back on his '60s counter-cultural roots and embraced Tory politics) makes his motivations explicit at the end of Phase One, telling a former Cloud 9 colleague that he only helped defeat Masterman's reborn twin "to pick up votes in the election". He duly wins a seat (despite opposition protests that his battle with Masterman was "a shameful piece of Tory propaganda"), gets offered a position as Defence Secretary by Thatcher, before ultimately becoming Prime-Minister himself.

Not only that, but he does so by influencing Commons debates through telepathy and by acting as a covert Tory assassin: seemingly agreeing to dispose of Ted Heath (at Thatcher's request!) while most likely having an active hand in the fatal heart-attack of Labour leader John Smith (an act that swept St. John's Tories back to power). As an eerie side-note, I should mention that this happened in Phase Four's finale – on 24th October, 1992 – eighteen months before the real John Smith died…of a heart-attack.

Zenith, like St.John, survives to the end – seeing his pop career flourish as he cynically reinvents himself with the times. So what kind of "hero" does he, in the final analysis, turn out to be? Throughout all four Phases he has to be cajoled, bribed and badgered into taking part in traditional (world-saving) heroic activities. "I’m not a fighter! There must be another way to deal with this", he bawls early on, while reacting to a call to arms with, "Why should I get my head kicked in for you?". When faced with a devastated survivor of Alternative-666, a world utterly ruined by the Lloigor, he offers these words of "comfort": "Oh stop moaning!".

The ultimate Zenith moment arrives at the climax of Phase Three. The surviving heroes reconvene at base, build a memorial to fallen fellows, and solemnly share their thoughts – convinced that Zenith has sacrificed himself to save the universe from Lloigor domination. "Strange how it was Zenith who came through in the end", says one. "He died a hero", says another. Moments later, Zenith pops through the door, a can of beer in hand, and says: "What? Me sacrifice myself? You must be joking?". The realisation then dawns that the character who so heroically gave his life was "Vertex" – an alternative (friendly and pleasant) "Zenith" from another world ("I've been here all the time", chortles Zenith). A horrified hero hilariously sums up the outrage of all by wailing, "Well I hope [we're] taking his name off the memorial!".

Yet for all his '80s shallowness and self-obsession, Zenith does, bizarrely, stand as a quasi-hero for uncertain times, in one regard. Unlike most of the key players (St. John, Cloud 9, the Nazis, Dr. Peyne, the Lloigor etc), he pursues no ideology. He couldn't care less about changing, reshaping or reordering the world. If he stands for anything it's for hedonism and individuality (crass though his versions of them may be). He's harmless and inoffensive as a superhuman precisely because he doesn't care. He kicks back and (mostly) watches as zealots battle it out for the future of the universe. In a world riven and divided by ideologies that almost, nearly, sort of…makes him a hero.
—–

Little extra bits…

Steve Yeowell

The "Galaxy’s Greatest Comic" has hosted its share of fine illustration over the years, but Steve Yeowell's beautifully spare art on Zenith remains a notable high-water mark. As Zenith progressed, Yeowell (who’d previously worked with Morrison on Zoids for Marvel UK) began to experiment with "a lot of much looser techniques". Influenced by Scottish artist Ian Kennedy – who had, Yeowell says, "a way of reducing everything down to solid blocks of black and white" – he used Zenith to perfect a "pared-down, simplified, chiaroscuro look". A look that delicately emphasised fragility and anxiety over conventional superheroic muscularity and confidence.

Name that (slaughtered) hero

Phase Three's brutal wipeout of both much-loved and mega-obscure British comic characters of yore is a nerd's wet dream (or nightmare). Spotted among the living and the dead are "Big Ben" from "Caucusville" (i.e Desperate Dan/Cactusville), "Jimmy Quick" (The Beano's, Billy the Whizz), an Acid House-obsessed Robot Archie from Lion, "Tiger Tom" and "Tammy" (Beano's Billy the Cat and Katie), Sally's Cat Girl, Tri-Man from Smash, Buster's Leopard from Lime Street, "Prince Mamba" (Hotspur's, King Cobra) and many more. There’s even a four-legged fatality with "Bobbie" (The Dandy's, Black Bob) being upsettingly dashed against a wall by a nasty Lloigor.

1. Piece originally appeared in SFX #203. [back]

So I feel I'm speaking with some expertise when I say that the Tiger is not just a trickster and a sprite, but a sort of Macguffin. He enters the world of Sophie and her mother, eats the edibles, drinks the drinkables, and departs. Leaving Sophie's mother unable to give her child a bath (the Tiger having consumed all the water in the pipes) and, crucially, unable to prepare tea for the father/husband who's due home imminently.

The image of her alone in the desolation of her kitchen, pondering this dilemma, sadly, always makes me cry. Even when it's dark. And I can't see her (but can still imagine her).

Enter the father/husband.

We then have the book's most haunting, and telling, image.

Sophie's mother animatedly explains the outrageous reasons for the absence of food on the table. The father/husband sits, listening, with the weary/resigned (?) look of someone who's been down this road before. Domestic chaos. No tea. Bare cupboards. An unwashed child. A "Tiger" blamed.

If this were a gritty, kitchen-sink, 60s play the drunken ogre of a husband might now explode into "Where's me dinner?!" violence. But there's no judgement. No fury. Just the tender suggestion that they all head out into the night to the local café for sausages and chips and ice-cream. The crippling loneliness, boredom and frustration of Sophie's mum's socially-enforced domestic servitude (echoing Betty Friedan's "the problem that has no name") may have conjured the Tiger – as a friend and a companion, an excuse and a justification – but he has perhaps, served his purpose. As an agent of change. An animal spirit guide. And Sophie loves him.

And so, in the morning, they go shopping and buy lots more things to eat. And a very big tin of Tiger food in case the Tiger should ever come to tea again.

But he never does.¹

1. How to read this. Is the husband's "resignation" actually of the "poor hysterical/addled woman, I must humour her" variety? Is the trip to the café, instead, an act of love? Does the Tiger's failure to return really signal change (and a new harmony), or is this the death of a cherished sustaining fantasy? I may have to squint at it in the gloom some more. [back]

So there I was, on Saturday afternoon, chatting with Dave Fanning about Hergé, his (great) works, and the (not-so-great) Spielberg/Jackson adaptation of said works, when we got to the sticky issue of "faithfulness". I may have (accidentally) ended up sounding like the kind of saddo nerd to whom slavish faithfulness is intoxicating fan-boy catnip. But, like, y'know, I didn't mean to…

Take Zak Snyder's (snore) Watchmen, or Robert Rodriguez' (zzzz) Sin City. Both cravenly respectful adaptations of the source materials. Both technical experiments in trans-medium faithfulness that treat comics as mere storyboards. With intensely dull and unimaginative results.

The problem here is a formal one. Comics are (of course) not storyboards. Comic book panels are not the direct equivalent of cinematic "shots". They have their own visual language. Their own narrative logic and flow. And few people have ever spoken this language more eloquently and gracefully than Hergé. Sure, the Tintin stories are fun-filled and stuffed with the thrilling-est of derring-do. Sure, the characters (Tintin aside) are outrageous, lovable and hilarious. But it's not those elements that raise Tintin from pleasantly good to unforgettably great.

The things that make Tintin arguably¹ the greatest creation in the history of comics are all specific to the medium. Hergé's visual genius (disciplined, obsessive and hard-won) didn't lead to the creation of some sort of proto-cinema in book form. It wasn't a stiff skeleton waiting for animation to make it dance.

It celebrated the thing just about to happen. The pause between the stumble and the head-long plunge into a ravine. The thrill of the frozen moment just before a wielded cosh connects with an unsuspecting head. You could stare (breathlessly) at those moments for minutes at a time, terrified to turn the page.² Afraid to see the results of this thrillingly tense pause being released.

There are so many other examples. The long vertical thrust of panels where Tintin stands perilously on the edge of a cliff/building (as he does in The Black Island). The long horizontal thrust of panels where the long road stretches ever on (as it does in Tintin in Tibet). The sumptuous detail of the backgrounds (inviting the reader to pause and linger and return). The way every single extra, every single backgrounded or foregrounded unspeaking figure is invested with character. Each face telling their own untold stories.

These things (and many more) mark Tintin as, ultimately, a glorious celebration of the possibilities and pleasures of the comic book form. Specifically. You can faithfully reproduce narrative elements, dialogue, character, in live action or animation, but this X-factor,³ this thing that makes Tintin – Tintin, is, quite possibly, impossible to translate to another medium (particularly a comfortably mainstream piece of cinema).

And so, whatever about the cold/dead failings of motion-capture, whatever about the allegedly formulaic Hollywood-isation of this most European of icons, the most glaring flaw of all is that the soul of Tintin (our Tintin) just isn't there. And this absence really has nothing much to do with faithfulness (or otherwise). It's simply this.

Tintin = comics.

Producing a film/TV version is like dancing a poem. Or singing a painting. It may be a pleasurable thing, in and of itself, but it's not the thing (and, perhaps, it can never be). Particularly in this case. We're left with Tintin minus Tintin. Which is what, exactly? An above average action/adventure flick? A poor-man's Indiana Jones?

1. I emphasise arguably. [back]
2. Many of Tintin's most deliciously tense moments occupied a page's final panel. A classic example being those panels where a loud BANG! causes our hero to leap into the air and glance anxiously over his left shoulder (in the direction, of course, of the next page) toward the sound's source. Source not revealed till the page was excitedly turned. [back]
3. A compromised term these days, I know. [back]

We live, after all, in a time of uncertainty. I don't mean a "Will I be able to find a matching pair of socks in the morning?" uncertainty, though that exists too. And may yet have (in some ill-defined way) a quasi-mystical effect upon the outcome of the forthcoming election. It certainly can't be discounted. At this point in time.

I refer, instead, to quantum uncertainty. The uncertainty that pours out (in a steady head-fucking data stream) from the cool instrumentation of CERN. The uncertainty that makes Einstein look like a fucking eejit. Hyperactive neutrinos that flip two sub-atomic fingers in the direction of common-sense and conventional wisdom. We don't know whether we're coming or going anymore. For all I know you're reading this in the past – on a steam-punked, coal-fueled 19th Century iPad (and wondering who Gay Mitchell is…lucky you).

Speaking of Gay Mitchell…

Right. So he "understands our past". Fair enough. Just another way of saying he thinks our past is fucking awesome and tosses off to Cúchulainn poet-warrior porn like all the other Your-Country-Your-Call (bring back the Tailteann Games) reactionary fuckwads. That's what we need (in the present). More past. We have a clear past deficit. A healthy dose of the past would set us right.

But what's all this about believing in our future? I didn't know the future was dependent on (or receptive) to belief. I thought it was, well, just sort of there. Ready to unfurl itself like a magic carpet, or the yellow brick road. I never suspected it was contingent upon our belief (like Fianna Fáil). But this is a post-CERN world. A world where Gay Mitchell strokes Schrodinger's Cat (like a quantum-mechanical Blofeld) and keeps the future (our future) alive, through the sheer furious insistence of his belief.

Without him we're lost. We literally have no future. Not only must we elect him president (lest he gets depressed and stops believing, even for an instant), but we urgently need to discover a way to keep his brain alive post-mortem. Make him president for life, and beyond. Store his consciousness in a mega-computer in Áras an Uachtaráin and blast it endlessly with impossibly-accelerated neutrinos. Do whatever it takes to keep his essential belief in the future alive.

Otherwise we're left with the past and the endless present. And, let's face it, both suck (quantum) balls.

Had a blast and a half, with the Outbreak Festival crew, in the old Daghda space (St. John's Sq, Limerick) last night. A healthy (or suitably unhealthy) crowd shuffled horrifically down to enjoy local film-maker Dermott Petty's Gothic Country 'n' Irish short Zombie Waltzing, and the "splatstick" classic I'd chosen as our main attraction, Return of the Living Dead.

On the off chance any gorehound wishes to check out the folk and films mentioned in my introduction to the screening, here it be.

The film you're about to see, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 Return of the Living Dead, was released almost simultaneously with Day of the Dead, the third film in George Romero's seminal zombie series. Though the two films share a common birthday, tonally they could hardly be more different. While Day was bleak and grim, Return was (and is) in the words of zombie-scholar Jamie Russell “a breathless horror cartoon that aspires to make jaws drop to the floor through its sheer exuberant excess”.

It had originally been conceived by John Russo – Romero's co-screenwriter on 1968′s Night of the Living Dead – as a straightforward horror film in the Romero mould, with Tobe Hooper (of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) directing. When Hooper departed to direct the schlocky alien vampire-fest Lifeforce, Dan O'Bannon (who had written the screenplay for the original Alien and worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star) was brought on board.

In O'Bannon's hands the tone quickly shifted from earnest to overtly and outrageously comedic. Though horror and comedy might, on a superficial level, seem odd bedfellows, they've been combining happily and hilariously on-screen for many decades, dating back at least as far as James Whale's Old Dark House in 1932. In terms of breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, graphically depicting things that society normally hides away, the comedic and the horrific are, in reality, close cousins. Allowing audiences to laugh and scream in the face of their fears.

What films like Return of the Living Dead specifically helped popularise was the horror sub-genre/form generally referred to as “splatstick”. A key influence on O'Bannon's film – and other “splatstick” classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, Peter Jackson's Braindead and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 – were the outrageous horror comics of the 1950s, particularly those produced by the legendary EC. In those publications – which were victims of a sustained campaign of moral outrage – death, dismemberment and evisceration became gleefully delivered punchlines. The tension-releasing laughter they inevitably invited being one of the things that infuriated the guardians of public morality the most.

So what exactly makes Return of the Living Dead one of the finest examples of “splatstick”? Well first (and possibly foremost) are the three pitch perfect performances from the senior male leads: the wonderful James Karen (as the folksy and avuncular 'Frank'), Clu Gulager (as his put-upon, pragmatic boss 'Burt'), and Don Calfa (as the Nazi-loving embalmer 'Ernie Kaltenbrunner' – named, incidentally , after a real-life Nazi war-criminal). The gusto and glee with they embrace their roles, not only offered a refreshing counterpoint to the often irritating woodenness of the film's teen stars, but showed how instinctively they understood the kind of acting “splatstick” demands: full-on, no-holds-barred commitment, no matter how ludicrous the situations might be. [Bruce Campbell, of the Evil Dead fame, is probably one of the finest practitioners of this kind of OTT style]

Then, of course, there are the zombies themselves. In keeping with a film that cracks along at a frenetic pace, and bounces along to an ass-kicking punk soundtrack (featuring the likes of The Cramps, 45 Grave and The Damned) – the film's zombies don't shuffle and stagger about a la Romero. They sprint full tilt toward their prey – anticipating the hyperactive undead of 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake.

Most memorable of all was the film's so-called “Tarman” zombie – a dripping oozing mass of putrid flesh whose obsession with devouring big juicy “braaaainnns!” almost single-handedly popularised the notion that the undead are fixated with the contents of our skulls.

Oh…and then there's Linnea Quigley's…em….naked gyrations on a crypt. Which proved catnip to teen fanboys, and helped turn her, overnight, into a successful and prolific “scream queen”.

As gloriously goofy as the film undoubtedly is, there are moments where unsettling horror, unexpectedly and delightfully, creeps to the surface. While previous zombie movies had portrayed the undead as abjectly wretched – denied the dignity of eternal rest – Return of the Dead was one of the first films to suggest that being dead was actually painful. They're not just eating our brains because they're hungry, they're eating them because doing so offers temporary respite from the agony of being dead! Death, then, is not a release from bodily pain, but a descent into even more terrible suffering!

Another of the film's innovations was to actually show you the process of someone slowly turning into a fully-fledged zombie. As they lose control of their will, develop rigor mortis, and feel the urge to eat brains grow, Frank and Freddy describe what all this feels like. And force us to imagine and feel it too.

But, enough of all that. It's the laughs that brings people to the film, and it's the laughs we remember. There may be one or two more important zombie films, and certainly one or two more sophisticated zombie films, but none are anything like this much fun. Enjoy.

But, wait. All is not lost. We have in our possessions a technological miracle. A camcorder. You press a button and it imprints moving images on tape. Crazy! And check out the settings. Pixellate! Solarise! Sepia! The future was here (or there, and then). What a world.

And so, we grabbed the camera, and pointed it at things (mainly ourselves). Two hours later and the greatest fucking zombie film ever made by anyone anywhere was in the can (if, y'now, "the can" had been an 8mm TDK tape). My friends, behold BRAINSTORM (or Dawn of the Damp). The newly-digitised "Director's Cut", with delicious layers of funky muzak lashed on.

Forget wordy old Ulysses. This is the the most important cultural artefact ever hewn by Irish hands. Even if you ignore its aesthetic wonders (not that you should), it functions as a poignant and moving document of the world that was. A few short months later Y2K rode in on a pale horse. And the computers, as predicted, went nuts. And the robots rose from the wreckage of global apocalypse to force us all into sex slavery. The bastards.¹

1. I think I'm accurately representing Adam Curtis' thesis here. [back]

Choices were stark and choices and simple. And really limited. You could sit munching a communion wafer (or sucking an Oatfield sweetie) from mid-afternoon on a Friday, waiting, desperately, for the misanthropic Uncle Gaybo's Late Late to start, or you could curl up on a gold couch and sob. Beside a white telephone. Like Isabella Rossellini.

My mother always chose the latter option. Always. I played Subbuteo.

Occasionally, however, I'd lower the guard and gobble up the goods without really checking what I was consuming. Only later, when I saw, say, Christians sniggering behind their hands and elbowing each other would I realise I'd been had. Such was the case with the Narnia books. It was a grim day when I discovered that Aslan was really just Jesus hiding inside a fancy-dress lion suit. Still, at least those swarthy, scimitar-wielding baddies were creatures of pure fantasy, and in no way, shape or form a baleful example of Orientalist demonising…

But, by and large, my instincts and suspicions were sound. My daughter, sadly, has yet to develop these deductive skills. In her defence, she is only two, and thus not to be judged too harshly for recently finding this in a second-hand book shop and insisting (in a way only toddlers can) that I buy it. Immediately.

After flicking past the yummy Battenberg-ian cover – and a title page telling us that this is Volume 43 (!) in series that has, apparently, sold 30 million copies – we arrive at "Uncle Arthur's Letter". A 2-page missive from the bespectacled and avuncular man himself. There, in the final paragraph, are words that would, and should, chill any lively and imaginative child's heart.

"Readers may rest assured that every story is true to life, and that every one contains some uplifting, character-building lesson."

True to life? Character-building? Noooooo! This fucking sucks!

Happily, the contents page lightens the mood slightly with a list of titles that are so transcendently banal they become the stuff of high hilarity. Who, for example, can resist the exotic lure of "The Boy with a Bag"? Who can fail to be seduced by "Peter's Pyjamas"? Or the Hitchcock-ian thrills and intrigue of "The Unclipped Ticket"? Or "Daddy's New Watch"? Or (gasp!) "How Barbara Went to Sleep"?

Though the text may be tedious (and stuffed with "Jesus is amazeballs!" platitudes), the images, throughout, are glorious. Especially if (like me) you don't bother reading the associated tales and just view them as decontextualised things of creepy beauty. Enjoy.