SERIOCOMIC (27)
By:
July 3, 2019
One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels.
2000 AD
Oh, sighing halls of memory. Oh love-handled retrospect. I grow more grateful, year by year, to the bold creators who formed my childhood, the pop storytellers and makers of nutty images who mulched or colonized my underbrain at the crucial moment. Action comic: bloody hell. This was gore for British schoolchildren, featuring Hook Jaw the shark biting people’s legs off and a stubbly, nihilistic spy/avenger called Dredger. We’d buy it at the newsagent with our tubes of Fruit Pastilles and fingers of Fudge, rush home and read it in a kind of sugar porn daze.
Action came out in 1976 and by the end of the year it was banned like the Sex Pistols. Its work was done, though. Our young minds, jangling with artistic violence, were receptive to the next thing, the next comic brainchild of Action creator Pat Mills: 2000 AD (1977–present). Was this my first sci-fi? It felt like it. Entire worlds snapped into being. Tharg’s Future Shocks: brilliant little ironic or black-comedic vignettes, like timewarped Roald Dahl short stories, presented à la Alfred Hitchcock by the comic’s fake editor, the alien Tharg. Rogue Trooper, the wasteland-wandering super-soldier whose three best buddies — Gunnar, Helm and Bagman — have been reduced to biochips and implanted in his gear. (A soldier so lonely, in other words, that he talks to his backpack like Dora the Explorer.) Judge Dredd, of course: pure power, battling chaos, locked into some kind of moral-erotic tension with the incredible (female) Judge Anderson. Slaine the barbarian, who taught me about berserking or the “warp spasm.” And Nemesis the Warlock, whom I never understood.
All I have to say is: thank you.
SERIOCOMIC: Mimi Lipson on LITTLE LULU | Sara Ryan on AMPHIGOREY | Gary Panter on THE NUT BROS./THE SQUIRREL CAGE | Gordon Dahlquist on POGO | Robert Wringham on VIZ | Matthew De Abaitua on CAPTAIN BRITAIN | Jessamyn West on FUN HOME | Bradley Peterson on HELLBOY | Stephanie Burt on KITTY PRYDE RETURNS | Jenny Davidson on OOR WULLIE | Luc Sante on MARSUPILAMI | Susan Roe on BLOOM COUNTY | Marilyn Berlin Snell on CHARLES ADDAMS | Deb Chachra on ARKHAM ASYLUM | Judith Zissman on ERNIE POOK’S COMEEK | Alexandra Lange on BETTY (ARCHIE) | Catherine Newman on VERONICA (ARCHIE) | Josh Glenn on SPIRE CHRISTIAN COMICS | Adam McGovern on THE CREW | William Nericcio on ERRATA STIGMATA | Chelsey Johnson on DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR | Sherri Wasserman on TANK GIRL | Tom Nealon on MEGATON MAN | Erin M. Routson on THE WEDDING OF SCOTT SUMMERS & JEAN GREY | Douglas Wolk on FRANK IN THE RIVER | Annie Nocenti on DICK TRACY | James Parker on 2000 AD | Adrienne Crew on NUTS | Vanessa Berry on MEAT CAKE | John Holbo on WITZEND | Michael Campochiaro on SPIDER-WOMAN | Miranda Mellis on RED SONJA & BÊLIT | Michael Grasso on THE NEW MUTANTS | Ty Burr on BINKY BROWN | Bishakh Som on AMAR CHITRA KATHA | Mark Kingwell on CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED | Brian Berger on JIMBO | Kenya (Robinson) on AGENT 355 | Seth on THE ETERNALS ANNUAL | Susannah Breslin on SLASHER | Lisa Kahlden on JACK CHICK TRACTS | Mandy Keifetz on KRAZY KAT | Tom Devlin on DUM-DUM POSSE READER | Eric Reynolds on ACTION COMICS #460 | Rick Pinchera on EIGHTBALL #16 | Juan Recondo on DAYTRIPPER | Elizabeth Foy Larsen on ROZ CHAST | J.E. Anckorn on HALO JONES | Deborah Wassertzug on GREAT POP THINGS | Peggy Nelson on MAD MOVIE SATIRES | Holly Interlandi on ANGEL SANCTUARY | Karen Green on THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS.
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