To do a Kick Ass 2 review
September 6th, 2010
Clint was found, after a little befuddled craning and turning while doing that exaggerated ‘I am looking for something’ look, not beside the sci-fi/movie/comic mags that the cover tries to pass itself off as, but a whole shelf over, next to the lads mags and Madgadget Monthly. Is this a local thing, slip of shelfstacker’s wrist, or deliberate placement, on WHSmiths’ no-doubt nationally co-ordinated layout plans? This seemed at first like a straight up simple mistake – word with someone in sales, get it sorted for the next issue. But after a read of the Great British boys’ comic’s best last hope… maybe not so sure.
Kick Ass 2 itself, while we’re here, just briefly, looks bright and brash on the bigger paper, and thanks to that and Millar’s assured ease with the characters and universe it flows along in it’s snappy, irresistibly annoying way and ends far too quickly. Kick Ass’s narrative mode doesn’t allow for 8 mere pages to establish any sort of rhythm, and in that kind of breaks its own most basic belief: More is More. (And here we get less.)
If there’s a good general rule about comic readers, perhaps just a common characteristic that might join them together (and I don’t mean obsessively reading & buying since they were old enough to go to the shops on their own fans, I mean normalish people who might not have decided in advance that comics aren’t for them and they just don’t feel comics at all cheers, but are what you might call ‘interested and sympathetic bystanders’, or ‘potential customers’) then it’s that they think that they are jolly clever sorts. The intellectual conceitedness of either the casual, occasional, weekender or hardcore members of the geek horde is never something to underestimate. Do not talk down to geeks. Do not pretend to geeks that geeks are like everyone else and will be satisfied reading tossed-off, barely literate articles about aspects of the world that they either don’t care about or know more about already. Do not try to convince geeks that they are the lowest common denominator, because they will simply walk to another part of the newsagents and buy a magazine from there.
There are a handful of articles in Clint, maybe 20 pages or so. From a comics point of view this is good – 4/5ths of Clint is pure strip. The articles are there to serve several functions: to extend the reading experience so that a read through of Clint will occupy getting on for an hour of your life, like a proper magazine should. To show to salespeople who might have written off selling comics, but are willing to experiment with a new comic-magazine hybrid. Most importantly, they are to provide a bit of background, real-world context for casual readers of the magazine who don’t understand what its brand is about. In Clint’s case, this means reporting on a world that speaks to the same set of broad interests and impulses that appeals to potential customers, to normalise the fact that what they are holding and reading is basically that most awful of modern things: a comic. They should convey the message: ‘Do you like (e.g.) zombie movies? If so, this comic-magazine is for you!’ And, importantly, essentially, see above, it has to do this without tying a knife to the toe of a size twelve boot and taking a running kick at the ballsack of the readership’s intelligence.
Unfortunately, the articles in Clint are all Doc Martens and Stanley blades. To start with the best, there is a good interview between Martin Mor and Jimmy Carr, and on account of it being structured like a simple, straightforward chat about the ins and outs of being a standup comedian, by two people sharing a lot of experience in the game, you get a good insider’s view of its nuances and details. Then there’s an article about Charles Manson. My wife has been a ghoulish follower of the Manson story ever since her goth days, and even learnt something new about the case regarding the celebrities the Family would have targeted after Tate and Polanski. She has been walking around the house doing an unconvincing Tom Jones impression ever since, saying ‘great load of mad old hippies, runnin’ around trying to chop my clackers off, isn’t it’ in her best Welsh accent. Points to that article for this alone.
The rest though, seriously, they’re barely readable. Without exception dull, poorly written, unimaginative, unoriginal… and for thickos. Not for kids or inexperienced comics readers, just for the world’s legions of grown-up, signed-up, card-carrying thickety-thick thickwit thicky thickos. People, in other words, who don’t read, and don’t want to read, comicbooks. Treating Clint’s readers as if they’re, well, Nuts readers, might be a semi-deliberate editorial decision, and is almost certainly a mistake. There is a big enough market attached to the sci-fi/fantasy hobbyist sector of the newsagent to comfortable accommodate Clint, but buddying up/competing with the terminal decline scaredyman’s wankrags like Nuts and Zoo? That’s a bad decision, one which I can only hope is rectified quickly before Clint becomes yet another noble failure. (Although, if it does stick to this route, the word ‘noble’ won’t really apply, will it?)
The strips themselves… the snippet of Kick Ass 2 we get is a strange thing. Is this a sequel to the first series, or to the movie, or to both? I can’t remember the ending of either well enough to know what details line up with what. That’s cool though – from the off KA was conceived as a multimedia event, desperately happy to cross over into and trample on any platform brave enough to take it on. The franchise’s journey hasn’t left it unchanged – the stresses of the trip from page to screen and back again have toughened it up somehow, made it, and I appreciate this may be difficult to imagine, even more crass. It could be a simple case of sequelitis, where the volume on all the trademark moves gets turned up to twelve. It could be the fact that Hollywood beats out even the noble, honest, benevolent caring and thoughtful comicbook industry on a dumb-to-dollar ratio. It could be Millar winding things up to build that strange maelstrom of unreported controversy and general nonspecific buzz he seems to find so comfortable by dropping in a few ‘he said what?!’s. But whatever the reason – jokes about learning difficulties? Jokes about domestic abuse? I know I’m an old man, came of age at the height of political correctness and happy for it, but hose gags give me the ick a bit, and taken in conjunction with the spirit of some of the articles in this issue, bearing in mind which magazines I found this one next to (Nuts and Zoo, rather than SFX, SciFiNow and Death Ray, where the market for a modern newsstand comic will be found), feels a bit like a step into a school of culture I’m really not all that comfortable with. Remember – girls are people too!
Still, Kick Ass 2 as a read still has its predecessor’s attitude and sheer gleeful gonzo momentum. And it looks great on the big paper – this is a far better place to go to get your Romita fix than the latest Avengers bollocks or whatever. funny for a guy who is so bullpen, Romita still finds extra dimensions of style and weight to add to his more ‘personal work’. Later chapters are clearly going to be feature big splashes of overweight men dressed in lycra masks and capes bashing each other in with golf clubs and stuff, and I won’t pretend to you for an instant that I won’t be interested in seeing that. The 8-page chapter in this issue of Clint is over far too quickly.
The next Millar strip is Nemesis #1 reprinted in its entirety. I’ve ell changed my tune on this. Nemesis is brilliant. Mcniven’s carnage absolutely sings on the big glossy paper, and the rollicking yah-boo script seems much more at home blown up to A4 too. This is where Nemesis was meant to be, and could go on to be Clint’s signature strip.
On to Ross & Edwards’ Turf. I never got through the first issue of the US pamphlet, and really struggled for the first page or two of this second go. Then, about mid way through page 2 I got the bright idea of reading the story with Jonathan Ross’ vice in my head like he’s doing one of his to-camera bits on Film 90, putting the extra ‘w’s in myself, the lot. It suddenly made a lot more sense, and the next few pages passed a lot more happily. But then, even then, with the new, familiar and friendly narrative voice, and the big paper giving Edwards’ art room to find itself among the bubbles and captions, Turf just buried itself under all the words and the simple fact that this first chapter at least is actually quite a slow, ponderous tale, relying heavily on extraneous narrative detail and an awkward, digressive writing style. It was just too much to carry on with. I hereby promise the world I will have another crack at reading all of Turf issue 1 before the next Clint arrives, but I’ve not been having much luck with it so far.
Boyle, Muir and Michael Dowling’s twisted supervillain knockabout Rex Royd is so slight and slippery it’s almost impossible not to read, almost over before you’ve realised you’ve started it. The Ennis and Morrison influences are impossible not to spot if (and you are) you’re sad enough to know about them already, and they contribute to a kind of touchingly misanthropic (it’s the disappointment, the hopeful faith abandoned that makes misanthropy so cuddly, by the way) bad drug vibe that makes this the most interesting strip in the issue. If Clint is supposed to be 2000AD moved along a generation, then Rex Royd is the one which makes sense of that claim in a textual-comparison sense: a little more obscene, a little more bratty, and even more insouciant than anything typical of Tharg’s stable, certainly in its recent dadrock years. It’s nothing too memorable, nothing to especially treasure, but something to unaccountably recall and grin about when you’re drunk and weaving your way home, mere instants before you’re happyslapped by the local hoodies. (Remember hoodies and happyslapping? Aw, sweet. It’s like a Noughties nostalgia show and… Oh no. Hang on – actually, I think I may have inadvertently hit upon something: Clint is quite a lot like a Noughties Best Of… clip show. And that may not be a particularly reassuring thing.)
The final strip is a short called The Diner by Manuel Bracchi. If Rex Royd is attitudinally (drokk vs. fuck) and stylistically (absorbing US comic influences vs. denying them altogether) a step on from 2000AD, then this is unfortunately a step back. Millar’s commitment to getting unknowns to fill the spaces between the celebrities is a great move, the most laudable thing about Clint itself. (Imagine the alternative – get in a load of 2000AD jobsworths to do some hilarious ‘over-the-top’ gag strips to warm the cockles as we slouch in our bedsocks into this cosy new decade… hardly bears thinking about.) It’s just a Future Shock, but it has no middle and no real twist: There’s Zombies!! And a man takes one out and tries to convince everyone There’s Zombies!! And they don’t believe him but the twist is: There’s Zombies!! As a finished piece it’s clearly missing a scene or two to make it hold together, something which the Millarworlders should have mentioned on the various submissions threads over there. There’s some great work on that thread, and it seems odd that this was the one chosen to open the proceedings with. Oh, the Huw Edwards thing?
Joke of the year mate. Keep at it Clint, good to see someonehaving a fucking good crack at it.
September 6th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
That line about your wife is possibly the funniest thing I’ve read all year…
September 6th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Millar’s commitment to getting unknowns to fill the spaces between the celebrities is a great move, the most laudable thing about Clint itself.
Just pulling that line out on it’s own. Where everybody can see it.
//\Oo/\\
September 7th, 2010 at 4:15 am
(just re-read that. Eep. Not meant to sound so aggressive. Soz. Just that not enough people have mentioned that aspect of the mag)
//\Oo/\\
September 7th, 2010 at 7:55 am
No need to worry, you’re right to flag it again, as it’s an aspect that’s been lost among the celeb ballyhoo. From a fanman perspective it’s the most important and interesting thing to say about it, and one of the big hinges where the editorial commitment to revitalise the newsagents will stand or fall.
September 7th, 2010 at 8:27 am
When I spotted it in Tescos, it was over with the comics, rather than with the lads mags, or SFX where I half-expected it to be. In fact, seeing it beside DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES and HANNAH MONTANA and MY DROKKING PONY et al, I was more than a little disappointed that it didn’t have some cheap-arsed cover-mounted plastic toy. So I didn’t buy it.
September 7th, 2010 at 8:40 am
David Allison tells me that his was found with the geeky mags. Looks like it could suffer from a case of the inconsistencies.
Also, with the fucking kiddie comics? Jesus, someone in that shop could be looking forward to some angry conversations with parents.
September 10th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
OMG, conversations with parents! They can be harsh.
September 13th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
So this is basically just Mark Millar reprinting his and Wossy’s recent work, with a bit of padding around it?
If so I’m surprised. From the way he’s talked it up on Millarworld, (and while I wasn’t going to buy it or anything) I was expecting more than one strip by ‘new talent’ or whatever, to the point where I was going to ask if anyone on here had submitted their stuff, and how it had gone, and so on.
But from the sound of it, there wouldn’t be much point.
Granted, watching Mark Millar’s business empire/delusions (but are they?) of power blossom over the last year or so has been a source of minor annoyance, but I suppose I could just about live with it if he was still writing well. Some might argue that he never did, of course, but for a while back there (circa ‘Wanted’ ‘The Authority’ ‘Enemy Of The State’ and ‘The Ultimates’) he reliably turned in decent comics, I think. All right, he always had one eye on Hollywood, but only in a ‘wouldn’t it be great if …’ sense. Lately though, he seems to have started to think of himself as a brand, with the result that he increasingly looks to be falling back on easy shock tactics (sex, ultraviolence and show-boating catchphrases are all fine in moderation, but not if that’s all there is) instead of thinking that much about what he’s doing. ‘Ultimate Comics Avengers’, compared to the original, really just reads like the rantings of a hormonal teenager.
And it does matter, at least as much as things ever do, because someone who’s been as wildly successful (and, credit where credit’s due, he has) is almost bound to be imitated.
Which, unless he changes his ways (and really, why should he? The days of joking about going to the toilet during a Millar-chaired meeting seem long gone) is not going to be good for the sort of comics I’m guessing most people on here enjoy reading.
September 14th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Hmm. I’m no fan of a lot of Millar’s writing, but I think it’s fair to give the man his props – he’s done very fucking well for himself in the last few years. Sure, it’s a bubble that will burst in terms of Hollywood but the man’s made an awful lot of money, has a tonne of creative freedom and his fingers in a lot of pies (eck!).
The only other contemporary comic creator to have so succesfully played the game so successfully would be Gaiman.
I’m not saying it invalidates your criticisms of him mind. Just that I have an amount of respect for his business savvy.
September 17th, 2010 at 8:06 am
So I’m hungover today so I wanted a bacon sandwich so I went to a caff so I had a flcik through the Sun while I was waiting so I noticed that Frankie Boyle has a column in the Sun. What a cock.
September 17th, 2010 at 8:14 am
Jesus. One bacon sarnie and two big bags of salt n vinegar square crisps later, I am officially a fat bastard.
September 17th, 2010 at 9:14 am
2 bags. I never do 2 bags.
September 17th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Two bags is brilliant. My tongue burns yet.
September 17th, 2010 at 9:51 am
2 fuckin’ bags
September 17th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Is it too late to change my name to Twobags bobsy?
September 17th, 2010 at 10:03 am
No.
September 17th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Twobags Bobsy makes you sound like a fuckin’ wrong’un.
September 20th, 2010 at 6:23 am
Guys, are ye nae wanderin’ awa’ frae the point a wee bit?
The point being that Frankie Boyle is a complicated man. Do his ghastly bon mots make you feel a bit ick? I can’t watch anything he’s in without wanting to commit suicide, personally, but maybe that’s my problem. And not Frankie’s, after all. He’d perhaps see people who felt they had no other choice than to get into the bath with a toaster during one of his performances as ‘Guardian-reading, middle class poofters.’
I’m happy enough to put a tenner in; if another nine of you dream hard enough, maybe, just maybe, we’d have enough cash in the pot to stop Frankie, forever.
Although, to be honest, if the assassin was exposed to Boyle’s antics for long enough, he, or she, might well do the necessary for free.
September 21st, 2010 at 8:26 am
I’m not sure I’d want to expose myself to anything by anyone who has ever been on Mock the Week, really, but I am intrigued by this, what with it being a HotT NeWw BriTT cOmIk, and it’s always good to see them on the shelves, stacked next to loathsome ladmags or otherwise.
Incidentally, why is it called ‘Clint’? Because of the manliness of Clint Eastwood? Because Clint Boon evokes nostalgic memories of the early 90s, a good time for 2000AD? Or because ‘Clint’ looks a bit like the C-word? All of the above?
September 21st, 2010 at 9:39 am
(I like a lot of those Mock the Week comedians)
September 21st, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Really? Wow, Boyle was the pick of them by far, and he hasn’t been on it for ages. Hugh Dennis? That blond Westlife refugee looking creep manchild guy? That trollish bald guy with the moustache and the grating voice? ‘Have you ever noticed how..?’ No way are those unfunny fuckers allowed on MY telly.
Thrills, reckon it’s a pretty safe bet that Millar doesn’t know who the Inspirals were, but he has however been using the Clint/C-word joke since at least his Swamp Thing run…
September 21st, 2010 at 1:11 pm
It’s a fucking shit name.
September 21st, 2010 at 1:53 pm
“Like” as in when I’m watching some crap telly before bedtime.
You fucking laugh at that shit too. Your standards are as pathetically low as mine before bedtime, if not lower.
September 21st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I’ve never even seen a whole thing of Mock the Week, which, by the way, finishes at like 10.30 – that’s not bedtime, you massive baby! I’ve got at least another hour and a half of crap telly to fit in before I go to bed.
September 21st, 2010 at 2:14 pm
You’ve never seen the whole thing because you always have to turn over and watch some total shit. Always. You know it’s true.
September 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I have been getting into the Showcase channel lately, it’s true – total no-budget conspiracy lunacy/blatant gov’t disinformation on the cheap plus ex-copyright movies and no adverts – perfick.
(But you clearly fancy Darren ‘Oh’ Brieeaiinn so as you can imagine I’m not especially ashamed of myself.)
September 22nd, 2010 at 11:37 am
Oops! Didnae mean tae start a fight! Sorry aboot that, likesay.
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I do not fancy that’n. I don’t mind a bit of blondey (not a whole show, mind you), a bit of that posh twat (not a whole show, mind you), a bunch of Boyle, and a smattering of the rest.
Shut up, Thrills. You’re a fucking problem and no mistake.
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:36 pm
It’s the truth, so it is, I’m a total shit.
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
You are.
September 24th, 2010 at 11:32 am
I have an unreasonable amount of fondness for Hugh Dennis.
sorry.
September 24th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Hang on, are you saying that you like the Now Show? Before you answer bear in mind that I don’t want to friendeject you, but I will if I have to.
September 24th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Hugh Dennis? He’s like, the shit one out of Punt & Dennis. That’s pretty shit.
September 27th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
My sister, ever a giver of shit Xmas gifts, gave my dad Outnumbered on DVD last year. I haven’t dared ask how it be.
Former library assistant Boyle used to have a column in the Record, which I thought was very funny the one time I read it. He’s a very Mark Millar-type person, really, which is something I appreciate in a hard-to-define cultural way.
September 27th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
We like Outnumbered
September 27th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Yeah? I just assumed it was rubbish because it’s a UK sitcom and gift given by my sister, who gives terrible gifts.
A reasonable assumption, really.
September 27th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
For sure. You might still hate the show, you know
September 28th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
High Dennis is not the shit one out of Punt and Dennis. That’s Steve Punt whoi a) is now a ‘comedy historian’ (failed comedian) and b)is what his name rhymes with. They’re both dwarfed in shitness by David Baddiel whose painfully embarassed squarks on perennial turd football anthem ‘Three Lions’ will hopefully dog him to the grave.
Frankie’s alright in my book. Can always be counted on to bring some pitch black cuntery to any middle of the road comedy half hour.
September 28th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
The Now Show is made truly unbearable by the presence of Mitch Ben’s comedy songs.
September 28th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Can always be counted on to bring some pitch black cuntery to any middle of the road comedy half hour.
This is it, exactly. I think he is a very bad man, the only comic I’ve ever deliberately seen live, and I would frankly never sit in a front row at a comedy gig as a result; the man is a merciless wrecking ball.
September 29th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Mitch Benn is a fucking man-turd of unbearable proportions. The Venue I used to work in was endlessly privvy to his smug awfulosity.
COMEDY SONGS ARE SHIT.
Unless you’re Ween.
September 29th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Fuck! You had to tolerate him ON THE PREMISES!?! No wonder you dislike so much live comedy – it suffers by association.
October 2nd, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Had a leaf through the new issue, was utterly effing astounded by the ‘sexy chavs’ pin-up. Classist AND sexist. Nice work, shiteo.
Or am I just not ‘getting’ it?
I’m so square/PC/not a monster!
Grrrngh.
October 14th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
best comments evarr!!!
flicking bunch of crisp-eating, tv-watching, lad-mag-reading clint-holes!!!
right, answer me this, and don’t ignore me just cos it’s an old post.
i’m bumping it.
you sez:
“(absorbing US comic influences vs. denying them altogether)”
our survey sez:
you wott??!!?!?!?!??!?!????
are you saying that 2000AD denied US comic influences altogether.
hang on, it’s still going isn’t it. for a moment i forgot that it didn’t die of shame in the early 90s.
so (with less incredulity this time) are you saying that it does that now?
or, are you saying (go on) that it always did that?
cos, man, oh man, if you is stating the latter, i am gonna haffta come on here and post another comment politely explaining why i disagree!!!!
by now i’m almost certain that you weren’t saying that, but sod it, at least i’m not going “crisps, telly, crisps, sarnies, what? you go to bed when??!?!?”
ha! i bet all the mindless ones are in bed now.
October 14th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
You’d be wrong. You’d also be wrong to assume that Bobs speaks for everyone. But mostly you’d be wrong for using so my punctuation marks!?@$^&(!
Crikey, sir!
Actually, I am going to bed. Right now!
October 15th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Coming soon by Barren Ellis from Avatart Press: Alec Trench! He’s only a flippin geezer! He’s the Ockult Danny Dyer!
(Clearly I ought to be in bed by now too.)
Yeah, y’know, for shits and giggles I might find myself saying that 2KAD deliberately eschewed the conventions of the USian boys’ comic book, looking across the Channel for its newer spins, but actually deeply embroiled in a then still-extant UK adventure comics tradition from where it drew the vast majority its stylistic cues.
So write the comment telling me why I’m wrong – I’d like to read it.
October 15th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
OY OY!!!!!
@Zom,
No wuckers, son.
I ain’t got enuff tar on me brush fer the lot o yers!!!!!!
Nah, yer alright.
Now Bobsy, I want a word wiv yoo, sunshine.
First of all, have a look at it, you blind twat!!!!!?!Nextly, there’s an interview, wot i can’t find, where Pat Mills rattles on about how they reduced the amount of panels per page (making explicit reference to the less cramped US style of page layout) and generally made fings more visibly dynamic and exciting than the old skool malarky.
i fink it must’ve been in that book wot i red.
So here’s Dave Gibbons instead:
When asked,
” Did being an artist influenced by American comics help to change the way you and other artists told these “2000 AD” stories? ”
Dave sez:
” “2000 AD’s” art was much closer to the American style, with longer episodes allowing for splashy “break-out” artwork. Several of us had grown up as fans of American comics and could give them what they wanted. ”
Here:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18407
So there’s some primary to kick off wiv, you cheeky muppet!!!!!!!!!!!!
Later on (after i’ve necked a load of Kroney and shouted compliments at any wobbly birds wot i might like to make the aquaintance ov) I’ll get back to yer wiv summink wot I shall make up from inside me old noggin — and rest assured that it will be terrifickly intrestin and opinionated.
Not to mention devastatin to yor paffetic little mind!!!!!!!!!!!
ArseHole!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 16th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Simmer down tweacle.
October 17th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I dunno what came over me. I just saw red and that was it.
Next fing I knew, all the little kiddies had parents’ hands over their delicate little lug-holes.
Probbly a bit o psychic fallout from England’s defeat during the week.
Apart from the South American artists, all the drawing styles in the galaxy’s greatest graphical-narrative-anthology-publication were at least as influenced by 60s/70s US artists as they were by the British tradition.
Nothing too shocking about that, see the echoes (?) of J Kirby, W Wood, S Ditko, C Infantino, W Eisner, N Adams, J Davis, in the character poses, panel layouts and rendering techniques of Ian Gibson (Eisner, Wood, Ditko?), Alan Davis (Infantino, Adams?), Mike McMahon (Kirby, Meskin, Krigstein?), Brendan McCarthy (Kirby, Ditko, Kirby, Kirby!), Steve Dillon (Infantino), Casanovas (Ditko in the Warren mags) and compare them to the more classical approaches used by the artists in Valiant, Lion, Victor, Hurricane etc.
The tendency in British adventure illustration up to then was towards pen drawings that look like they wish they were pencil drawings. And a lot of stiff photo-referencing.
Frank Hampson being an extremely notable exception to the general conservatism of style. Maybe cos he payed so much attention to Milton Canniff, Noel Sickles, Frank Robbins and that era of pre-comic-book strips, where innovation and visual flair were more in demand and less hampered by the sheer page-count needed to provide realistic wages later on.
oops, waffling.
As for the plotting, I reckon there’s strong affinity between the particular imaginative energies at work in late 50s/early 60s DC scifi (e.g. Mystery in Space) and the playful, oddball inventiveness which used to enliven the settings and context of Judge Dredd, in particular.
Future Shocks, of course, are the EC formula, as relied on by all 1950s US anthology comic writers, but thankfully stripped of its obsession with tepid moral closure.
Steve Moore brought so much of his own liberated consciousness to the Future Shocks, though, so they really ended up forming their own stylistic centre of gravity.
When that other bloke called Moore started doing them, the connection to EC became more pronounced, sometimes quoting directly from Kutzman’s pre-code Mad comics.
Veeblefetzers, anyone?
ChronoCops vs Dragged Net from Mad #11?
That one’s an all-out tribute to Kurtzman and Elder, visual and textual references littering the panels.
blahblahblah.
October 26th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I take issue with writing off the current 2000AD crew as “jobsworths”. I honestly couldn’t name anyone currently working for Tharg who fits that description, and I feel that was a bit of a cheap shot, really.
October 26th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Bobsy isn’t beyond cheapness. Defend theeself, Bob.
(bet you can’t)
October 26th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Kick-Ass 2 DOES continue from the comic. I know because I just read the whole of KA Book 1 last night. I loved the movie, and I appreciate it cut most of Millar’s usual “MINORITIES ARE SCUM AND WOMEN ARE LYING HARPIES” subtext.
And Kick-Ass may be the one time where I’ve thought the movie versions of the costumes were more colorful and inventive than the original comic. Some of the new characters have neat designs, though.
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