Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Thrill-Power Overload?

By Regie Rigby

‘Allo.

Really sorry I’m late. As I type, it’s Friday night and this is the seventh time I’ve started this column since Tuesday.

I really have got to get me a new PC…

Still. Computer glitches are a small price to pay for the privilege of having this column. And it is a privilege. There’s no money involved here – like the other folks here at SBC, I’m not writing for money, I’m writing for love. There are perks though, and as regular readers will know, chief amongst them is the frequency with which free stuff, >ahem<, sorry, review copies arrive on my doorstep.

The latest in a long line of welcome books turned up at the end of last week when I arrived home from a hard day’s teaching to find a copy of David Bishop’s Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000AD waiting for me. Naturally, I rushed inside and ripped open the package with some enthusiasm. I’ve been a 2000AD reader for twenty years or more now, and this was a book I’d been looking forward to for some time.

It’s an impressive tome, I have to say. Perfectly coffee table sized, with glossy pages and hard covers, it really looks the part. It isn’t though, what I was expecting. I might not have been paying attention (in fact, I almost certainly wasn’t) but I sort of thought that former 2000AD editor David Bishop (better known, to a generation of ‘Tooth readers as the “BishOp droid”) was going to put together a collection of classic reprints from the glorious history of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic”.

What we have is far, far more interesting, but possibly to a smaller group of people. Bishop in fact has put together a definitive history of the UK’s longest running non-humour comic. It’s a fascinating story. Much of it has been told before of course, but Bishop manages to get interviews and quotes from almost everyone that has had any kind of important influence on the comic, as well as with the people who were around in the industry before ‘Tooth was first imagined. The guys who in effect created the environment that made it possible for something as revolutionary as 2000AD to spring into existence.

Because although it has evolved over the years, ‘Tooth remains very much a product of its time. The late seventies were a chaotic time. On the one hand the forces of revolution were very strong in Britain. People were disillusioned with the status quo and were looking for change. Some sought it out in a return to more traditional right wing politics – ultimately bringing Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979 and basically creating the eighties.

But others were altogether angrier. Others had altogether less faith in the old ways of doing things. Punk was at its hair spiking, spit launching pogoing height, and a whole generation was just itching to stick two fingers up at authority and do something shocking.

Comics were more than ready to tap into that, and Bishop explains how the now legendary Action! weekly tried to do just that. If failed of course, because however keen the forces of revolution were, the forces of inertia were greater. But Bishop also explains that deep within the hide bound world of UK comics publishing, a young editor called Pat Mills was keen to fill what he perceived as an empty niche – science fiction.

He reasoned that war comics were very popular (I myself have fond memories of Battle and Victor) so why not another genre? Especially since all the hot films set to come out of Hollywood were SF. Apparently there was a whisper about something called “Star Wars” that rumour had it was going to be hot.*

Older hands in the business assured him that he was wrong. “Science Fiction just doesn’t work” he was told. He ignored them.

He was helped by the loss of another much loved (and still fondly remembered) comic. Action! had ridden the wave of late seventies anarchy. It was loud, violent and anti establishment. The stars of its stories were kids, the bad guys adults. There was blood, attitude and anti establishmentism (is that a word?) on every page. It was clearly drawing inspiration from popular films of the time – there was a “sort of like jaws” killer shark strip, a “sort of like dirty Harry” tough cop strip and so on.

I’ve talked about Action! before, so the short version of what happened is that “kids loved it, adults hated it, it got banned”.

2000AD filled the gap, and to be honest did the same thing with a SciFi twist. The rest, as they say, is history.

And it’s that history which is the meat of Bishop’s book. Decade by decade, page after glossy page, he takes us through the progress of a UK comics phenomenon. Perhaps it’s because he used to be Tharg, but he presents the whole thing with a wonderfully matter of fact unsensational tone which I found really rather engaging. He certainly gets access to pretty much everyone who was anyone in the development of ‘Tooth.

Like all coffee table books, I doubt that anyone will actually sit down and read it systematically cover to cover. It seems to be that this is a book to be dipped into, depending on which decade you want to be nostalgic about. I enjoyed the section on the late eighties (when I first picked the comic up) particularly, and it was also interesting to browse through the nineties to find the answers to all the ”what were they thinking?!” questions I was asking at the time. (Parts of the nineties were pretty much the low point for ‘Tooth in the eyes of many fans, and there were times in the early nineties when nobody really believed that the comic would survive to see the cover date in its title.)

Thrill-Power Overload isn’t cheap. At over thirty quid, it’s pretty damn expensive in fact. The question I always ask myself when I’m reviewing books I got for free is “would I have bought this if I hadn’t been given it?” The answer here is “sort of”. It is a beautiful, authoritive, entertaining and informative read. I enjoyed it immensely, and if you’re interested in the making of what I still believe is the best comic in the world, I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Would I have bought it? Probably not. I certainly wanted it, but I doubt I’d actually have splashed out my own money if I’d picked it up off’ve the comics shop shelf, preferring as I do to spend my finite comics budget on actual comics, rather than books about comics. I would though, have dropped several heavy hints to my nearest and dearest regarding possible birthday, Christmas or anniversary gifts. This isn’t the sort of book you buy for yourself, but it is the perfect gift for the 2000AD fan in your life.

Ultimately, it’s more than a coffee table book too. I suspect that Thrill-Power Overload will come to be regarded as the definitive history of The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. Bishop has disguised some considerable scholarship behind his glossy pages and accessible tone. Get your girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband/parents/close friends/whoever to buy you a copy, and treasure it.

Then, if you don’t get it already, go out and buy the most recent copy of 2000AD. I want to talk to you about it next week, and I’d like you to be prepared.

Can’t you tell school’s out? I’m setting you homework already!

See you on Wednesday, computers permitting…









*Yes, a world before Star Wars. Hard to imagine now, isn’t it?
‘Allo.