For Arena, it was in 2002 to 2004 when one of the commissioning editors was a comics fan and wanted me to give outspoken commentary on the new launches of the day. This made it an interesting departure for me as I was still producing Comics International at the time and, as editor, I felt I shouldn’t show any personal bias in a trade magazine. So this gave me a chance to say what I really thought!

While I wasn’t crazy about the main header they gave the column – From All Good Seedy Depressing Comic Shops – I didn’t kick off too much as it was a fantastic opportunity to show people there was more to comics than The Beano and Batman. Besides, I was on a good rate for it.

Continuing my belief of “If tha’s nowt good to say, don’t say owt at all” I generally picked titles which I thought were worthwhile reading – there’s no mileage in putting the medium down to outsiders! Here are some of them (so you don’t have to strain your eyes on the visuals above)…

Marvel’s Buffalo Soldiers

(Arena #131, February 2003) Disgracefully tardy for an industry over 30 years old, Marvel Comics was the first publisher to introduce black superheroes with its inappropriate and uncomfortably named Black Panther in 1966.

Fast forward 36 years and the self-styled House of Ideas, invigorated by its wave of hit movies, is now kicking over one of its bigger stones as writer Robert Morales and artist Kyle Baker tell us that Captain America was originally black.

The six-issue story, Captain America: Truth [$3.50, issues 1 and 2 now on sale], echoes the infamous Tuskegee Experiment of 1932. A shameful episode in the history of US race relations, the government of the time told 399 poor black Alabama sharecroppers they were being treated for “bad blood”. In reality, they had contracted syphilis and were left untreated for 40 years in order to discover the disease’s effect.

Marvel’s Truth #1 suggests that the Captain America super-serum developed to create World War II’s perfect fighter was first tried on a small unit of black soldiers. Upon success, the anonymous guinea pigs were cast aside in favour of blue-eyed blond Steve Rogers. A beautifully crafted computer enhanced series, Truth avoids stereotypes in this fantastic yet socially relevant story. With perfect narrative, it explores the creation of one of the world’s most recognisable superheroes, uncovering some startling information along the way.

Y – The Last Man (DC/Vertigo)

(Arena #132, March 2003) During her brief tenure as an editor for New York’s DC Comics, cut short by a personality clash with her supposed betters, comics journalist Heidi MacDonald pulled off a minor miracle. Working with a motley crew of B-list creators she hatched the first hit title for the “mature readers” Vertigo imprint since Preacher and The Sandman.

In Y: The Last Man (named after the Y chromosome and lead character Yorick, not a cash-in follow up to X-Men) previously low-profile writer Brian K. Vaughan presents a post-Apocalypse world with a twist, sort of an Omega Man meets Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Alas, poor Yorick – he’s the sole survivor of a plague which wipes out all mankind, leaving only woman not-so-kind in charge. Whatever you’d do in such a situation, Yorick wants to track down his girlfriend. All the women in the world to chose from and he’s trying to get from America to Australia for one in particular. Beth is obviously more than a girl in a million, one in three billion in fact.

Another twist is in the shape of Yorick’s sister, Hero (their father was a Classic Literature teacher) who’s just had her left bazooma chopped off to join a gang of militant amazons.

It may sound cheesy, but it’s proven so popular – each issue selling out within days — that AOL-Warner subsidiary DC Comics rush released its first two issues as a collected Y: The Last Man Double Feature Edition and has a first-five issue compilation, Y: The Last Man – Unmanned, on sale for $12.95 at the same time as #6 reaches stores.

The Preacheresque art is by newcomer Pia Guerra and veteran inker Jose Marzan Jr. Balancing out the male/female creative team, the unlikely named Pam Rambo adds a broad palette of deep colours to make this a perfect first taster for non-comics readers, and a great investment for those with an eye to capitalism.

The Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules (Marvel)

(Arena #133, April 2003) Retcon rules at the House of Ideas. While its Spider-Man, Daredevil, Hulk, X-Men and Blade are all making waves on cinema screens, Marvel’s first family continues to languish in the four-colour funnies print-only world. Which can be useful if you want to fool around with continuity without having to pander to (aka: cash in on) the whims of Hollywood.

Enter one James Sturm, writer/artist of the graphic novel of 2001 (according to Time.com) The Golum’s Mightiest Swing – but known for little else. Proving it’s where you are more than who you are, Sturm earbashed Marvel editors at US comics conventions about producing a 24-like Fantastic Four superhero arthouse miniseries and got it green-lighted.

His idea, set in a single day of 1959, tells readers that The Thing, The Human Torch, Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Woman were all based on real people. So there’s no spandex and no superpowers (other than the US government). Essentially, it’s a mock biography of totally fictional characters, backed up with po-faced scholarly footnotes at the end of the comic.

Finished art (over Sturm’s layouts) is supplied by Guy Davis, an acquired moody but scratchy taste who complements the script perfectly, and is best known for his film noir work on Sandman Mystery Theatre.

A bizarre concept unlikely to boost Marvel’s coffers a jot, this is one of those nice little self-contained titles perfectly suited to anybody who doesn’t want to be seen reading The Fantastic Four in public, but wants a quick hit of nostalgia with a twist.

Jack Staff (Image)

(Arena #135, June 2003) Being paid to confuse and belittle Americans has been a favourite pastime of the comics-creating Brit pack for the last 20 years and they’ve revelled in it. Throwing in as many archaic Anglo-Saxon curses and profanities as possible with a healthy dose of colloquialisms from Cockney rhyming slang to broad Geordie phonetics has become a great game.

Maybe it’s down to frustration. Most of these highly paid four colour fictioneers find the only outlet for their fantasies to be in American comics. Long gone are the days of a burgeoning domestic adventure comics market that they all grew up on. All we’re left with now are Judge Dredd and chums and that’s about it. Despite Britain being the home of comics (128 years and counting), it’s become as much a victim of the Brain Drain as almost any other industry. No more cheap and cheerful adventure weeklies, with their ragbag of assorted stories, all continued next week. Gone are the days of such stirringly-named 10p titles as Valiant, Victor, Lion, Tiger and the rest. Enter Sheffield’s Paul Grist, local lad done good.

Paul was a fervent young reader in the heyday of weekly Brit-fixes and wanted nothing more when he grew up than to be a part of an industry which sold over 10 million copies a week 30 odd years ago, but now can manage little more than 10,000 a week. So, with no obvious outlet for his ideas, he started publishing his own black and white comics and sending them out to anybody and everybody. It worked. After ten years of his Dancing Elephant imprint, he’s been noticed by America. California-based Image Comics (third biggest after Superman and Spider-Man publishers DC and Marvel) is now offering him the prestige of full colour printing and top rank profile for his uniquely British concept, Jack Staff…

While all the high profile Brit comics writers have been happy to mess up American minds with their turns of phrase, Paul Grist goes one step further. His Jack Staff actually reads like an old weekly comic, not only with a variety of seemingly different 3 to 5 page episodic strips per issue, but also featuring mildly remixed characters familiar to virtually nobody outside of 30 something Anglos. Robot Archie anybody? How about Captain Hurricane, Kelly’s Eye and the Spider? He’s even managed so far to throw in Dad’s Army (in a WWII flashback) and Bramble & Son, Vampire Hunters – better known to us as a contrary pair of rag and bone men.

Grist’s page composition, coupled with his minimalist sketchy style and original approach to storytelling makes it all great uncomplicated fun, placing no large demands on the reader, but neither insulting anybody’s intelligence. Despite the in-jokes running rampant, this is the kind of all-ages comicbook we deserve to see more of.

2000 AD Megazine (Rebellion)

(Arena #136, July 2003) If only he’d been born in the USA, he’d be worth millions by now. Fascist future cop Judge Dredd, not to be confused with smutty ska/reggae revivalist rude boy Judge Dread or the original spoof by Prince Buster, has celebrated his 27th year of publication by losing top billing in his own magazine, or Megazine as those witty comics editors christened it. Oh, the shame of it all. The hero of grungers everywhere, old stoney-face suffered the ultimate ignomy when Hollywood wiped out all his potential in one strike and sent him hustling back to his comicbook roots. No X-franchise or Spider-licence here it seems, as his 12-year old UK title had a recent makeover resulting in The Judge Dredd Megazine, the bigger thicker monthly spin-off from weekly 2000 AD, being remoulded as the confusingly-titled 2000AD Megazine with Dredd booted off the cover and his logo shrunk to microtype in favour of obscure jokes and even more obscure character paintings. Stallone has a lot to answer for.

But, amazingly enough, the U-turn worked, resulting in a £3.95 100 page disparate strip-fest. Dredd still heads up the contents with a 15-page a month serial, but is followed by an assortment of colour and black and white comics, old and new. For those who grew up with a weekly fix of Tharg-induced thrill power, Celtic berserker-king Slaine provides 20 pages of budget-busting nostalgia, while the dodgy Darkie’s Mob adds a bizarre World War II angle, reprinted from the 1970s comic Battle. Gay vampire slaying priest Devlin Waugh and Family – The Sopranos with magic – add a contemporary feel to the title while Young Middenface is plain well indescribable.

As far as Brit comics go, this could be our last best hope. And under new publishers Rebellion, the computer game company that gave you Rainbow Six and Aliens vs Predator, there seems to be life in the old dog yet.

Batman: Hush (hardback; DC Comics)

(Arena #137, August 2003) So, how would you like your Jim Lee Batman served? There’s the finely sliced 22-page piecemeal, at $2.25 a month. Or the double-sized serving for only $3.95. And, for the true aficionado, the $19.99 deluxe special.

In other words, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Nineties X-Men fan fave Jim Lee dumped the Marvel best-seller to set up his own company, WildStorm. But, preferring to draw, he then sold the whole lot to AOL Time-Warner’s DC Comics and is now artist on Batman. Obviously a believer in safety first, one of the ex-best hopes of the indie market now draws a character created in 1939… and has made it the US’s top title, with over 100,000 sales a month. Forget your movie-tied X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk and Spider-Man, Batman’s back on top.

Aided by Smallville scripter Jeff Loeb and inker Scott Williams, Lee’s Batman offering is a 12-month serial, thankfully printed in the regular monthly, not one of those irritating spin-off series. Capitalising on the popularity, the first two episodes were collected in February as a Batman Hush Double Feature (for those who came in late) and now book and comicshop frequenters can get the first five episodes as a 128-page hardcover.

Overpriced and overplayed maybe, but while the Catwoman and Poison Ivy co-starring saga has not even reached half-way yet, it’s a quality act. Lee draws a mean hi-tech Caped Crusader with clean detailed fuss-free art while Loeb takes advantage of the 12 issue arc, letting us get inside Batman’s head as the mystery slowly unfurls.

Choose your format now, or hang on another seven months for the inevitable 272 page doorstop collection.

Global Frequency (DC/WildStorm)

(Arena #138, Spetember 2003) Mix a 21st century version of Thunderbirds’ International Rescue with the Ross Kemp Ultimate Force nasties and you get the idea of the latest hit title from the pen of current US comics badboy Warren Ellis.

Having terrified DC Comics execs for the last few years with his version of Superman and Batman as a totally OTT gay couple in The Authority, the Southend-on-Sea scripter yanks them off life-support with Global Frequency. Nothing too naughty for the sensitive US palates here in his self-contained stories of a worldwide network of 1001 agents – the Global Frequency – who are able to leap to the rescue whenever international terrorism rears its unacceptable head.

Blood, guts and mayhem abound alongside skulduggery, deceit and homicide as every month a new band of agents, each a world-leading specialist in their own field, is called upon by enigmatic leader Miranda Zero to make things right again in 22 pages.

Great art from a range of the industry’s top talent coupled with unique cover design bring to life Ellis’s fast-paced actioner, brimming with fad gadgets and pseudo-science.

Eight issues currently available, with a collection sure to follow.

Superman: Red Son (DC Comics)

(Arena #139, October 2003) Increasingly a part of the entertainment superstar elite, comics creators are now recognised to be more important to the money machine than the properties they write and draw. Along with Warren (Global Frequency) Ellis, fellow Brit Mark Millar is the leading badboy of US comicbooks, showing a healthy disrespect for their contemporary legends and reworking superheroes in epic Hollywood disaster movie fashion.

Millar, who honed his craft assisting Grant (The Invisibles) Morrison, gave the ailing AOL/Time Warner’s DC Comics division a publicist’s dream in his top-selling The Authority, but was rewarded with heavy-handed censorship. He replied by moving across to Marvel and earning bigger bucks by reinventing X-Men and The Avengers for their Ultimates line.

Unpublished for almost a year, Superman: Red Son was the last major project he worked on for DC before his very public blackballing. Finally printed as a three part glossy, it perfectly illustrates the puritanical DC’s loss as Millar sets up a parallel reality in which baby Kal-El’s spaceship crashlands in Russia in the 1930s.

With Dave Johnson’s artwork evoking classic Soviet agitprop, brimming with dark shadows and sharp angles, Millar avoids cliché and allows the communist Superman to retain his naïve altruism, while America’s Lex Luthor is soon government-sanctioned to destroy him. A ripping yarn for readers old or new.

Underground Genie (DC/Vertigo Comics)

(Arena #140, November 2003) In the heady world of the comicbook cognoscenti, the award-winning Kyle Baker is very much an artist’s artist. Which is a shame. Kyle’s comics – invariably too rarefied a taste for the denizens of dingy comics dens – generally don’t sell well.

One time he came up with a twee little Superbaby-sitting story. When the publisher saw a printed copy of this $4.95 oversized extravaganza including Superbaby hiding in a microwave, fearing a backlash of readers emulating such with their sibling toddlers, he had the entire run recalled and pulped. Well, we are talking about people who need pictures to read their stories here.

Luckily the publisher forgot baby Kal-El can fly too or he’d probably dump the entire character with that logic.

So mischievous Kyle was moved across to the company’s Vertigo (mature readers) imprint to produce such class acts as King David (a Disney-styled retelling of David and Goliath) and his latest, Underground Genie. Basically, it’s a scattershot mix of Baker’s skewed views of relationships and what he calls “the absurdity of cultural assimilation” plus Ghost Chimp MD and The Adventures of God.

A perfect present for people who hate comics, it’s a large format 128-page collection of irreverent conjurings that would be make a meaty addition to anybody’s coffee table or toilet reads.

Striker – the comic

(Arena #141, December 2003) Reality check: Since 1985 you’ve been producing a comic strip for a national newspaper and it’s grown so popular that you’re getting half a million a year out of it. So this July you quit to do something else. Something that is so risky, you have to put your house up against it. No, really, that’s what Pete Nash has done.

He’d been creating Striker for The Sun for over 17 years and now he’s pulled it so he can move Warbury Warriors across into their own comic. Titled Striker, it’s sort of a Roy of the Rovers for the 21st century but with ultraslick CGI-style artwork and a print run of 100,000 a week. He’s a brave man, our Pete.

Echoing the approach The Eagle used on Dan Dare, back when your grandad read comics, Pete’s gathered a talented bunch of in-house artists to help him draw the strip, and even pulled in The Sunday Mirror’s sports editor to run the show. Like we said, he’s a brave man, our Pete.

He even slapped The Sun with a lawsuit when they refused to run his launch ads because they claimed he was in competition with them. (So it’s official, The Sun IS a comic!)

End product: the first new weekly British comic for over 20 years that’s worth buying. Not only is the art very polished, but it’s a great read. Even if you’re not a footie fan, it’s a good laugh and comes highly recommended. And, because it’s homegrown, you don’t have to track down your nearest comic shop to pick it up, you can get it anywhere!

Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic (Omnibus)

(Arena #143, February 2004) Those bumper overpriced funnybooks pretentiously known as graphic novels generally stick with the contemporary myth of the superhero if they’re American. When they do produce something different, the shock value is sufficient for them to be showered with awards from the condescending grown up print world of magazines and newspapers.

We do it different over here. The nearest we’ve got to a superhero is Judge Dredd, an out-and-out fascist future cop. But one of the Judge Dredd stable of comics creators, Jim McCarthy, has now jumped in with first-time author and spunk rocker Barnaby Legg and Yorkshire illustrator Steve “Flameboy” Beaumont to document the life and death of Nirvana’s own flameboy, Kurt Cobain, in a 96 page full colour illustrated paperback.

Fluctuating between subjective dream state and objective reality Godspeed descends into the dark palette of a tortured self-image as it offers a respectful and fitting epitaph which doesn’t let down either the legion of hardened Nirvana fans or merely curious outsiders.

The visuals are first rate, and despite the heavy responsibility, these guys have pulled it off remarkably well, going beyond the basic facts to produce a worthy tribute to a talented, tortured genius.

The Losers: Ante Up (DC/Vertigo)

(Arena #144, March 2004) Call it fatalism, but The Losers is a popular choice of title. There was a crap 1970 Jack Starrett movie (Uncle Sam recruits five Hell’s Angels to terrorise the Viet Cong on armoured bikes and rescue an American “advisor” from Cambodia). An English heavy punk band (Steve, Tim, Conrad and Pug) took the name, but split in 1994 after being held at gunpoint by an insane Polish psychopath in Berlin. It was also the title of an off-genre 1993 book by fantasy author David Eddings (a modern-day morality play, and a treatise on the ills and insanity of our social services system).

…Plus it’s a far out comicbook by ex-2000 AD editor turned gutsy scripter Andy Diggle and the no-nonsense bold ‘n’ brash art of the enigmatic “Jock”. Thanks to savvy marketing, you don’t have to scrabble for back issues, as Batman publisher DC-Vertigo has promptly collected the first four issues, The Losers: Ante Up, into a tightly-written $9.95 action-thriller on sale now.

Even DC Comics had already used the title, but only as a World War II piece of nonsense. Here it’s straight to the jugular with a pissed-off team of six black ops ex-CIA agents including a female Afghani freedom fighter, who saw something they shouldn’t have. The suits wrongly thought they’d solved their problem with a helicopter “accident” and now our heroes are out for revenge.

Probably the best action movie you’ve never seen.

The Matrix Comics (Burleyman)

Arena #145, April 2004) How to Succeed in Comics Without Really Trying: Make a few cult movies or TV series and the editors will beg you to write them.

It worked for Babylon 5’s Joe Michael Straczynski, currently revitalising Spider-Man comics. Dogma’s Kevin Smith worked wonders on Green Arrow. Quentin Tarantino is the ultimate comics geek and apparently on the brink of writing for Marvel.

So what about Andy and Larry Wachowski? They’re actually failed comics writers, having worked on Marvel’s short-lived Clive Barker horror titles. Then, part inspired by Vertigo’s The Invisibles, they came up with The Matrix.

Unable to kick their roots, they then set up the online Matrix Comics, inviting top artists to produce strips and writing a few themselves. Which is fine, if you like your R&R on screen. Now, finally, they have transferred the best of them to print in a 158 page colour collection under their own Burleyman Entertainment imprint, with a sequel promised to follow.

It’s the ultimate in cool as a coffee table accessory. Good gags, stunning graphics and a bunch of trippy stories with namedrop creators like Neil (Sandman) Gaiman, Dave (Watchmen) Gibbons and Bill (Elektra Lives) Sienciewicz. £16.99 well spent.

Wanted (Top Cow Productions/Image Comics)

(Arena #148, July 2004) Hey look, it’s MacMillar time! The ruling Brit enfant terrible of the US comics fanboy scene is Glaswegian cheeky boy Mark Millar – he who achieves maximum national press coverage simply by making things up. Butler-served champagne breakfasts, Madonna screenplays, multi-million income, the sort of nonsense the tabloids fall for every time.

Fortunately his comics fiction is as inspired as his PR fiction. From his 1989 Saviour launchpad (superheroic second comings) to his current revisionist X-Men and Spider-Man reworkings, he rarely fails to deliver innovative storytelling.

And he loves to shock. His latest demented crop includes another Son of God pop, Chosen (12 year old suddenly discovers he’s the returned JC with a flight booked for destiny in Israel), The Unfunnies (anthropomorphic internet porn) and Wanted.

Wanted is a real world superhero comic, but without any superheroes. Because they’ve all been neutralised and reality has been rewritten so nobody remembers they ever existed. It’s all down to the entire planet’s super-criminal community getting together to become an unstoppable force. And winning. Enter our lead character, Wesley Gibson, one alienated meek ipod guy whose wife’s screwing his best friend and gets spat on by every passing Spike Lee extra. As Millar puts it, “Spina bifida babies have more backbone”. So he does a Michael Douglas Falling Down turnaround and takes up the offer to train to become a sonofabitch supervillain himself.

Superb draftsman Geoff (JG) Jones provides intense photorealistic art, complemented by excellent computer colouring by Paul Mounts for this six-issue mini in all good seedy comic shops now and sure to become a bumper collection any time soon.

The Red Snake and The Bug Boy (DH Publishing)

(Arena #149, August 2003) With zombies and ghoulies making max box office and Japanese translations dominating the Western graphic novel market, an unholy marriage of the two seems a dead cert. Which is no surprise to manga mayhem meister Hideshi Hino, who’s been terrifying oriental comics readers with his twisted tales for over 20 years.

Now translated into English, Hino-horror hits comics shops and sicker bookshops this summer with two launch titles, both in the manga pocketbook format. The Red Snake is a cross between The Simpsons and The Mansons with an added dash of Alien. Also described as “Alice in Wonderland meets Evil Dead“, it is followed by The Bug Boy, X-certificate Kafka morphing grotesqueness with such classic lines as “Soon his whole body was a rotting mass of jelly”.

Definitely not for the squeamish, a wonderful antidote to such sickly-sweet Japanese titles as Sailor Moon, this is the stuff of seriously bad tripping and definitely not for kids. So start your splatterfest collection now, because Tokyo’s DH Publishing has a back catalogue of over 200 heinous Hino titles ready for translation and is threatening us with publishing them, alongside the writer/artist’s new work, ad infinitum.

Charley’s War: Day One (Titan Books)

(Arena #151, October 2004) It’s a popularly held belief that the snootily-named Graphic Novels have saved comics from near-extinction. What was once available by the million in newsagents across the UK and USA had deteriorated into an industry purely focused on the ever-decreasing anorak market, served only by those creepy and usually seedy backstreet comics shops. Then some bright spark copied the European album format, with chunky “Best of” collections and a respectable identity and cover prices that bookshops couldn’t get enough of.

In the UK, ex-2000 AD editor Nick Landau got the rights to repackage Judge Dredd strips as graphic novels and, over the last 20 years has built an empire as Titan Books, with titles ranging from Buffy and Star Wars to The Simpsons and Superman. But along the way he has lost his backbone line as the new 2000 AD publishers, computer gamers Rebellion, have now taken the license back for themselves. The line replacement positively reeks of musty UK nostalgia, including collections of Dan Dare, Modesty Blaise and James Bond comic strips. But the cream of this new crop has to be Charley’s War (£14.99, 192 pages, on sale November).

Brutal and raw, it tells of July 1st 1916, when 20,000 British soldiers were killed and 38,000 wounded on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and of survivor, 16 year old Private Charley Bourne. Culled from the 1975 6p Battle newsprint weekly comic, the Pat Mills/Joe Colquhoun-created strip has long been celebrated for its authentic telling of life in the trenches during World War One and is a worthy Titan Books replacement for the fascist future of Judge Dredd.

The Originals (DC Comics)

(Arena #153, December 2003) As a distant cousin of the whole celebrity shebang, the comics fraternity has its own little pantheon of star entertainers. A clutch of usually film-wannabe strip writers and artists can acquire cult followings for work considered revolutionary in a medium where cliché invariably rules. When a title, often in the much abused graphic novel format, breaks into mainstream sales charts its creators transcend their roots and achieve critical acclaim. Such a title is Watchmen, the 1986 multiple award winning benchmark for the next decade’s grim ‘n’ gritty take on spandex suited superhumans.

Despite being a combined effort by writer and artist, journalists constantly gave the author full credit, relegating artist and co-creator Dave Gibbons to workmanlike secondary status, despite his painstaking involvement taking at least four times that of writer Alan Moore.

Now, almost 20 years later, Gibbons has again taken on a two-year project, but this time in the auteur role, writing, drawing and even lettering his 160-page magnum opus, The Originals. Not to be dismissed as “mod-retro” Gibbons rises above the obvious, combining his memories of the Sixties with hard-edged science fiction in a Clockwork Orange fashion. As he summerises it, “I wanted to do a personal truth, to show the way it felt back then. My first seeing a horde of Lambrettas was like watching the Martians land, it was so alien. I didn’t want to do a retro documentary.”

With a self-imposed monochrome palette, Gibbons’ design-conscious drama of hover scooters, sharp Italian suits and gang feuds transcends revival status, displaying a master craftsman at his creative peak in both words and pictures.

True Brit (DC Comics)

(Arena #154, January 2004) It seemed like a good idea at the time. Revered Brit comic writer John Cleese and equally revered Yank comic company DC coming together on a laff-a-minute Superman hardback with the premise of Superbaby landing in Weston-super-Mere. Throw in a West Bromwich-born artist and what could go wrong? Well, everything, actually.

It’s the wrong sort of comic routine for Cleese, who, despite the old Super Bicycle Repair Man sketch for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, couldn’t give a toss about Superman, and the well-past-his-sell-by-date artist, John Byrne, had emigrated to Canada aged seven.

For a 94-page speed read, it’s overpriced tosh which makes Benny Hill seem subtle. Byrne’s clichéd England looks like a suburb of Kansas and Cleese – unable or unwilling to write the actual script – merely threw in a couple of lame gags for an American ex-Python fanzine editor with no comics-writing pedigree to pad out.

A half-hearted effort right down to the title – Fawlty Powers would have been far better. Instead a weak pun on an old John Wayne movie was slapped on. Sadly, the end product was more True Shit than True Brit.

Overpriced, overhyped and over here.

Combat Zone: True Tales of GIs in Iraq (Marvel)

(Arena #156, March 2004) The use of American comicbooks as propaganda dates back almost to their 1930s origin so it’s no coincidence that sales peaked during World War II with the Armed Forces eagerly lapping up the latest Axis-bashing adventures of Superman, Captain Marvel and their cape ‘n’ cowl friends.

Even in the 1960s “Marvel Age of Comics” they were still at it; their history lessons for baby boomers telling us how Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos had saved the free world from the Third Reich.

By the Eighties, a comicbook conscience had emerged, as The Nam set out to tell it straight, warts and all. But now, thanks to 9/11 and the Bush dynasty, we’re back to square one. Marvel’s latest grunts-with-guns launch is titled Combat Zone: True Tales of GIs in Iraq. You’d half expect Michael Moore to be the latest films-to-comics author for something like this, but no, we’re talking corporate America here.

This January launching $2.99 monthly is written by one Karl Zinsmeister. He’s a “respected” political observer, author (of Dawn over Baghdad, celebrating the US occupation) and war correspondent. He’s also editor in chief of the American Enterprise Magazine, house mag for what The Guardian newspaper calls a “barkingly neo-con think tank”, and also has strong ties to the oil industry, which is handy. It’s so big, in fact, that it was partly responsible for authoring the Bush administration’s current foreign policy doctrine.

The comic was to launch earlier but several artists approached point blank refused to draw it when its true nature was revealed. So now it’s down to Death of Superman’s Dan Jurgens to illustrate the factual five parter which editor Axel Alonso says, “is not about whether we should have been there or failed diplomacy”.

Damn straight with Zinsmeister writing it!

4/9/11: Before he was a Prisoner, he was DANGER MAN

Still finding mock-up dummies of projects which never were, and have just posted one which would have become a cult classic… Danger Man, taken from the 1960s ITC TV series and with art by the wonderful Jesus Blasco. Click here for the Ones That Got Away page and whizz on down to the bottom for the full story.

1/9/11: Keeping the Mail Order Bods quiet

We’re got to fed up with eBay making sellers’ lives pure hell that we’ve added a few new pages to this site, offering a range of goodies for the discerning comics fan and historian. You’ll find our very own Quality back issues (Warrior, House of Hammer, Starburst and the rest) here, while we’ve also produced a fabulous cover gallery and sales lists for hundreds of Starblazer and thousands of Commando back issues.

We’ll be adding more as weeks pass, so be sure to bookmark this page, chums!

18/8/11: MUSIC MAESTRO PUH-LEEZE!

As the more discerning among you will already realise, Brighton is a creative nexus for all things artistic… from computer game creators to actors, writers, comics folk and musicians. In fact, you can hardly step out of the front door without tripping over a creative of some sort! Even our window cleaner is an eccentric! About 75 years old, cut glass accent and green hair! No, really.

In Brighton, if you want to sound unusual and interesting in a pub chat (there are 365 of said establishments in this fine town BTW), best say you’re an accountant or an estate agent… anything but a creative, they’re ten a penny!

All of which is a tortuous lead-in to saying I’m now offering to the world the chap-hop charms of two of my local musical chums. Men of great taste and infinite jest, not only do both coincidentally drink from the same trough in splendid and slightly different ways, but they both have the good taste to also be followers of the sequential art form too!

In fact, one of them is actually a bit of a practitioner to boot! Above right is a sample of Mr B’s more autobiographical work to the right.

Given the oft-heard crossover between music and comics, coupled with our own mail order expertise going all the way back to 1975’s House of Hammer Bargain Basement, it seemed only logical to get behind these two chaps full force.

You’ll find the results here.

Dez holds fort at the Fab Cafe's June 2 relaunch party for Starburst.

5/2/11: Hardly a week back from the United Arab Emirates and I’ve been a guest speaker at another event. Yet more sand but less heat this time as I took a contingent of the Brighton bunch (or Skinn’s Posse as some have been calling us) down to Pontins, Camber Sands, for the second SFX Weekender.

Above (l-r): artists Glenn Fabry and Paul Cemmick, publishers Gareth Kavanagh and yrs truly, plus Cravats lead singer turned toigh guy actor The Shend, getting ready for action.

That the event had the audacity to be held on my birthday resulted in a higher personal profile than I’d intended, with me mounting the stage during the evening festivities, being serenaded by the assembled multitude and ending with a somewhat foolhardy dive into the mosh pit. So much for growing old gracefully!

I’m indebted to reader Simon Fitzpatrick for sending me the following clipping from the previous year’s event. As they invited me back this year, I can only imagine that SFX Magazine must have seen the article and actually believed what it said!

Education through Entertainment in the United Arab Emirates

30/1/11: Back from the first United Arab Emirates trip. Wow! Heady stuff. To the left is a photo taken during the talk at the New York University (Abu Dhabi) featuring Qais Mohammed Sedki (who became a firm friend during the three hour private conversation we shared before the event), yours truly as chair person and Charles Kochman (flown in from the States specifically for the talk and who I regret not getting to spend more time with). Following the 90-minute talk, there was a lively Q&A session and I then did a stack of interviews with local students, example here. There’s a review of the event here and NYU has made the entire discussion available as an online video here.

But I was actually out there for a meetings-packed week, laying the foundations for a major event about which more to follow. Brit cartoonist Kev F Sutherland also came out (spending his days zooming around ten local schools with his superb interactive workshop). This gave me a pal to chat with during our evenings back at the hotel where, despite fears, alcohol is available and, much to my relief and probably Kev’s disdain, they still allow smoking in restaurants and bars!

Left is an example of Kev’s school work out there (each a sixteen page comic produced by and for each class pupil) while right is a photo of him in action.

As well as this 3-piece suit event, I got all kitted up for the entire week with some serious funky power dressing (including skinny ties, wide braces, skinny jeans and chelsea boots) which greatly bemused the Emirati as such attire is rarely seen out there. Think Blues Brothers meets Wall Street in the Middle East!

Despite being one of the wealthiest countries, the UAE also has the largest number of unemployed under-25s (with the United Nations fearing it may rise as high as 40% by the end of 2011). I believe this is mainly due to it being a key victim of the worldwide fall in literacy, surely the basis for all learning. So, under my instant slogan of “Education through Entertainment”, it looks like I’ve found a new challenge in life!

If spam’s anything to go by, we’re certainly getting plenty of hits (we’re deleting about 50 pieces of nonsense every day) but you’ve all gone worrying quiet on us again…

Is it something I said?

Another section I’ve just built up features some of my attempts to convince a mainstream magazine audience of the value of comics literature. You can see examples of my old Arena columns via this link.

BEING HUMAN

You have, of course, been watching BBC 3’s top series, Being Human (two seasons in the can with a third about to follow) haven’t you?

Apparently there’s a US version about to be made – let’s hope it shapes up better than the US Life on Mars (see here for the jaw-droppingly awful ending – literally featuring Major Tom, a genetic gene hunt, the planet Mars and even Ground Control (yet the Bowie soundtrack is oddly replaced by Elton John’s Mona Lisa!). Looks like we can add “metaphor” to the Separated by a Common Language list which began with “irony”.

Anyway, main plot: At a Brighton function recently (The Space) I was introduced to Toby Whithouse, creator/writer of the wonderful everyday tale of three Bristol housemates – a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. It turned out he’s as big a fan of Warrior and House of Hammer as I am of his work.

We’ve promised to swap autographs over a beer soon! Here’s a photo of said historic first encounter twixt Toby and Dez “At the start of their bromance,” as snapper Kerensa Bryant put it! Hate to think what she’d have said if she’d heard event organiser Wayne Imms when we met… he told me he has every issue from #1 of my old Starburst magazine!

A HISTORY OF HORROR

“This is a Proustian moment for me. This brings back a rush of unbelievably happy memories.” Gatiss said that when he was 11 or 12, he was obsessed with House of Hammer magazine. However, after his parents discovered that he’d been writing gory stories at school, they banned him looking at either the magazine or horror films.

I do hope you’ve been watching the latest from the ever-amazing author/actor Mark Gatiss (Sherlock, Doctor Who, League of Gentlemen, Nighty Night, Jekyll, etc).

His History of Horror is a three parter documentary on BBC 4, currently available as a catch-up through BBC iPlayer, or Google “A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss”.

The first part focused on Universal horror, the second on Hammer, Amicus and Roger Corman, the third on the 1980s US horror wave.

He even gave my old House of Hammer magazine a lovely plug in the second one, bless him.

Then the Crumb movie came out and domestic sales rocketed, resulting in them selling out. Sensibly, as there were still plenty of copies Stateside, they shipped a whole bunch back to themselves. A British book coming back into Britain.

But the shipment was seized at Heathrow, deemed as obscene, and Knockabout was faced with hefty court costs if they wished to defend and get their books back. So it was time to do something madcap to raise funds!

Paul Hudson, then owner of London’s Comic Showcase shop, and I, then editor of Comics International, decided we’d do a sponsored parachute jump to raise money for the cause. Here’s how it went…
The ensuing court case was equally funny. On one side the briefcase-bearing suits of Her Majesty’s, all filed in with their new boss, eager to please and impress. On the other side a rag-tag bunch of comics sorts.

Their aim was to convince the judge that Robert Crumb’s work was pornographic smut. Ours was to justify it as autobiographic memories, drawn in such a style that NOBODY (except maybe Crumb himself) could consider it even a tad saucy.

Paul Gravett

Admission 16 years later: It hadn't been my first time!

Their side seriously started to err when they tried comparing it to Soho porn. My favourite moment was when comics historian Paul Gravett was cross-examined by the prosecution. “Is this not the kind of material you would expect to find in a typical Soho pornography shop?” they asked. Indignantly, Paul replied, “I certainly wouldn’t know!” (his face a picture at the very suggestion he was familiar with such). You had to be there.

Anyway, major victory for the little guy. We won, thrashed them. Humiliated them. Beat them hollow. Wonder what that did for the shiny new top dog’s career at Heathrow?

Feel free to use this section to post any general comments about the site and its content. When appropriate I will of course answer any specific questions, but don’t go taking advantage of me, you hear? I blocked this off for a few months as we were getting inundated with spam.

Unlike last year’s sell-out Audience with Dame Dezna, it’s going to be a freebie. So if you’re in central M’nchestaaah Saturday July 17, it’s a 3.00pm kick-off and you’ve no excuse not to turn up. Especially as it’s being held in a pub, the good old Lass O’Gowrie, 36 Charles Street, M1

The festivities continue into the evening as I’ve been asked to switch heads and become DJ Dez for the duration (mad fools!).

Scary thing is nobody told me what I was meant to be talking about! But I think I managed to hoof it.

L-R, back row: Dez Skinn, Pat Mills, Alan Davis, Rian Hughes. Front row: DC Thomson’s Bill Graham, Dundee University’s Christopher Murray and Nana Li.

Here’s a link for anybody in the area with time to kill :/ Dundee Literary Festival

In Manchester at the Lass O’Gowrie pub (sensible venue!) on Sunday July 18 alongside actress & good buddy Sophie (Ace) Alred, director Graeme Harper, writers Terrance Dicks, Robert Shearman & Andrew Cartmel and artists Chris Achilleos and good egg Adrian Salmon. Hope to see some of you there.

When I first posted the above visual on Facebook, it led to a rush of comments…

Dave King: Totally agreed on the FM cover. I thought it was a joke when I first saw it. Not laughing now, mind… A relaunch for HoH!? How fab! When’s it hitting?

David Flint: An HoH relaunch? Interesting…

Nick Setchfield: At least they’ve kept the logo, but what an insane cover choice, especially as an old school painting of a Predator would have looked terrific.

Stephen Hooker: Relaunch HoH!!!! And I’ll beat path to your door!

Alan John Dempsey: An HoH relaunch would be fantastic, Dez. Count me in!

Adam Blavatsky: Me too, Dez- ah, those were the days……..:-)

Adrian Salmon: Get that HoH launched Dez ! People are gagging here…

Cavan Scott: I’d buy a new issue of HoH. Hell, I’d buy two!

Alan Woollcombe: Dunno when your HoH is set to relaunch but how about a piece on soon-to-be-flattened Bray Studios (http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/news/article-15841-film-studios-hit-by-recession-could-become-homes/)?

Gerry Turnbull: Dez, are you really relaunching HoH? I still have all my originals in the mail away binders!

Dave Reeder (who edited the 1980s relaunch): Halls of Horror? Seems to me I remember that…

Andrew Ralton: Loved HoH. As a horror magazine with top graphical artists it’s never been bettered, IMHO.

John Gibben: Hey Dez, i note you changed the colour from that horrible yellow to black on issue 1 on this cover, good call imo ;- ) Looking forward to the relaunch should it happen.

Des Glass: Can’t wait for the new HoH Dez, do you have a possible launch date for it? Always thought that a complete Van Helsing’s Terror Tales trade paperback would be brilliant, any chance?

John Gibben: Well, if and when on both HoH and VH trade paperback I’m in for buying ‘em, Dez ;- )

Nick Neocleous: Sounds like a great trade paperback Dez, all those great strips by Bolton, Neary, Lewis etc. Would have loved to have seen a new painted cover though.

To which I replied: Wouldn’t we all, Nick. Brian Lewis is sadly missed and a tough act to follow…

Stephen Hooker: Brian Lewis was the first comic pro, for me, anyway, who seemed human and happy to be at cons rather than looking like he’d like to be somewhere else.

John Gibben: Brian Lewis was indeed a class act.

To which I replied: He was a definite one-off. The stories I could tell (some more adult than others)…

At which point it digressed somewhat, culminating in me saying I really should move the discussion elsewhere, and here it is! (Posting of new comments for this section temporarily disabled.)

For those of you in parts of the world unable to locate Comic Heroes magazine (but you really should try!), here’s the content of the first few…

Sez Dez on Downloads

Produced for Future Publishing’s COMIC HEROES #1, March 2010; http://www.comicheroesmagazine.com/

Future Publishing's Comic Heroes #1 with The Skinny appearing on page 13. Scary!

It’s not the most super-heroic way to grab your attention for an opening paragraph, but isn’t it amazing that in a post-punk possibly pre-apocalyptic society here in the dear old UK milkmen still leave full bottles by your front door and nobody nicks them? I mean, come on… the prisons are overcrowded, inflation’s running rampant, dole figures are bulging but nobody would dream of breaking that unspoken rule, smashing one of the last bastions of our quaint old society… pinching the milk.

Well, it would be stealing. Theft. The unbearable guilt, the absolute shame of it, such would haunt us to our graves. But downloads? Ah, that’s a different matter. We’ve all been merrily bootlegging somebody else’s copyright material ever since Charles Ginsburg invented the audio tape recorder. And as technology moved on, it’s been happening ever since. Videos, CDs, and now courtesy of the world wide web, just about anything! Even comicbooks.

But that’s a weird one, that. Comicbooks are carefully crafted for print. It’s not just about the individual frames (or panels, if you’re a non-Blighty reader). Artists have been known to throw hissy-fits if a full page ad breaks up a spread. Because of the initial impact. Think about it. It’s a relatively subliminal thing but when you physically turn a page your eye first takes in the next two page spread long before you focus on those itty-bitty speech balloons. It’s the nature of the beast. Chances are you became comics-literate soon after starting primary school, you somehow accepted that absurd concept of speech balloons, narrative panels, thought balloons and sound effects existing in the same visual world as the characters you were reading about. Surreal stuff.

There’s never been a Comics 101 to my knowledge which actually told the reader that dotted outlines mean whispering or jagged outlines shouting or best of all those cloudy bubbly outlines meaning thinking. You just quickly learn to know it. In fact there was a BBC Radio 4 Book Programme a few years back where the four panellists were given a copy of Watchmen to review and two of them admitted they actually couldn’t read it, they weren’t comics literate. They just didn’t get it! And that was with nice and uniform squared off pictures on a nine-frame grid. Hardly taxing. Imagine how they’d have coped with Jim Steranko’s psychedelia on S.H.I.E.L.D. or Frank Bellamy’s jagged and dripping borders on Eagle’s Heros the Spartan? So much for Radio 4 (the shame, the shame).

But we’re talking downloads here. And you could argue that you can print out a download. Sure. And collate and staple together all 32 pages, then rush to your nearest PC World for another bunch of madly-expensive colour cartridges. Not terribly cost-effective that, even with today’s prices for comicbooks. Because we are talking about today’s crop here. Forget archive material going all the way back to the first Batman, Superman and Spider-Man comics (‘cos they’re all up there too!).

It would be blatantly encouraging such piracy were I to namecheck the sites, but they’re up there offering this week’s comicbooks online – all of ‘em! It’s amazing considering how many are being pumped out each week. Even more amazing, the corporate owners of Spidey publishing Marvel and Supes producing DC – the heavyweight Disney and Warner Bros corporations – seem incapable of stopping them. No sooner do they scare one off but two more replace it.

So we’re not talking licensing here, heaven forbid, but an army of people scanning all this stuff in — unless the publishers are still naively sending out promotional e-copies thinking they’ll only be used for review purposes. There is the point that downloads can undermine the viability of the real thing, plus creatives are losing out on their royalties, and the counter-argument that freebies increase a title’s and creator’s profile. But we know all about that through constant battles over film and music.

Besides, we’re collectors. We wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of online comics, would we? The printed form isn’t really a 20th century phenomenon, replaced by technology to be read only on screen, is it? We like the feel of our comicbooks, the smell of them, the sheer thrill of turning that page. They’re a tactile experience that we read, bag and treasure.

Anyway, reading online makes your eyes hurt, doesn’t it? And we’d never steal bottles of milk either!

Sez Dez on British Super-Heroes

produced for Future Publishing’s COMIC HEROES #2, June 2010

For my second column for this new title, I had a sudden realisation, why are features about a visual art always presented as columns of grey type? How dull’s that? So, to avoid boring lists – as this would have included a LOT of them, I twisted Future Publishing’s arm into letting me have a two page spread for the following. They tidied my version up a lot, but here’s what I presented them with…

Sez Dez on Freelancers

produced for Future Publishing’s COMIC HEROES #3, Autumn 2010

Freelance: Sir Walter Scott is credited with creating the term, as free-lance, meaning a medieval mercenary warrior, somebody whose lance is not in any lord’s service.

These days it hasn’t changed much at all. Sure, the lance may have morphed into a keyboard and the lord into an editor, but it’s still not dedicated. A freelance writer, or artist, colourist or letterer, can work for anybody who’ll have them.

But there is one major difference. A medieval freelance would continually wander the countryside in search of work, these days they don’t get out much. In fact, were it not for Tescos and comic conventions they probably wouldn’t get out at all!

A lot of comics readers envy writers and artists. They see them at conventions being lionized and eulogised, whether on stage or as the focal point of queues, signing and sketching for their public. These are the true comic heroes, the creators.

But that’s only one or two weekends of the year. With the exception of a larger-than-life Hagrid lookalike who rarely strays, they’re pretty much unrecognisable to the general public when they do the shopping. Because it’s not a proper job really, is it? They work from home, so they’re always the first call if one of their children falls over at school. Because don’t fool yourself into believing that it’s such a luxurious lifestyle that their income alone is sufficient to maintain the entire family. No way. The other half invariably works too, except they go out to earn a crust.

The freelancer doesn’t. He (or increasingly frequently she) stays in. Working at home, living at home, seven days a week… freelance. No paid holidays, no paid sickness leave, no Christmas parties, no office gossip. In fact no real perks except being able to wear your jammies all day.

I’ve always had the highest respect for people who can maintain the life of a freelancer. The self-discipline needed is truly awesome. Take John Wagner, for instance: for the best part of 33 years, week in week out this guy has been producing a new Judge Dredd strip for 2000 AD plus more than a few spin-offs. Like most folk, he’ll have had weeks when he felt under the weather, or had personal problems, but he’s still maintained an incredibly high standard. On time, all the time. And if you’ve met six foot something John, you’ll know he’s not the type of person that editors would cajole to keep on time. It’s down to a strict self discipline.

An American comics scribe once summed up what it’s like being a freelance writer by saying “You can never deliver top quality scripts every time. Sometimes I write average stuff, sometimes below average, but every once in a while a script turns out fantastic.” Let’s hope his editor never saw that. But what are they to do if a regular writer (or artist or colorist) turns in a sub-standard piece of work? These people are continually on the eleventh hour of deadlines. There’s no point them even thinking of getting a few issues ahead, cashflow won’t allow for early payment so even if they have the time and inclination, they won’t see any financial reward for months.

It’s easy to criticise somebody’s work, to say, “I could do better”. But could you do better month in month out, on time and on budget for years? Initial Conan the Barbarian artist Barry Windsor Smith suddenly quit drawing the title because he said he wasn’t being paid enough for the amount of work he put in. True, he wasn’t.

In under two years he’d gone from being Jack Kirby-influenced to his pre-Raphaelite stage, highly meticulous in detail and mannered in style. Beautiful and groundbreaking for the comics medium, but impossible to maintain. In fact, impossible to ink too! When the inker was handed the finely pencilled Conan pages and said there was no way he could get it done on time, the editor suggested he simply replaced some of the fantastic backgrounds with either simple horizons and sunsets or just rubbed them out and left the characters as vignettes. Poor Barry. Is there any wonder he quit?

So when Windsor Smith was replaced by Big John Buscema, with Conan #25, the fans felt let down. Buscema had more raw power in his figure work than Smith, but where was all the fantastic detail? But Buscema continued producing Conan on a regular basis for more than a decade.

To allow for the likes of such visionaries as Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Bernie Wrightson or Barry Windsor Smith, you need a legion of solid reliable artists like Curt Swan, Jim Aparo, Norm Breyfogle, John Romita and the like to maintain the schedule, decade after decade. Without them, there wouldn’t be any backbone titles to revolutionise. And worse, when these visionaries have awed and amazed the fans with their blowaway four parters, the guys who’ve been keeping the title going until then and have to carry on after the award-winning interruptions seem somehow diminished.

But these are the freelancers I truly respect most. The often unsung comic heroes who month-in month-out produce rock solid work, on time and on budget.

Another reason they’re always in work: They make the editor’s life easier. So if you’re looking for a career in comics, never underestimate that!