Re[2]: Re[2]: "Comic Books"

Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Fri, 25 Jul 1997 21:33:04 +0100


On Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:56:32 +0000
Mark Grant <mark@unicorn.com> wrote:

[snip]

>With some reservations, I really liked the British version of 'The
>Adventures of Luther Arkwright'; the US printing screwed up a lot of the
>art and the comic suffered from an average publication rate of one issue a
>year so the later issues are far more impressive than the early ones.

With you on that one - excellent, idiosyncratic artwork, and an
imaginative scenario.

>> But I think you'll find that those who wrote them (Alan Moore, David
>> Gibbons, and the Scotsman whose name I've forgotten who writes the
>> 'Invisibles', another more recent good comic) are pretty solidly
>> left-wing.
>
>Yes, but left-wing in the Iain Banks sense; more like anarcho-socialists
>than authoritarian socialists. I think I have far more in common with them
>than with, say, the avowedly capitalist Tory party.

Absolutely! Another one is the Scottish S-F writer Ken McLeod (Star
Fraction and The Stone Canal). He actually knows some of the folks in
the Libertarian Alliance here in the UK (they figure in the dedication
of Star Fraction)!

[pins]

>2000AD left wing? Some of the 80s stories certainly leant that way,
>particularly those by the authors in question, but I'd have a hard time
>seeing Judge Dredd as left-wing (though I suspect he'd have loved to work
>in Stalinist Russia...)
>
Ah well, there's the subtlety of British irony for you! I think the general idea was
to make fun of American 'cultural imperialism', and extrapolate
its horrendous possibilities (as they see them), while at the same time
pointing to how we are all suckers for it at the same time.

Guru George