| Dear Steve, Thanks for creating a great site. It's a tribute to my favourite writer in any medium, Pat Mills. My view of Action is that it was brill but my favourite comic of all time remains the pre-Action Force version of Battle. I think that only now are readers beginning to appreciate how great that comic was. In my humble view, Action was marred by too many sports stories, sport just does not entertain in comics and it's interesting to note that it is now dead as a subject for comics. I am happy to watch sport in real life but can't abide it in comics. Comics are meant to immerse people in a world of events that they can't see in real life - monster sharks, magnum-toting spies, Panzers, but you can watch a game of football any night of the week. And these fantasies were more important in the 70s than they are now we have videos, satellites, PCs. In the 70s, you had to wait years for a cinema film to reach TV and if you didn't stay up late to watch it there was no way of recording it. I am convinced that's why comics like Action and Battle thrived in the late 70s. Viewing this Action website makes me think the comic was handicapped by sports stories. But the thing I don't understand is how sports comics were amongst the last DC or IPC titles to die out in the 80s, who bought them? When they launched Crisis I went to a Pat Mills signing and got the first issued signed. At the time I viewed him as a mystical messiah but when I read the Crisis, the unalloyed political correctness turned me right off. Pat has been described as a Marxist - Charley's War - but the strange thing is that some of Action could be construed as wildly reactionary - Dredger, Kids Rule - as could Invasion -and his greatest creation Judge Dredd became so fascistic they had to write a democracy campaign into the script years down the line. A very complex but very talented individual. Did Dredd(ger) and Kids Rule reflect the wave that brought the dreaded Mrs T to power? Obviously I don't want anyone to think that I am knocking the greatest comic writer of all time! In fact, Pat's new Savage strip is probably the best piece of political writing in Britain this year, but it intrigues me how Action reflected real or imagined problems in Britain at the time and how it coincided with the rise of scary Maggie. Charley |
| Steve says: I couldn't agree more. Sport is pretty dull in any medium, but continued comic book adventures of unlikely heroes on the track and field really are the pits. I liked Lefty as a kid, but now when I look back at the way the strip developed post ban, it really was tedious. Ditto Roaring Wheels, Double Dynamite and their like. Play till you Drop! was a strip I always avoided. How the market sustained Tiger, Scorcher, Roy of the Rovers and their like for so long is a mystery. Now sport is reduced to Scorer or Striker or The Premier or whatever their successors are in the tabloids. Pass the war comics. Pat Mills was a fine creator, and even though he often let his personal obsessions with hard line politics and ecology, pagan living and khaos magic taint a lot of his work in the last decade, he can still turn in a fantastic, hard hitting, humorous and satirical strip that pulls no punches. Sometimes I think Pat was spoiled a little by his prolific output and needed the benefit of a decent editor. He would, on occasion, re-invent a character he had previously done a much better version of, and perhaps had the new idea had more time to gestate, it would have evolved into a more three dimensional strip. I always thought that third world war spin off Finn was a lame duck. ABC Warriors went through periods that sucked, and Nemesis had long passed the sell by date. Slaine is enjoying a revitalisation as Pat has gone back to the ethos that made it so unique before all the time travel bollocks turned it into Dr. Who with an axe. David Bishop's articles in the Dredd Megazine a few years back on the origins of 2000AD were great, and truly acknowledged Pat's contribution to British comics outside of Tooth. Whilst it could be said that Pat Mills created the name of Judge Dredd (although he originally spelt it 'dread'), the concept of the uber-fascist lawman belongs to John Wagner. Mills' idea for 'Judge Dread' was a far cry from political correctness, all black magic and voodoo rituals, a bit like the natives in the second Hook Jaw story. A dummy strip was created, but never published. Mills thought the name better suited Wagner's character and the spelling was changed accordingly. The democracy campaign came from Wagner growing tired of Dredd having no redeeming qualities, and a boredom with writing him in such a way. Mills has distanced himself from titles such as Kids Rule, believing it was a stupid idea and was just asking for all the trouble it brought. It's interesting to look at some of his creations for Tooth though. Flesh is like Hook Jaw on the surface, a bit of a sharp-toothed slasher. The subtexts illustrating human greed at the expense of the environment are also very similar. I'm currently researching and writing a magazine article on Action, and decided to look at the political backdrop that produced the comic. Thatcherism was still three years away, but the crises of the times were still grim reading, with the government faltering following Wilson's resignation as Prime Sinister. Argentine threats to the Falklands, gunboats patrolling our coast in the cod wars, national bankruptcy with the collapse of the Pound, all of this following on from Heath's era of power cuts, flying pickets and the three day week. The anti-authoritarian stance of Action was hardly surprising. Apparently Mr. Mills writes comic strip porn for the French market of which he is so vocal in support. Maybe they treat creators better there than here, but is this really the best use of his obvious talents, and what's on with Savage? Very post-modern I'm sure. Whatever your opinions of Pat Mills, and he's had his ups and downs, he was certainly a maverick, and a pioneer when it came to bringing British comics kicking and screaming out of the 1950s. |
