Word reaches me that a clutch of classic British comics characters are about to be revived by Alan Moore, initially in a four-issue series called Albion from DC's WildStorm imprint. Apparently IPC (which absorbed or transformed from Fleetway Publications in the year dot, if memory serves) is now owned by Time-Warner, which also owns IPC, so...
In retrospect, there was some really rather weird shit going down in the pages of comics such as Lion and Valiant during their 60s heyday, with anti-heroes seemingly being the norm rather than conventional square-jawed do-gooders. We had a vaguely demonic-looking escapologist (Janus Stark), a giant robot ape (Mytek the Mighty), a man with a spooky jewel implanted in his chest (Kelly's Eye) and a completely inarticulate robot (Robot Archie - although I think he actually got given a voice eventually) and even an out-and-out criminal (The Spider). As for Jason Hyde - let's not even go there...
I may well have got some of the above muddled, but of course, MM, you wrote lots of scripts for comics around this time, did you not? I know you did some Skid Solo stories and many others - did you ever have a hand in any of the aforementioned? The ambivalent, slightly dark nature of many of these characters now seems to be ahead of its time in comparison with the anodyne stuff that passed elsewhere/elsewhen.
In retrospect, there was some really rather weird shit going down in the pages of comics such as Lion and Valiant during their 60s heyday, with anti-heroes seemingly being the norm rather than conventional square-jawed do-gooders. We had a vaguely demonic-looking escapologist (Janus Stark), a giant robot ape (Mytek the Mighty), a man with a spooky jewel implanted in his chest (Kelly's Eye) and a completely inarticulate robot (Robot Archie - although I think he actually got given a voice eventually) and even an out-and-out criminal (The Spider). As for Jason Hyde - let's not even go there...
I may well have got some of the above muddled, but of course, MM, you wrote lots of scripts for comics around this time, did you not? I know you did some Skid Solo stories and many others - did you ever have a hand in any of the aforementioned? The ambivalent, slightly dark nature of many of these characters now seems to be ahead of its time in comparison with the anodyne stuff that passed elsewhere/elsewhen.
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